Michael Galbreth, RIP

Michael Galbreth, the tall half of the Art Guys, died yesterday. I'm staggering under this news. There is much to say about this man and his work. Perhaps once I have collected my thoughts, I will write something. For now, I thought I'd publish some of the photos I've taken of Michael over the years, usually while he and fellow Art Guy Jack Massing were doing a performance.

These were all taken at a performance the Art Guys did at Notsuoh in July, 2013.





 

A month later, they did this performance in front of City Hall.




This is from a performance they did in November, 2013. 

Contextually Speaking: A couple of BLACK GUYS, Tu, and You

Dean Liscum

In December I attended two art events that captured my imagination, 24 hours at the Lightnin' Hopkins Bus Stop by THE BLACK GUYS, and Planned Obsolesce by Alex Tu. On the surface, they could not be more dissimilar, but underneath they shared some concepts and methods.


(Photo by Robert Pruitt)

24 hours at the Lightnin' Hopkins Bus Stop by THE BLACK GUYS, which consists of Robert Hodge and Phillip Pyle the Second, was held from 10 a.m. December 10th to 10 a.m. December 11th. The event was one from their series THE BLACK GUYS in which Hodge and Pyle recreate and/or appropriate a series of the Art Guys' (Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing) performances as well as present some original pieces. 24 hours is based on the Art Guys 1995 event entitled Stop-N-Go, where Galbreth and Massing worked as clerks at a convenience store for 24 hours straight.

The duration of the piece was the primary commonality between the Art Guys performance and that of the THE BLACK GUYS. After that, the works diverged. Where as the Art Guys performance may have had some political overtones: protesting the 90s commodification of the art market and drawing attention to the plight of the convenience store clerk, THE BLACK GUYS piece was explicitly political. In publicity about the event, Hodge and Pyle stated that their objective was to temporarily reclaim the Lightning Hopkins bus stop, to which Hodge had contributed a customized bench and large sign when Hopkins was honored by the city of Houston. Since the commemoration, the local drug trade at the 24-hour Gulf station across the street has spilled over to the bus stop. It serves more as an open air market than as public service or a commemorative space. When I spoke with Phillip around midnight, according to his unscientific research, he'd only seen 3 people catch the bus at that site.


Photo by Lovie Olivia 

Hodge and Pyle's downplayed the political aspect of the piece. They described their performance as "spending 24 hours" at the Lightning Hopkins bus stop at Dowling and Frances. They made it participatory, inviting fans, art appreciators, friends, and residence of the neighborhood to join them. And come they did. In their video about the event, a constant parade of friends, fans, fellow artists, neighbors, and patrons stream by. People brought food, drinks, music, and even a portable fire pit fueled with recycled cooking oil to keep them warm. Both artist had brought books and videos in case no one showed, but I doubt either had time to open a book or start video.

The power of the TBG's piece was that what appeared to be a 24hr block party on the surface was actually a clandestine demonstration. Hodge and Pyle parlayed their artistic cache into political action and very subtly enlisted their artistic entourage into helping them reclaim the space. From what I observed and heard, it was neither a defensive nor a confrontational act. There were no shouts or accusations between the usual denizens of the stop and the TBG's retinue. Both artists are from Houston and are aware of the complex history and politics of the Third Ward as well as the artistic communities ambivalent relationship to the drug trade. In fact, I doubt if most of the participants realized what their participation was actually accomplishing. It was a positive protest in which Hodge and Pyle created the future they envisioned for this spot and for the Third Ward in general. TBG co-opted the Art Guy's Stop-N-Go performance and turned it into a positive protest by reclaiming the public space and making it one of camaraderie and friendship, which to fully appreciate, you had to be there.

Planned Obsolesce, Alex Tu's show at the Civic TV Collective wasn't a performance per se. It was a standard opening with an after party in situ. If you breezed by, glancing at the work, chatting with many artists and art appreciators that stopped by, snacking on the pigs head and roast duck, grooving to the DJ, and then moving on, you might have missed something, like the art.

Like TBG's piece, Tu's photographs were appropriations of other works of art/images. They are grainy images enlarged to monumental proportion. These images were once important political and cultural symbols. Now they are backdrops, the visual equivalent of elevator music, artistic white noise. The image of Mao has gone from a potent political symbol, to a pop art icon, to the artistic equivalent of a still life assignment: every art student has to add one to his/her oeuvre.


Idol Gazing At Himself Television infomercial for prosperity and fortune generating golden statue, Beijing, 2012 

The obelisk's significance has gone soft from over use by purveyors of national pride.


Empty Obelisk Transmitting Light Globally/CCTV, Beijing 2012 

The images of lush beaches have grown tired and cancerous, succumbing to the over exposure as a stand in for a purchasable paradise.



Prosperity and Good Fortune in the First World, mural found above meat department at a Chinese American supermarket in Alief, Houston 2012

Further contributing to the work is the site itself. The location of Civic TV Collective is in what was previously Chinatown, but has been recently re-christened as EADO. Like the images in Tu's show, it remains the same geographic location and yet it has been transformed. It's context has changed. The pig's head and roasted duck from one of the last Chinese grocery stores in the area provide sensual remembrance, a taste and smell, of things passed and passing.

The context of old China town and Tu's appropriation and recontextualizing of these ubiquitous images exposes their dubious futures. Do the symbols go on to live in perpetuity in the pop lexicon? Do they pass into oblivion? Are they reborn with a new cogency, a new artistic agency? And Chinatown, what of its future? Does it become a site of urban renewal that retains its current residences and welcomes new ones? Or are the denizens displaced and relocated? Does everything eventually evolve into rebranded EADO whatever that entails?

Planned Obsolesce, the title of Tu's work, begs those questions. I'm not sure how many of the audience struggled to answer them. Tu, himself, was taciturn and thoughtful. Directing people to the food and beer and chatting about any topic but the work. However, as with TBG's performance, if you stuck around for a little while and engaged the work, observed where you were and contemplated why the artist chose that work for that place, you might have discovered that you had unknowingly become part of the performance / piece itself.

2013: A Highly Personal Top 10 List

Robert Boyd

Usually top 10 lists are about one type of thing. Top 10 movies, top 10 books, etc. In the past we've run best-of lists for visual art and performance art. This year, I decided to follow Griel Marcus's example and just list anything I wanted, regardless of genre. This blog is still an art blog, however, so art dominates the list. But it's not all art exhibits. These are exhibits, books, comics, etc., that appealed to me mightily this year.

The list is not in any particular order. There are many items on the "honorable mention" list that could easily have gone in the top 10 list if I thought about it long enough. And these items reflect both my own taste, idiosyncratic as it may be, and what I had access to. (I'm always impressed by critics who seem to have, for example, seen every movie released in a given year. But I'm an amateur part-time art critic, and I know I missed some great exhibits in the past year.) So the way to view this list is not as a top 10 list but rather as a list of things that I considered good in 2013.



Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible, curated by Claire Elliot and Robert Gober (The Menil) and Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle by Chuck Smith (powerHouse Books)

It was a Forrest Bess year for me this year. The Menil put together a fine exhibit, which included within it an exhibit originally curated by Robert Gober for the Whitney Biennial. I suspect that the exhibit was what prompted Chuck Smith to turn his 1999 documetary into a book. The documentary is good, but the book is so much better--including complete texts of many Forrest Bess letters and tons of photographs. For me, the exhibit and the book inspired three posts that I'm proud of--first a review of the show, then a recounting of legendary newspaperman Sig Byrd's visit with Bess, and finally an account of my attempt to find the location of Bess's long-gone shack on East Matagorda Bay.



12 Events by the Art Guys

The Art Guys have been a partnership for 30 years. This year, they decided to step away from the baroque style of their more recent projects and do 12 "simple" events. Some involved endurance (walking the length of Little York, the longest street in Houston; doing standup comedy for 8 hours straight), some involved repeating the same absurd action over and over (riding around the 610 Loop over and over for 24 hours; walking around the crosswalks at the intersection of Westheimer and Hillcroft for 8 hours); and some were sui generis (wearing portable fences as they walked around city hall; moving objects counterclockwise from the southernmost, westernmost, northernmost and easternmost points of the city). They concluded by restaging their first event, The Art Guys Agree on Painting, as The Art Guys Agree On Painting, Again, This Time From Thirty Feet Up. 12 Events wasn't just a celebration of their long partnership, it was a tribute to the site of that partnership, the city of Houston.



The Property by Rutu Modan (Drawn & Quarterly)

This graphic novel (which I reviewed here) by Israeli cartoonist Rutu Modan took the form of a madcap romantic comedy (a delightful one) to deal with the fraught issue of the history of relations between Polish Jews and Gentiles. (See Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945by Tony Judt for a grimmer recitation of this distressing history.) The opening and closing scenes on the airplane (coming to Poland and returning to Israel demonstrate the duality between frivolity and seriousness that typifies the story. Of course, it helps that the art is beautiful and the visual storytelling lively. It's Modan's best comic from a career of excellent work, and it suggests where she can go in the future. My main worry now is that she may end up seduced away from comics to film--Modan would be a great screenwriter/director.



Sean Shim-Boyle's Salt House at Project Row Houses

To describe what Sean Shim-Boyle did with his Project Row Houses installation is to minimize its impact on the viewer. Nonetheless, here goes. Shim-Boyle took inherent elements of the row house and limited his installation to minimal use of existing elements. Specifically he put a second chimney in and added a new light source in the floor. But the magic was actually being in the space. The angled chimney was uncannily like the original chimney, and by its position made the familiar boxy room of the row house utterly strange. Devon Britt-Darby wrote in Art + Culture Texas, "The criss-crossing lines created by the chimneys, the beams, the windows and shadows give seemingly every vantage point an enchanting division of spaces that cries out for a viewfinder."


Hillerbrand+Magsamen, untitled, 2013, plastic toys, mostly from McDonalds Happy Meals, dimensions variable

Hillerbrand+Magsamen's Stuffed at Brand 10 Artspace

When I saw the above piece in Fort Worth, I instantly thought of Richard Long circles of slate. Long's work suggests to me the deep geologic time of the earth. Hillerbrand+Magsamen's Happy Meal toy version suggests another kind of time--call it "mess time"--the tiny period of time it takes for children to spread toys evenly over the floor space of one's home. It's work that makes you smile, but it also makes you think about the stuff that fills our lives. Mary Magsamen and Stephen Hillerbrand often use their two children in their work (they should get credit!), and much of the work is about being a suburban nuclear family. (I wonder how their work will change when their kids enter adolescence. So far, though, they seem like real good sports about working with mom and dad.) This exhibit was especially about the possessions that fill up a suburban home--the piles of stuff that fill a house, end up in garage sales, Good Will stores, and landfills. It was a playfully absurd exhibit.


Jeremy DePrez, left: Untitled (Milton), 2013, oil and wax on canvas, 82 x 36 inches; and right: Untitled (Harriet), 2013, acrylic on canvas, 82 x 36 inches

Jeff Elrod's and Jeremy Deprez's Fantasy Island at Texas Gallery 

I'm not going to pretend I really understand Jeremy DePrez's artwork. On the contrary, I feel like whenever I try to analyze it, I fall flat on my face. That was the case when I looked at his work in his MFA exhibit, and it was the case when I saw his paintings in the Boredom show at Lawndale. I wish I could say I had an "aha!" moment seeing his work displayed with Jeff Elrod's at Texas Gallery. But I did have a revelation: whatever it is that DePrez is doing, I like it. The slightly irregular look of his canvases in this show (the stretchers weren't straight, the parallel lines were broken up) gives the work a carefully constructed feeling of slackness. They get it right by not getting it right. Oh, and the Jeff Elrods were excellent, too.



Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize by Sean B. Carroll  (Crown)

Germany invaded France on May 10, 1940, and in just over a month defeated the French and British armies there. Albert Camus was the editor of a French Resistance newspaper called Combat. Jacques Monod, a biologist, was recruited into the Resistance group Francs-Tireurs et Partisans. When the various Resistance organizations were joined under an umbrella organization, the French Forces of the Interior, Monod was the chief of staff. The writer and biologist didn't meet each other until after the war, however, when they became close friends. Camus continued to write and remained an activist, turning against Communism in the face of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Monod fought a public battle against the ideologically-motivated Soviet pseudo-science of genetics known as Lysenkoism. Camus died in a car accident in 1960 shortly after winning the Nobel Prize in literature. Monod went on to win a Nobel Prize in medicine for his pioneering genetics work. Only a brief portion of the book that considers the personal friendship of the two men. Instead, Carroll weaves their life stories into the history of the French Resistance, the Hungarian rebellion, the study of genes, etc. In addition to showing the intersections between these two brilliant men, this book manages to show how the advances in biology in the period from just before World War II through the 60s are as much a part of history as anything else--that despite the split of the humanities and science into "two cultures," it is possible to consider them together fruitfully. I could not put Brave Genius down once I started--it was the most compelling book I read all year.



Brandon Araujo's exhibit at Domy Books and New Paintings by Brandon, Dylan, Guillaume and Isaiah at Spring Street Studios

Araujo's paintings have sneaked up on me over the course of the year. I know I have probably seen his work before, but the first time I noticed was at the exhibit at Domy (it was really a "Brandon" show, but Domy was still there). And I wasn't totally sure what to think about it. Then I saw more of his work in the Spring Street group show and finally visited his studio during Artcrawl. Araujo is an artist who is working out his own style, but he is also one whose work has a relationship to work by other artists around his age in Houston. So trying to understand his work is related to the task of trying to understand the work of some of his peers (among whom, the artists in the Spring Street show--Dylan Roberts, Guillaume Gelot and Isaiah López). But these artists aren't the germ of some regional school of painters--there are artists all over who are working in similar areas of abstract painting--Nathan Green, for example. They are sometimes called New Casualists or New Provisionalists. I'm a little loathe to put Araujo in that pigeonhole, particularly so early in his career. I can't put my finger on what I like about it, but the thing is, every time I see his work, I want to see more.


Ken Price, Pastel, 1995, fired and painted clay, 14.5 x 15 x 14 in.

Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective at the Nasher Sculpture Center

If you read much about contemporary art, you will have seen over the past few decades a reduction of discussion of craftsmanship in the conversation. This goes doubly so for arts that are traditionally considered part of the craft tradition. But the considerable rise in the critical fortunes of Ken Price recently suggests that the the fortunes of craft may be changing. Price, who died in 2012 just a few months before his retrospective opened at LACMA, was one of the artists associated with the Ferus Gallery. His work has a jazzy West Coast vibe. It's playful and fun. As a ceramicist, Price would make overtures to the traditions of the crafts (his highly abstracted "cups," for example) but was also quite willing to toss tradition completely overboard when it suited him. Seeing a lifetime's work from Price was one of the best museum experiences I had all year.



Sam Zabel and The Magic Pen by Dylan Horrocks

This is an incomplete comics narrative. Every now and then, Horrocks will throw up a new page on his website. He just posted page 103. The first page was posted in 2009. So why call this a 2013 work? I've been following it for quite a while with great pleasure, but it was this year that it really electrified me. The very first page in 2013 plops the protagonist Sam in the middle of an orgy with 50 beautiful green Venusian women (the page reproduced above is the only "SFW" page from that sequence). Now if someone had described this too me, I'd say it sounded like a lame pile of adolescent fantasy wish-fulfillment, and I certainly wouldn't imagine that a cartoonist as sensitive and possessing of moral rectitude as Dylan Horrocks would draw such a thing. And yet, here it is. It isn't ironic--it's eroticism is meant to be erotic. But within the context of the narrative, it works--especially as you see how the rest of 2013's pages unfold. Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen is about the ability of comics to be wish fulfillment. The first part is essentially realistic, a story of a blocked cartoonist. But there is an abrupt switch to the fantastic, specifically magic realism in the sense of Italo Calvino.This feels like it is shaping up to be a sequel of sorts to Hicksville, Horrock's graphic novel that posited that there was an secret art history of comics. That Horrocks continually creates major works about cartoonists and comics may seem solopsistic, and the character Sam does in many ways seem to be a stand-in for Horrocks himself. But the work is playful in the same way that If on a winter's night a traveler is playful, and that draws me in.

Honorable mention

• 9.5 Thesis on Art by Ben Davis (Haymarket Books)
• Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me directed by Drew DeNicola and Oliva Mori 
• Inside Llewyn Davis directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
• The Core Fellows exhibit at the Glassell School of Art featuring Andrea Behm, Anna Elise Johnson, Jang Soon Im, Madsen Minax, Miguel Amat, Ronny Quevedo, Senalka McDonald and Tatiana Istomina
• North of South, East of West directed by Meredith Danluck
• The uncontrollable nature of grief and forgiveness (or lack of) by Kathryn Kelley (Art League)
• Within Without the Space of a Corner by Nick Kersulis (Devin Borden Gallery)
• Tracing Our Pilgrimage by Kermit Oliver (Art League)
• Ad Reinhardt: How to Look: Art Comics with an essay by Robert Storr  (Hatje Cantz/David Zwirner)
• Not How It Happened by Joel Ross and Jason Creps (Tiny Park) 
• A chain of non-events by Katie Wynne (Lawndale) 
• World Map Room by Yuichi Yokoyama (PictureBox)
• Zinefest 

No Particular Place to Go

Robert Boyd

For the last 11 months, the Art Guys (Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing) have been doing a series of events--performance pieces that often hearken back to their earlier work--to celebrate 30 years of artistic partnership. These performances often take something fairly ordinary and turn them into something seemingly absurd using time, repetition, etc. For example, the took a walk--the entire length of Little York, Houston's longest street. They shook hands with stranger in the downtown tunnels for eight hours. They got on stage and told jokes for eight hours. And this kind of thing recalls well known earlier performances, like when they sat in a Denny's restaurant for 24 hours straight.

Some of their earlier performances in this series were fairly private, even as they took place in public. I don't know how many people visited them as they walked down Little York. Patrick Bresnan photographed them, but I don't know if he was with them the whole time.

For Loop, their current performance (current in the sense that it is continuing until 5 pm tomorrow), they are driving around the 610 Loop for 24 hours. For 12 hours they are going clockwise, and then for 12 more hours, they will be going counterclockwise. They made this event a public spectacle as much as possible. They put the van they'd use for the trip on display at Memorial City Mall (the sponsor of the event) for a week prior. They have a phone number you can call to talk the Art Guys as they travel--832-712-6207. You can follow the event live (and comment) at http://www.facebook.com/theartguys or https://twitter.com/TheArtGuys. And perhaps the coolest thing is to follow their progress on Glympse:





And they took people on rides. I met them around 7:30 pm at the Taco Cabana on the North Loop at Durham. The van they were riding had been painted by a professional sign painter and looked great.



They clearly were hoping that people might call them from their cars.



Their sponsor was prominently identified.



And there was a little bit of editorial comment--I'm not sure if this was an improvisation by the sign painter or the Art Guys instructed him to include it.



John Nova Lomax would approve.

Inside they had a driver, a documentary filmmaker, Michael Galbreth, Jack Massing and for one circuit, me.



Michael's on the left, the driver is wearing a captain's hat, and Jack is in the yellow jacket.



Michael spoke about how these events were about doing whatever they wanted, getting back to their roots. I mentioned how so many of them involved the geography of Houston and its economic, political and social structure, that they could be seen collectively as a portrait of the city. Michael also spoke of how even though they were in theory always turning right (for the first half of the performance), there were odd little doglegs in 610 when they would veer slightly to the left. He was becoming extremely familiar with the little things about the Loop that most people wouldn't notice, like the bizarre pedestrian bridge over the Loop at Gulfgate Mall.

Going around the Loop once has a point--you learn something about the city you're in. Going around it 18 times is an utterly pointless act. And as Hennessy Youngman says, that's how you know it's art.

Pan Recommends for the week of November 7 to November 13

Robert Boyd

Damn, this week's going to be tough! There's the usual round of openings, but layered on top is that Cinema Arts Festival, which officially opened Wednesday. I've highlighted quite a few of their films below, but you can see their entire schedule at their website, as well as trailers for most of the films. It's a pretty unique festival in that it shows a lot of films about art--visual, theatrical, musical, literary, cinematic, whatever. In addition to all these features that you have to buy tickets for, I strongly recommend you stop by their headquarters 1201 Main (at Dallas) because they have a variety of screens set up for showing experimental animated films that are completely free (there are several other programs that are free in the Festival as well). Some of these are classic animation experiments (by Norman McLaren, for example), while some are quite fascinating interactive animations using iPods as the tool for audience participation. The festival headquarters is also where they have "Cinema 16," which is a busy venue for somewhat more experimental films all during the festival.

THURSDAY



Cutie and the Boxer at Sundance Cinemas, 12:45 pm. The story of octogenarian pugilist painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko. Shinohara also has an exhibition of paintings opening on Friday at Zoya Tommy Contemporary.



Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton at Sundance Cinemas, 12:50 pm. Experimental filmmaker and poet James Broughton was a prophet of sexual experimentation in the days before the counter-culture blossomed.



North of South, West of East by Meredith Danluck at  Cinema 16, 1 pm, 7 pm and 9:30 pm. Meredith Danluck's feature film is shown simultaneously on four screen in the round. Audiences sit in chairs that can rotate and must always decide which screen to watch. (This obviously limits the audience size, which may be why it is running so frequently over the course of the festival. I recommend buying tickets in advance.)



Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction by Sophie Huber at Sundance Cinemas, 3:40 pm. The great character actor (Repo Man, Paris, Texas, Alien, and 200+ more) profiled.



Portraits of Women Artists: Lover Other / Maya Deren’s Sink by Barbara Hammer at Cinema 16, 4 pm. Two films that sound fascinating: Portrait of Women Artists is a true story about a pair of lesbian surrealists who became Resistance fighters in World War II, and Maya Deren's Sink is about the great experimental filmmaker and her sink.


Putting the U in Color by Prince V Thomas, CC Stinson Kavi T, and Jyoti Guptaat the Doshi House, 5 to 7 pm. An exhibit dealing with an issue I never heard of--"colorism"--bias against dark skinned women in South Asian communities.

Liliana Porter, The Square II, 1973

Liliana Porter: The Square and other Early Works at Sicardi Gallery, 5–7 pm. The Argentine conceptualist and her early work.



Marco Maggi: Fanfold at Sicardi Gallery, 5–8 pm. Not sure what to expect from this show based on the photos and description, but Maggi has done very interesting work in the past.



Galina Kurlat: Inherent Traits at Peveto, 6–8 pm. Galina Kurlat creates beautiful photos, and I expect to see more beautiful photos in this show of self-portraits.


Tom Marioni's The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends is the Highest Form of Artat the BLAFFER Art Museum, 6 pm to 9 pm. A well-lubricated performance of of Tom Marioni's famous conceptual piece, part of their show Feast.


Elvira Sarmiento, “Tu con El” Homenaje a Posada, 1913–2013. Solar Plate, Size: 19” x 27.5”

Elvira Sarmiento: Alludere Posada at the Museum of Printing History, 6–8 pm. Continuing with their tributes to José Guadalupe Posada is this solo show by Mexican printmaker Elvira Sarmiento.



Shepard and Dark by Treva Wurmfeld at  Sundance 2, 6:30 pm. Documenting the friendship of playwright Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark.



Paris, Texas at Sundance Cinemas, 9:40 pm. My favorite move set in Houston. The best freeway shots ever filmed!

FRIDAY



Jamel Shabazz: Street Photographer by Charlie Ahearn at Project Row Houses Eldorado Ballroom, 10:30 am. , and at Sundance Cinemas, 9:30 pm. The director of Wild Style, Charlie Ahearn, turns his camera on Bronx photographer Jamel Shabazz.



"CUTIE AND THE BOXER" work by USHIO SHINOHARA at Zoya Tommy Contemporary, 4-7 pm. A pop-up show to accompany the documentary about Shinohara.

North of South, West of East at Cinema 16, 1 pm and 6:30 pm.

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction at Sundance Cinema, 1 pm.

Geraldo Rosales

Gerardo Rosales at Avis Frank Gallery, 6–8 pm. His statement says that his art is about "about homophobia, sexuality, violence, loneliness and the imagery of the 'bear' subculture within the gay community." And sometimes it's about two headed ducks wearing a giant shoe.


an older painting by Danielle Frankenthal: Camelot,  acrylic paint on three transparent acrylic resin panels, 36 x 48 in

Danielle Frankenthal: Turbulence at Wade Wilson Art, 6 to 8 pm. She has an interesting interactive painting up at CAMH, so what better time for a solo gallery show?


Houston vs Austin featuring James Burns, Chris Cascio, Galina Kurlat, Jonathan Leach, Patrick Turk, Jerry Defrese, Hector Hernandez, Syraya Horton, Koseph Phillips and Lana Waldrep at BLUEorange Contemporary, 6–9 pm. Galina Kurlat appears in her second opening in two nights in this potential bloodbath pitting Houston artists against Austin artists. Maybe they can get John Nova Lomax to officiate.



Art Hard by Meredith Danluck at Cinema 16 at 9:00 pm. Jim Deneven makes the world's largest work of art on Lake Baikal.

SATURDAY


11th Annual Book Fair at the Museum of Printing History, 10 am – 5 pm. Oh so many lovely books, including plenty of art books from Exquisite Corpse.



Charlie Ahearn’s Hip-Hop Videos at Cinema 16 at 1 pm. From the director of Wild Style, nine videos that look totally fun.


Perry House, 3-5-11, Helter Skelter series,2011,  acrylic on canvas, 36x36 inches

PERRY HOUSE "Explosions" at HBU Contemporary Art Gallery, 1 to 4 pm. OK, this is a bit mysterious since it is not listed on HBU's way out of date webpage. It is listed on Glasstire, though. And Perry House is always worth seeing.



Persistence of Vision by Kevin Schreck at Sundance cinemas at 3:30 pm. A documentary about an unfinished animated film by the great Richard Williams.

North of South, West of East at Cinema 16 at 4 pm.


If the van's a-rockin'

The Art Guys: Loop along the 610 Loop from  5 pm Saturday to 5 pm Sunday. The 11th of their 12 events, they will drive around 610 Loop in the van pictured above (currently on view at Memorial City Mall--take that, Galleria!) for 24 hours. They will stay in contact with people via Facebook and Twitter, and you can just call the Guys up during the performance on a temporary phone line, 832-712-6207. Of course, you could just drive along side them--their van will be easy to spot!


Life Goes On… I Keep Singing by Jonas Mekas at Deborah Colton Gallery, 6 pm. Photos and videos by the great Jonas Mekas.



Jeremy Rourke: Live Music and Animation at Cinema 16 at 8:15. Jeremy Rourke is a musician/anumator who will be combining the two.



Wild Style by Charlie Ahearn at Sundance Cinema at 9:45 pm. If you want to be reminded that hip hop is old, watch this classic movie, Wild Style, from 1983. One of several Charlie Ahearn movies being shown at the festival.



Madeleine Dietz: What Remains at Gallery Sonja Roesch, 5–7 pm. These very interesting pieces toy with being architecture or interior decoration. Their liminal ambiguity combined with their beauty appeals to me a lot.

SUNDAY



Time Shift: The Films of Scott Stark at Cinema 16 at 1:00 pm. Austin experimental filmmaker Scott Stark is showcased.



Approved for Adoption at Sundance Cinema  at 1:15 pm. Interesting looking autobiographical film by cartoonist Jung Hemin. Born in South Korea, he was adopted and brought up in Belgium. His comics work looks (to my eyes) like typical Belgian adventure comics (with Asian settings). I can't find any examples of more personal comics work by Jung Hemin--except this movie.

Life Goes On… I Keep Singing at the Deborah Colton Gallery at 2 pm


North of South, West of East at Cinema 16, 6:15 pm and 8:45.


Antonio Berni, Ramona en la calle, de la serie Ramona Montiel y sus amigos (Ramona in the Street, from the series Ramona Montiel and Her Friends), 1966, xylo-collage-relief 

Antonio Berni: Juanito and Ramona at the Museum of Fine Arts, 10 am – 5 pm. Argentine artist Antonio Berni created his characters Juanito and Ramona in the mid-50s and continued to depict them in various media for the rest of his life. This show brings them together in the U.S. for the first time.

MONDAY

Life Goes On… I Keep Singing at Deborah Colton Gallery at 9:30 am

TUESDAY

Life Goes On… I Keep Singing at Deborah Colton Gallery at 9:30 am.


Houston Short Film Fund: World Premiere Screening featuring Kathryn Kane, Lauren Kelley, Douglas Newman, Jerry Ochoa and more at Sundance Cinema at 6:45. SWAMP (the best acronym ever) helped fund these short films by Houston filmmakers.