Round 7, Simulacra

Betsy Huete

Since 1979, Lawndale Art Center has been a bastion of the Houston arts community, starting as an extension of the University of Houston and gradually transforming itself into its own organization, eventually becoming one of the premier non-profit art venues in town. Lawndale underwent a major renovation in 2005, and along with it came the Lawndale Artist Studio Program. It is a residency that gives three artists nine months of studio space, a stipend, and an exhibition. Now in its seventh year (hence the exhibition title Round 7), Lawndale’s John M. O’Quinn Gallery is showing the work of residents Domokos Benczedi (including his band Future Blondes 0.0.0.0.), Nancy Douthey, and Patrick Turk.

Domokos Benczedi has been a staple of the Houston noise and underground music scene for probably the past two decades. He has been involved with everything from current project Future Blondes to Rusted Shut to Black Leather Jesus. The Future Blondes 0.0.0.0. sound, while of course varying from track to track, is hauntingly repetitive and mesmerizing, emanating what can only be described as a sepulchral pixilation. Frustratingly, the strongest components of Benczedi’s work do not appear in Round 7.

As the viewer enters the O’Quinn Gallery, she encounters Sioux Dance (2013), a mostly black and white installation comprising a variety of materials: a large collage print, white washed speakers, and about twenty to thirty salt chlorinator unit covers just to name a few. The installation is set up like a stage—the 8’x5’ collage forms the background, while the speakers and false walls flank the sides and what Benczedi coins as a blueprint floor assemblage covers the floor. With the exception of a video collage on a small TV monitor on the left, it’s a stage where nothing happens, and that’s how all the work feels. He performed original sound work via Future Blondes and brought in other local musical acts on June 8th, but the work without his sound comes across as artifacts or props for a concert, not standing on its own. And the one sound piece, Your Eyes My World (2012), is barely, if at all, audible, competing with Justin Boyd’s sound installation upstairs and Douthey’s barking dog nearby.


Domokos Benczedi, Sioux Dance, 2013, collage print, blueprint floor assemblage w/ recycled salt chlorinator unit covers, white washed Pioneer speakers, vintage amplifier + 8trk/cassette recorder, found broken mirrors, blueprints on moveable walls, video monitor, broken monitors, dimensions variable

Nancy Douthey is a performance and video artist who confronts, utilizes, and mimics various performative and feminist art historical tropes. As the viewer paces across the gallery, he encounters a ninety-degree angle freestanding wall with three video monitors mounted to it, two on adjacent walls and one on the opposite side. The Green Room (Kubrick, Ocean, Numb) (2013) shows Douthey sitting presumably in a bedroom, closely facing the camera. She is thoroughly, roughly massaging her cheeks and face, staring doe-eyed off into the distance. Her movements recall the bodily performances experimented by Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman of the ‘60s and ends with her face bitch-slapped by what appears to be a male hand. The Yellow Bathroom (Mom, Dad, Superman) (2013) conjures Cindy Sherman as Douthey sits on the edge of her bathtub robed in matronly and floral silk. Again, she faces the camera, crying while mouthing the words “mom” and “dad,” occasionally lip syncing to the accompanying music.


Nancy Douthey, The Green Room (Kubrick, Ocean, Numb), 2013, 2 minute video loop

While Douthey convincingly melds absurdity and sincerity in these performances (she seems to be legitimately crying in The Yellow Bathroom), her most effective and thought provoking work derives from the piece where she isn’t doing much at all. The Fireplace (Not to be reproduced) (2013) is a bifurcated video loop of two Doutheys side by side, standing (waiting?) on two different sides of the same living room mantle. This time Douthey, neither of them, face the camera, but instead stands at a three quarter stance with her back mostly to the camera, only giving the viewer occasional glances of her profile. While the camera is clearly facing the mirror, it quickly becomes obvious that she is intentionally blocking her reflection with the back of her own head. The Fireplace is reminiscent of Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women (1979), where he photographs a woman facing the mirror. The viewer here is implicated as voyeur, staring at the woman. But the woman confronts the “male gaze,” staring straight back at the viewer. However, Douthey in her piece not only undercuts the viewer’s gaze but also her own. In denying both the gaze and her confrontation of it, Douthey provides a thoughtfully vulnerable and ambivalent portrait of what it is to be a woman and be perceived by others in an era of self-revealing social media and slutcore pop stars.


Nancy Douthey, The Fireplace (Not to be reproduced), 2013, 2 minute video loop

On the opposite end of the gallery one will find Patrick Turk’s The Superorganism: Concrescence and The Superorganism: Entropy (both 2013). Both pieces consist of densely applied paper collages. Microcosms of animals, plant life, and human body parts circulate throughout the collages. The figures pop up three-dimensionally from the background and feel simultaneously anxious, maneuvering through traffic, and frozen, as if these characters are buried like deeply compacted sediment. Both works are mounted on circular pieces of plywood, each nearly four feet in diameter.


Patrick Turk, The Superorganism: Concrescence,  2013, Plywood, construction paper, glitter, Swarovski crystals, book images, acrylic medium, 46” diameter.

Turk, at least according to his statement, hopes for his pieces to be immersive for his audience, “bring(ing) them into an exotic reality where the body becomes more than it seems.” The Superoganism series delivers a far cry from that immersion. On the contrary, it is trite, glittery, and a little dorky, as if Lisa Frank and a biology illustrator bore a lovechild—and it really works. Turk’s clearly labor-intensive process of cutting and collaging feels sweetly heroic, as if he’s hell-bent on narrating a macabre children’s story of the follies and beauty of concurrently living beings.


Patrick Turk, The Superorganism: Concrescence (detail), 2013, Plywood, construction paper, glitter, Swarovski crystals, book images, acrylic medium, 46” diameter.

Round 7 provides a wide range of the kind of work that should be conducted in a residency: work that breaks through, struggles, falls flat, and successfully asks questions. It arouses the curiosity of what will come not only for Domokos Benczedi, Nancy Douthey, and Patrick Turk, but also for the eighth round of Lawndale residents.

Round 7 runs through June 15 at Lawndale Art Center.

Pan Recommends for the week of May 9 to May 15

Dean Liscum & Robert Boyd

Groove to a DJ set, get in-vigor-ated, join a parade, and get strung along all in the pursuit of art. Here are some but not all of the art events happening this weekend.


THURSDAY

Sound Proof by Peter Lucas at MKT BAR Artist talk at 7 p.m. DJ set 7-9 p.m.
Lucas took the pictures and will DJ, but did he make the fresh baba ganoush next door at the deli counter?

PRH Curatorial Lunchtime Talk series with Marcela Guerrero at Project Row Houses at 12 p.m. Guerrero explores art of the Caribbean and Latin America using Glissant’s theories of creolization. Bring an appetite for knowledge.


FRIDAY

VIM AND VIGOR works by Brandon Araujo, Chris Fulkerson, and Mauricio Menijvar Curated by Paul Middendorf, 6-8 PM at Fresh Arts
Fill up with vim and then get all in-vigor-ated. They promise it won't hurt...much.

Round 7 LAWNDALE 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., Artist talks at 6 p.m.
If you're not overwhelmed, you need to get your whelmed checked. Exhibitions include...

Round 7 • DOMOKOS / FUTURE BLONDES 0.0.0.0., Nancy Douthey & Patrick Turk

I'll Send The Message Along The Wires by Justin Boyd Halls

without walls, room to feel in. The door awaits,your return within. by Abhidnya Ghuge

PRECARIOT by Massa Lemu


SATURDAY

The 26th Annual Art Car Parade from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
During the paleolithic period, men made art on the walls of their dwellings. During the oil age in which man practically lives in his car, men make art on the side of theirs. Cars roll at 1 p.m.

TUESDAY

A Length Of String by The Art Guys beginning at 9:00 a.m. until they reach the end.
Starts at White Oak Bayou beginning at near Tidwell at West T.C. Jester, walking south along the bayou to toward I-610.
If the Art Guys were attending this event instead of performing in it, would they bring scissors?

What I did at the Lone Star Explosion Biennale: Day 3 (NSFW)

Dean Liscum

Lone Star Performance Explosion day three's dominating theme seemed to be food and catharsis. By the third day, I figured out the timing (the artists never start on time) and arrived in time to catch all the acts even though the first thing listed on the bill was Daniel-Kayne's Three Day Fast. By my calculations he was a day and a half into it, which made me a day and a half late.

If there was an explanation, I missed it. So what I saw is what you get: denuding Fiji bottles of there labels, decanting the bottled water into a larger container, performing a ritual (meditation? possibly prayers? the striking of a gong?) re-decanting the water back into the Fiji bottles from whence it came, and placing them on the alter.

Daniel-Kayne in the window of Dean's

Altar-making

More precious than oil, you just wait.

I'm not sure if this was a protest against designer water (Fiji being one of the most egregiously ungreen) or simply a reminder of how vital water is to us as humans. Whether you worship it or not, water and its future is worth expending a little mental energy on.

I stepped into Notsuoh for Chicken 'N Dinner in which Nancy Douthey played a talking chicken as it described and acted out how to prepare itself for dinner.

A floured Nancy Douthey

Dinner done, the audience moved next door to Dean's and was greeted by a toilet on stage. Stevie and Brian McCord then mounted the stage, sat down, and started eating from the toilet. Their dinner table talk consisted of discussions about food: access to and experiences of it. As they shoveled the contents of the toilet into their mouths with their hands, occasionally endearingly feeding each other, they discussed the plethora of grocery stores in and around River Oaks. They discussed the food desserts in Houston in places like the Third Ward. Stevie discussed the first times she ate meat: first pork (not so good), then chicken (coming up it still tastes remarkably like chicken), and finally beef, which took--she still loves it. Brian, basically, made a whole lot of snide remarks about whatever Stevie said. (I'm not sure if it's supposed to be part of the performance, but I could tell they're married.)

Brian and Stevie McCord
No really, it's soy.

When they were done (and I'm not sure if they cleaned their bowl), they wiped off with a napkin and exited stage right.

The end result was just as appetizing as the meal.

By the end, I and apparently the rest of the audience, was ready for a drink. As I was approaching the bar, a group of people who were all dressed in black stormed the bar. They were lead by a woman standing in a shopping cart. Since before I arrived, this group had been outside the bar spouting some sort of temperance and abstinence jibberish. "This leads to veneral disease" one shouted while pointing to Notsuoh. (I'd heard the bathrooms at Notsuoh were sketchy, but I didn't think they were that bad.)

I will buy any book with the silhouette
of a hatchet on its cover.

The woman in the shopping cart got out of her chariot and on the bar. Once stable, she pulled out an axe, brandishing it and castigating the crowd. Then my brain clicked on. That wasn't an axe, it was a hatchet. And that wasn't an abstinence crusader, it was Emily Sloan excellently disguised and performing her piece Carrie Nation Hatchitation.

Alcohol leads to debauchery!
No shit. That's why I'm in this bar.

After she was de-barred, Sloan shouted slogans and lead her band of teetotaler (and myself) to the second floor of Notsuoh, which was the venue for the remainder of the performances.

On the second floor, waiting atop a 15 ft. ladder was the performance artist, Julia Wallace in dark sunglasses and a black dress. Music began and she performed a sort of ballet dance on the ladder. It wasn't Cirque du Soleil, but it certainly wasn't a drunken maintenance man either. It was tightly choreographed, similar to a number of pieces she's done with sexyATTACK.

Done with the dance, she descended the ladder into a pile of dirt and glitter. After perfunctorily removing her sunglasses and dress, she scooped up the dirt and smeared it on her body. Sufficiently slathered, she danced around the ladder and vocalized.

The nudity and the slathering were sensual, but she had me up on the ladder. That portion of the performance captivated my mind.

While a crew of people removed the ladder and the dirt to prepare for the next act, I grabbed a plate of wonderful Pakistani food prepared by Nusrat Malik and then spent 5 minutes trying to navigate the drink-ticket bar set up. My quest for a ticket and a justification of why was a performance piece in itself.

What's a festival without fantastic food?
Nusrat and her assistant Dale

Gim Gwang Cheol took the stage and began unfurling a tape of some type (adhesive? magnetic?). After he'd reached a certain length, he stopped.

Gim Gwang Cheol unraveling a spool of  tape.

Then he methodically and matter-of- factly wrapped it tightly around his head until he had used all the tape that he had unfurled.

Gim with head wrapped, raising his arms to form a cross.
I'm not sure if it was a religious reference or one to the movie Platoon.

As with his other works, I have no idea what it meant, but the slow, subtle, steady pace of it mesmerized me.

Dressed like every middle school physical education (P.E.) teacher I've ever had, John Gregory Boehme strode on to the stage with his arms full of a tennis racket, a golf club, a hockey stick, and a baseball bat. He situated the equipment on a block of lard, which was already there. After all the implements were properly positioned, he tore a hunk of lard from the block and fashioned it into a ball. He repeated this exercise until he had several balls of lard (sounds like a gift one of my rural uncles tried to give me in the 70s) that ranged from baseball to golf ball size.

Coach Boehme

Boehme then proceeded to hit them with the various sports equipment. Some as they lay on the ground. Others, he coaxed audience members to toss his way and he attempted to blast them into the crowd.

Having played all the balls, Boehme stripped out of his sweat suit and put on slacks, a tie, and a jacket. He then placed some sort of breathing apparatus over his nose and mouth, coated his head with 6 inches of lard, pressed a tennis racket, golf club, and a hockey stick into it and then proceed to read a list of the habits of highly successful people or some such group.

Basically, the performance metaphorically captured my entire experience of middle school.

The adolescent flashback, however, didn't stop there. Orion Maxted took the stage with a small card board box. He placed the box in the middle of the stage, extracted a banana from it, held the banana above his head and proclaimed, "banana."  Simply enough. It reminded me of Wittgenstein's language games.

Orion Maxted and his banana

Until he pulled out an orange and proclaimed it a ""banana" and then labelled the box itself a "banana" and began retrieving audience members, bullying them onto the stage, and christening them "banana."

Early "bananas"

Ultimately, he cajoled or coerced just about everyone and everything in the space into participating in this humorous but insidious game, in which he insisted on a version of "the banana truth" and we went a long with it.

peer-pressured or artist pressured "bananas"

To underscore the whole exercise, he wrapped the entire crowd in a ring of tape. All we were missing was a bow and he could have presented us as present to the most debased politicians as an example of how easy it is to get people to go along with your version of the truth as long as you insistently repeat it. Thank goodness he's not running for president.

The stage cleared of "bananas." A man in white paint and a loin cloth set up a small table with various jars and cans of food, most notably mayonnaise. Then Jim Pirtle took the stage and began reading a story of catharsis.

Pirtle with loin-clothed assistant

I'm not going to summarize the story because to do so would make it sound both archetypal and trite. I, who know Jim only as the owner of Notsuoh and who usually has a harder time keeping his balance than I do, found it moving. I will say it did involve a discussion with a virtual "brother" from Russia, a lot of mayonnaise being smeared on Jim, tears (catharsis usually does), more mayonnaise, some personal history, and the quote "this place used to be about chaos and now it's all clean!"...and the second floor of Notsuoh was impressively clean.

...and Russian twin/doppelganger makes three

Then Jim put on a wig and sang a song as a Russian bear. (He'd actually make a pretty good lounge singer if lounge singers wore bad wigs and stumbled around the stag while singing.) What can I say. It worked. Sometimes, you just gotta be there.

Pirtle channeling his musical, inner Russian bear

The next performance was A Geometry of Painting by Nestor Topchy, Marianna Lemesoff, Greg Henry, and Dawn Bell. Armed with paint trays full of what looked like International Klein Blue paint, Marianna and Dawn took their places on either side of the stage size-canvas that covered the floor. Nestor and Greg stood before each, respectively and the ladies coated their backs with the paint.

Marianna bluing the back of Nestor

The two men then met at various spots on the mat\canvas. Using Judo and Aikido movements, they proceeded to paint the canvas by throwing each other.

human painting implements
(I hope they got free drinks at the bar.)

It was a very deliberate act of composition. It consisted of moments of contemplation and consultation followed by a quick, forceful throw and the reverberating slap. Then a caesura involving the re-application of paint and a repetition of contemplation and kinetic composition.

Nestor and Greg putting their backs into their art.

The performance went on for sometime. The crowd got into it ("Oh no you didn't," "you walked right into that one," and the like). Nestor politely requested silence. The piece reminded me of Yves Klein's blue paintings with nude females. However, in my opinion, where as the "beauty" of Klein's piece is ultimately the canvas, the beauty of Topchy's piece was in the making.

The evening ended with 1KA performing some electronic-metal generated music. The sounds were at times screeching, at times thundering.

It was a pitch-perfect coda for my experience of the LSP Biennale.

More photos from the Lone Star Performance Explosion (NSFW)

by Robert Boyd

Here are a few photos I took for day 2 (Avant Graden) and day 3 (Notsuoh) of the Lone Star Performance Explosion. Stay tuned for more of Dean Liscum's performance diary!


Daniel Adame in a box


Nancy Douthey in Chick 'n Dinner


Nancy Douthey in Chick 'n Dinner


Daniel-Kayne in Three Day Fast


Daniel-Kayne's urine in Three Day Fast


Julia Wallace

 

Arrangement in Blue, Black and White

by Robert Boyd


photo by Nancy Douthey

Joel Shapiro has a show up at Texas Gallery (and at Rice Gallery). Nancy Douthey noticed I was wearing clothes that matched Shapiro's untitled drawing of charcoal, chalk and pastel.

The Best (and Worst) of 2011 -- The Houston Art Community Fails to Reach a Consensus (part 2)

by Robert Boyd

This is continued from part 1. The shows/events listed below are everything that got one vote from the 14 respondents to my poll.

Howard Sherman, Apocalyptic Wallpaper at McMurtrey. This show actually got two votes, but one was from Howard Sherman himself! I approve of an artist having high self-esteem, but thought it wouldn't be right to count that toward the total. Mark Flood also liked this show.

Alex Jones' protest against the Federal Reserve bank on Allen Pkwy. This odd entry on the list came from Mark Flood: "Maybe not art but I loved [the] Alex Jones led a protest against the Federal Reserve bank on Allen Pkwy., sorta connected with occupy."

Ancestors of the Lake: Art of Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay, New Guinea at the Menil. Mark Flood wrote, "I also loved [the Menil's] Ancestors of the Lake: Art of Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay, New Guinea. It makes me sound like a Menil groupie but believe me I'm not."


Ana Serrano, House of Beauty installation view, mixed media, 2011

Ana Serrano's Salon of Beauty at Rice Gallery. An anonymous respondent said, "I love to be totally immersed in an artist's world. This was spectacular! I wish I could visit it still."

BOX of Curiosities PODA Project by various Box 13 artists. This was one of the choices of an anonymous respondent.


Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time at MFAH. This color-saturated show was one of Devon Britt-Darby's favorites.


CounterCrawl flyer

CounterCrawl. A bicycling trip through various art studios struck a chord which performance artist Carrie Schneider.

The Cy Twombly Gallery shortly after his death. One of the most moving responses I got to my poll wass this one by painter/collagist/crochetist Stephanie Toppin: "To take an extremely personal take on this that I have not really told or blogged to anyone about, I did the very typical artist thing and visited the Cy Twombly gallery after he died. He is a part of the realm of painters that mak[es] me fall in love with not art, but paint. The relationship to canvas is what I could gawk at, spending hours away. I don't know what I really went for, but I had to go to satisfy the itch of not going. I wanted to think about art now that moved me like this. I felt scared. This year has been a personal rollercoaster for me and art has always been my safe place. For the first time, life seemed marked. I am not afraid of death, I am afraid of artist's death, of an art death. It actually hurts me to type this. Maybe I always felt that his painting lived, the possibility of more, and with his death they truly stopped. All of it became history. This is all there is.

"I know it is dramatic. I wish I was better at communicating a feeling that I can hardly contain. I've been thinking about it for days. I just wanted to tell you, it doesn't matter if you post this. I wish there was a show that shined above this for me.

"Art seems so fast now, there are so many pop up shows and work around every corner. I applaud the energy, I think it helps the public know and understand arts contribution to the culture of the city. I guess I am romantic. I want more slow art. I will have to stew on that."


Dennis Harper, iPageant, performance with paper props, 2011

iPageant, Dennis Harper & friends at the Joanna. An anonymous respondent wrote, "I was really disappointed with Nancy Douthey's performance, and I wish there was more time spent on the game show portion of the exhibition, but this was great." (Personally, I liked Douthey's performance, but I agree the game show should have kept going--hopefully they will restage it sometime.)

The Devon Britt-Darby saga. Emily Sloan voted for "Devon Britt-Darby's life, art, religion, sexcapades!"


Donald Moffett: The Extravagant Vein at CAMH. And speaking of Devon Britt-Darby, this is one of his top choices of the year.


Emily Peacock, MeeMee and Me, C Print, 2010

Emily Peacock. One anonymous correspondent wrote voted for "anything Emily Peacock does," which raises a point--there are artists that you see here and there who may not have a solo exhibit, but the sum of their work makes a big impact. I can see that effect with Peacock's photography.

Francis Giampietro & Jeremy DePrez, The Power of Negative Feedback at Lawndale. This two-man show garnered a vote from one of my anonymous respondents.

(Because I've reached the limit on the number of characters I can have in my "tags", I'm going to contiunue this in part 3--and part 4 and part 5. Onward!)