(Video by sanhelsington, Hat tip Hyperallergic)
Tis the season to post insanely cute videos. Merry Christmas!
Saturday, December 24, 2011
The Stendahl Syndrome, Age 2
(Video by sanhelsington, Hat tip Hyperallergic)
Tis the season to post insanely cute videos. Merry Christmas!
Art at the Houston Permitting Center
by Robert Boyd
Do you read Swamplot? (You should--it's one of Houston's most consistently entertaining blogs.) Every year they vote for "the Swampies", voting on various architectural, development, and planning/anti-planning successes and fiascoes in the Houston metro area. One Swampie is "Most Notable Recycling Effort"--a vote for the best remodelling/refurbishing/repurposing project in Houston. And on the top of the ballot this year is the Houston Permitting Center--and the voting seems to be favoring it. (Voting closes on December 27.) Pretty much everyone who has seen this has been impressed.
The Houston Permitting Center
What is it? It used to be a warehouse, and many who saw it described it as an eyesore. It's on the very end of Washington, next to the Amtrack station. The City of Houston decided to turn this building into their new Permitting Center. This is where contractors go to get the various permits they need for building projects. The city hired Studio RED to design the Center. The City devotes a 1.75% of capital improvements to art. So for an expensive project like this, that's a shitload of money for art. Mary Margaret Hansen won the commission, but it wasn't a single piece of art she put up. Instead, working with 12 artists, she put art everywhere inside and outside the building.
Hansen is a compulsive blogger--she has a personal blog and seems to start up a new blog every time she starts a new project. I like this--it builds anticipation, and informs people about the process and the progress of the project. Her blog about the Permitting Center is worth reading, but reading it as the project unfolded was the ideal way to experience it.
interior of the Houston Permitting Center, first floor
The first art you see on the inside is this:
This is the information desk. Most of the art is labeled, but I couldn't find one for these decorative silhouettes.
Kaneem Smith, Remnant Reverie, 2011
The name plaque for this piece by Kaneem Smith instructs viewers to "please touch."
As I walked further towards the south end of the first floor, I saw these:
I thought at first they were a large art installation, but what they in fact are are demonstration models of various construction materials. But just behind them is this:
Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, Torrent (detail), 2011
This is the first "indoor" piece I've ever seen by Havel and Ruck. It definitely gives on the impression of flotsam being carried away by a flood. Kind of a weird item for a building that is mainly concerned with building things (although the Permitting Center also issues demolition permits).Even though they are using recycled material in this piece, it seems ironically to suggest that this is the end-state of all this construction that happens in Houston. It's an evergreen notion:
Gonzo247, Information Highway, 2011
Gonzo247, Sunset in the City, 2011
Of the two Gonzo247 pieces, I prefer sunset in the city. It feels closer to a traditional graffiti piece. Also I like the irony--sunset often being associated with a quiet time, but in his work, he implies that the city comes alive at night. It has a jazzy urban feel that in some ways recalls Start Davis.
Mary Margaret Hansen, Overheard, 2011
Hansen spent time at the old permitting office listening to the phrases people used. Then she created this word collage out of her research. I've heard through the grapevine that she is irked that they put chairs in front of the piece. No artist likes to have their work covered up. But the Houston Permitting Center is not a museum--it's a working office. Things like this are to be expected. And I thought it had an unexpected aesthetic benefit. In my photograph, it feels like the piece is mirroring the actual thoughts of the guy sitting in front of it with his rolled-up plans and paperwork.
Jesse Sifuentes, View from the East, 2011
A lot of the work so far seems to reflect the bustle of both the Center and of the City, which is appropriate. The Permitting Center is about Houston in transition: tearing down, transforming, building up. You hear a soundtrack of chopped and screwed hip hop or grindcore. Not so with this pretty line of magnolias by Jesse Sifuentes.We're still clearly in an urban environment, but Sifuentes is reminding us of one of Houston's glories--its abundant trees.
Geoff Winningham, Fishing at Allen's Landing on Buffalo Bayou, 2001
The most subtle pieces are Geoff Winningham's photos, which are somehow printed on metal.Winningham too shows a quiet side of the city, but with the reflection in the still water, he reminds the viewer that they are in an urban space--indeed in the very heart of the city. The shadows, the reflection, the silhouette of the fisherman all make this a formally complex photograph. For that reason alone, you could sit and look at it for quite a while. But as a portrait of this city, it also seems perfect. It's timeless--one imagines this scene was common 100 years ago, and it wouldn't be out of place in an old Sig Byrd column.
There are several other artworks in the building and outside. The Houston Permitting Center strikes me as an exemplary example of how to use the 1.75% of capital costs for art. And I say this in a city that is full of squandered art dollars (ahem Tolerance ahem Open Channel Flow).
Do you read Swamplot? (You should--it's one of Houston's most consistently entertaining blogs.) Every year they vote for "the Swampies", voting on various architectural, development, and planning/anti-planning successes and fiascoes in the Houston metro area. One Swampie is "Most Notable Recycling Effort"--a vote for the best remodelling/refurbishing/repurposing project in Houston. And on the top of the ballot this year is the Houston Permitting Center--and the voting seems to be favoring it. (Voting closes on December 27.) Pretty much everyone who has seen this has been impressed.
The Houston Permitting Center
What is it? It used to be a warehouse, and many who saw it described it as an eyesore. It's on the very end of Washington, next to the Amtrack station. The City of Houston decided to turn this building into their new Permitting Center. This is where contractors go to get the various permits they need for building projects. The city hired Studio RED to design the Center. The City devotes a 1.75% of capital improvements to art. So for an expensive project like this, that's a shitload of money for art. Mary Margaret Hansen won the commission, but it wasn't a single piece of art she put up. Instead, working with 12 artists, she put art everywhere inside and outside the building.
Hansen is a compulsive blogger--she has a personal blog and seems to start up a new blog every time she starts a new project. I like this--it builds anticipation, and informs people about the process and the progress of the project. Her blog about the Permitting Center is worth reading, but reading it as the project unfolded was the ideal way to experience it.
interior of the Houston Permitting Center, first floor
The first art you see on the inside is this:
This is the information desk. Most of the art is labeled, but I couldn't find one for these decorative silhouettes.
Kaneem Smith, Remnant Reverie, 2011
The name plaque for this piece by Kaneem Smith instructs viewers to "please touch."
As I walked further towards the south end of the first floor, I saw these:
I thought at first they were a large art installation, but what they in fact are are demonstration models of various construction materials. But just behind them is this:
Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, Torrent (detail), 2011
This is the first "indoor" piece I've ever seen by Havel and Ruck. It definitely gives on the impression of flotsam being carried away by a flood. Kind of a weird item for a building that is mainly concerned with building things (although the Permitting Center also issues demolition permits).Even though they are using recycled material in this piece, it seems ironically to suggest that this is the end-state of all this construction that happens in Houston. It's an evergreen notion:
"My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings."
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Gonzo247, Information Highway, 2011
Gonzo247, Sunset in the City, 2011
Of the two Gonzo247 pieces, I prefer sunset in the city. It feels closer to a traditional graffiti piece. Also I like the irony--sunset often being associated with a quiet time, but in his work, he implies that the city comes alive at night. It has a jazzy urban feel that in some ways recalls Start Davis.
Mary Margaret Hansen, Overheard, 2011
Hansen spent time at the old permitting office listening to the phrases people used. Then she created this word collage out of her research. I've heard through the grapevine that she is irked that they put chairs in front of the piece. No artist likes to have their work covered up. But the Houston Permitting Center is not a museum--it's a working office. Things like this are to be expected. And I thought it had an unexpected aesthetic benefit. In my photograph, it feels like the piece is mirroring the actual thoughts of the guy sitting in front of it with his rolled-up plans and paperwork.
Jesse Sifuentes, View from the East, 2011
A lot of the work so far seems to reflect the bustle of both the Center and of the City, which is appropriate. The Permitting Center is about Houston in transition: tearing down, transforming, building up. You hear a soundtrack of chopped and screwed hip hop or grindcore. Not so with this pretty line of magnolias by Jesse Sifuentes.We're still clearly in an urban environment, but Sifuentes is reminding us of one of Houston's glories--its abundant trees.
Geoff Winningham, Fishing at Allen's Landing on Buffalo Bayou, 2001
The most subtle pieces are Geoff Winningham's photos, which are somehow printed on metal.Winningham too shows a quiet side of the city, but with the reflection in the still water, he reminds the viewer that they are in an urban space--indeed in the very heart of the city. The shadows, the reflection, the silhouette of the fisherman all make this a formally complex photograph. For that reason alone, you could sit and look at it for quite a while. But as a portrait of this city, it also seems perfect. It's timeless--one imagines this scene was common 100 years ago, and it wouldn't be out of place in an old Sig Byrd column.
There are several other artworks in the building and outside. The Houston Permitting Center strikes me as an exemplary example of how to use the 1.75% of capital costs for art. And I say this in a city that is full of squandered art dollars (ahem Tolerance ahem Open Channel Flow).
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Crude at the Station Museum
by Robert Boyd
Below is a show video walkthrough of Crude by Andrei Molodkin. This show is about oil, and it is pretty much against the corrupting influence of oil on democracies like the U.S. and fake democracies like Russia. It's a provocative show for Houston. Oil money is finances much of the art institutions in Houston, either directly or indirectly. Many friends and acquaintances of mine work in the oil industry, including my brother. (I work in the natural gas industry, which overlaps the oil industry.) It's not Hans Haacke, who would have told us exactly who paid for the art in Houston and how much of that money came from oil. But nonetheless, Crude doesn't pull punches.
Below is a show video walkthrough of Crude by Andrei Molodkin. This show is about oil, and it is pretty much against the corrupting influence of oil on democracies like the U.S. and fake democracies like Russia. It's a provocative show for Houston. Oil money is finances much of the art institutions in Houston, either directly or indirectly. Many friends and acquaintances of mine work in the oil industry, including my brother. (I work in the natural gas industry, which overlaps the oil industry.) It's not Hans Haacke, who would have told us exactly who paid for the art in Houston and how much of that money came from oil. But nonetheless, Crude doesn't pull punches.
Houston's Best Art 2011: What Do You think?
by Robert Boyd
You've read what I think and what several Houston art scene luminaries think. Now it's your turn. Do you think my list was full of shit? Make your own list!
To facilitate this, I just created an online poll.
This poll will be up until the end of the year, and I'll publish the results on January 1. I really want to hear from you, dear readers. Let your voice be heard!
(This photo has nothing to do with the poll. I just wanted to publish it on my blog before the end of the year.)
You've read what I think and what several Houston art scene luminaries think. Now it's your turn. Do you think my list was full of shit? Make your own list!
To facilitate this, I just created an online poll.
This poll will be up until the end of the year, and I'll publish the results on January 1. I really want to hear from you, dear readers. Let your voice be heard!
LOVE THE ART--LICK THE ART
(This photo has nothing to do with the poll. I just wanted to publish it on my blog before the end of the year.)
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Robert Boyd's 2011 Honorable Mention
All of the shows listed below were excellent, and on a different day, I might have placed any one of them in the top 10.
Lisa Gralnick: The Gold Standard at Center for Contemporary Craft. This was a very interesting show that included sculptures made of plaster and gold--where the percent of gold was determined by how much gold it would take to buy the thing depicted.
Stephanie Toppin's couch in Jim Peterson, Jr.'s garage
Stephanie Toppin's couch. Of all the things associated with the Art Car Parade this year, this is my favorite. After the parade, Toppin's couch was lost for several months until I happened to find it at Jim Peterson, Jr.'s house. Mystery solved!
The Time Travel Research Institute Presents by Patrick Turk at Art League. Instead of his usual dense psychedelic collages, Turk made these pieces have a sense of physical space and even added motion to some. Mindblowing.
Jim Nolan, Today is Tomorrow at Art Palace. Jim Nolan's art is what happens when minimalism goes downscale. Made often from items purchased at 99¢ Only stores, it is the perfect art for our belt-tightening times.
Jim Woodring, Lazy Robinson, charcoal on paper
Jim Woodring and Marc Bell, Walpurgis Afternoon at Lawndale. I'm picking a show I curated, which is a bit unfair. What can I say? I thought it was great--two cartooonists/painters whose work I've admired for decades, and between whom I felt there was a connection. It seemed natural.
Raul Gonzalez, More Work Ahead, ink and spray paint on floor laminate, 2010
Raul Gonzalez at the Caroline Collective. Raul Gonzalez is a real street artist--and by that, he paints Houston's streets and uses as motifs street signs. Indeed, the colors of street signs pervade his work. He has created the vision of Houston that seems most true.
Myke Venable, MV 25 Silver/Scarlet Red/Black, acrylic on canvas, 2011
Myke Venable at Sonia Roesch. The only way these paintings could be more minimal would be to turn them from two or three color paintings to one-color paintings. As a consequence of their minimal content, they lack autonomy--they collaborate, in a sense, with the room they're in. And that's what I like about them.
Southern/Pacific at Lawndale. Really lovely show filled with interesting pieces curated by recent transplant to Houston, Paul Middendorf. This was road-trip art--he picked up art in Portland, Oregon (where he used to live) and Marfa and finally Houston. It was a fine way to introduce Houston art viewers to some interesting out-of-towners.
Hagit Barkai, Aisen and Tyson, Oil on canvas, 2010
Hagit Barkai, Resistance at Nau-Haus. Hagit Barkai's paintings linger in my mind. It's not the extreme one, the ones showing highly distressed people--although those are good. It's piece like Aisen and Tyson and Home More or Less that stick with me.
Dennis Harper and Friends, iPageant at the Joanna. This show was a giant performance extravaganza. Dennis Harper constructed some of his patented oversized paper sculptures--this time of a 60s era television soundstage. It was within this construct, aided by multiple closed-circuit televisions, that Harper staged his variety show. I only hope it wasn't a one-time event.
Ward Sanders at Hooks Epstein. San Antonio artist Ward Sanders has had four shows at Hooks-Epstein, but for this one, he added a new element. In addition to his mysterious, lovingly-created boxes, he has a piece of text. It turns out his writing, at least in these short fragments, is excellent. The world of visual art could lose Sanders to the literary world.
Ibsen Espada, Reformulaciones at New Gallery. One of the original Fresh Paint artists, Espada has apparently laid low for a while. This show was a powerful (and hopefully triumphal) return. Muscular abstractions.
Sharon Engelstein's Green Golly got its own room at Pan Y Circos
Pan y Circos at PG Contemporary. Curated by yours truly. We had a huge space for this group show, and it turned out great. I am especially proud to have brought El Dinersito by Jorge Galvan to the attention of Houston's art crowd.
Robert Pruitt, You Are Your Own Twin at Hooks Epstein. Every time I've seen Pruitt's portraits, I've loved them. There seems to be a rising generation of artists and intellectuals who are heavily invested in African American identity and history and simultaneously into science fiction and gaming and other nerdy pursuits. For example, the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. And Robert Pruitt.
Kim Dingle at Front Gallery. The Front Gallery is Houston's newest gallery, and its smallest. The inaugural show, full of oil-sketches of hyper-active girls, was a fantastic beginning.
Lisa Qualls, absence at Koelsch. Here is a highly conceptual show (portraits of an ancestor who left behind no visual image) that is simultaneously highly personal. I found it quite moving.
Lisa Gralnick: The Gold Standard at Center for Contemporary Craft. This was a very interesting show that included sculptures made of plaster and gold--where the percent of gold was determined by how much gold it would take to buy the thing depicted.
Stephanie Toppin's couch in Jim Peterson, Jr.'s garage
Stephanie Toppin's couch. Of all the things associated with the Art Car Parade this year, this is my favorite. After the parade, Toppin's couch was lost for several months until I happened to find it at Jim Peterson, Jr.'s house. Mystery solved!
The Time Travel Research Institute Presents by Patrick Turk at Art League. Instead of his usual dense psychedelic collages, Turk made these pieces have a sense of physical space and even added motion to some. Mindblowing.
Jim Nolan, Today is Tomorrow at Art Palace. Jim Nolan's art is what happens when minimalism goes downscale. Made often from items purchased at 99¢ Only stores, it is the perfect art for our belt-tightening times.
Jim Woodring, Lazy Robinson, charcoal on paper
Jim Woodring and Marc Bell, Walpurgis Afternoon at Lawndale. I'm picking a show I curated, which is a bit unfair. What can I say? I thought it was great--two cartooonists/painters whose work I've admired for decades, and between whom I felt there was a connection. It seemed natural.
Raul Gonzalez, More Work Ahead, ink and spray paint on floor laminate, 2010
Raul Gonzalez at the Caroline Collective. Raul Gonzalez is a real street artist--and by that, he paints Houston's streets and uses as motifs street signs. Indeed, the colors of street signs pervade his work. He has created the vision of Houston that seems most true.
Myke Venable, MV 25 Silver/Scarlet Red/Black, acrylic on canvas, 2011
Myke Venable at Sonia Roesch. The only way these paintings could be more minimal would be to turn them from two or three color paintings to one-color paintings. As a consequence of their minimal content, they lack autonomy--they collaborate, in a sense, with the room they're in. And that's what I like about them.
Southern/Pacific at Lawndale. Really lovely show filled with interesting pieces curated by recent transplant to Houston, Paul Middendorf. This was road-trip art--he picked up art in Portland, Oregon (where he used to live) and Marfa and finally Houston. It was a fine way to introduce Houston art viewers to some interesting out-of-towners.
Hagit Barkai, Aisen and Tyson, Oil on canvas, 2010
Hagit Barkai, Resistance at Nau-Haus. Hagit Barkai's paintings linger in my mind. It's not the extreme one, the ones showing highly distressed people--although those are good. It's piece like Aisen and Tyson and Home More or Less that stick with me.
Dennis Harper and Friends, iPageant at the Joanna. This show was a giant performance extravaganza. Dennis Harper constructed some of his patented oversized paper sculptures--this time of a 60s era television soundstage. It was within this construct, aided by multiple closed-circuit televisions, that Harper staged his variety show. I only hope it wasn't a one-time event.
Ward Sanders at Hooks Epstein. San Antonio artist Ward Sanders has had four shows at Hooks-Epstein, but for this one, he added a new element. In addition to his mysterious, lovingly-created boxes, he has a piece of text. It turns out his writing, at least in these short fragments, is excellent. The world of visual art could lose Sanders to the literary world.
Ibsen Espada, Reformulaciones at New Gallery. One of the original Fresh Paint artists, Espada has apparently laid low for a while. This show was a powerful (and hopefully triumphal) return. Muscular abstractions.
Sharon Engelstein's Green Golly got its own room at Pan Y Circos
Pan y Circos at PG Contemporary. Curated by yours truly. We had a huge space for this group show, and it turned out great. I am especially proud to have brought El Dinersito by Jorge Galvan to the attention of Houston's art crowd.
Robert Pruitt, You Are Your Own Twin at Hooks Epstein. Every time I've seen Pruitt's portraits, I've loved them. There seems to be a rising generation of artists and intellectuals who are heavily invested in African American identity and history and simultaneously into science fiction and gaming and other nerdy pursuits. For example, the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. And Robert Pruitt.
Kim Dingle at Front Gallery. The Front Gallery is Houston's newest gallery, and its smallest. The inaugural show, full of oil-sketches of hyper-active girls, was a fantastic beginning.
Lisa Qualls, absence at Koelsch. Here is a highly conceptual show (portraits of an ancestor who left behind no visual image) that is simultaneously highly personal. I found it quite moving.
Robert Boyd's Worst of 2011
by Robert Boyd
Not every show can be a good show. And some--a lot, really--are pretty damn bad. This isn't really a list of all the worst exhibits from last year. There are some venues that almost never put up good art. I don't see much value in pointing this out. Therefore, everything listed here is from an institution that should have known better. Not only were these shows bad, they were disappointing.
Walter de Maria, Trilogies at the Menil. I thought the rods through the Bel Airs were kind of nice, but it ultimately seemed like de Maria was leaching off the art of the classic automobile while adding the slightest piece of himself to it. The Statement Series paintings were merely banal. Ultimately I agree with the sentiment that this show was "a 25 cent idea with a million dollar budget."
Rod Northcutt's Indigenous Genius at Art League. This is a case where an artist had an idea that must have initially then seemed clever and beat it into the ground. The notion of beavers as indigenous artists, in addition to being kind of an insult to the real issues surrounding indigenous art, was like a one page comic strip in Mad Magazine inflated until it popped. The feeble concept simply could not sustain a major art exhibit.
Tara Conley and Tria Wood, My Life As a Doll at Diverseworks. I hate to include this show on the "worst" list because I like Tara Conley's work (her show at Laura Rathe Fine Arts was really good). But the overblown execution of this piece, combined with the smug and condescending content, was awful. It was heavy-handed preaching to the choir.
This is Displacement, curated by Carolyn Lee Anderson and Emily Johnson at Diverseworks. Most of the art in this group exhibit of Native American artists was simply bad and some of it seemed amateurish. Diverseworks' description of the show was that it "offers audiences multiple views of displacement from indigenous perspectives and encourages dialogue and critical commentary on the intersections of art and identity." I say, in order to accomplish something like this, it has to reach a minimal level of artistic competency, which it didn't.
Patricia Hernandez, Parody of Light by Patricia Hernandez. A parody should have the ability to show us the emperor's naked fat ass, to show us the cliches and bad faith in a piece of art. This show smugly told a bunch of sophisticated art fans what they already know--that Thomas Kinkade is an awful artist and a crass person. This was not a revelation that required an entire gallery.
The Spectacular of Vernacular, curated by Darsie Alexander at the CAMH. Pablo Helguera once wrote that for curators stuck for an idea, they should "a) open a dictionary and point a finger to any page randomly; b) take the 'selected' word as the topic of the exhibition and search Google using this word along with the phrase "contemporary art"; c) generate a preliminary artist list based on the names that will come up from the mentioning of this subject." (Manual of Contemporary Art Style). This curatorial algorithm is what I thought of when I saw this show.
Not every show can be a good show. And some--a lot, really--are pretty damn bad. This isn't really a list of all the worst exhibits from last year. There are some venues that almost never put up good art. I don't see much value in pointing this out. Therefore, everything listed here is from an institution that should have known better. Not only were these shows bad, they were disappointing.
Walter de Maria, Trilogies at the Menil. I thought the rods through the Bel Airs were kind of nice, but it ultimately seemed like de Maria was leaching off the art of the classic automobile while adding the slightest piece of himself to it. The Statement Series paintings were merely banal. Ultimately I agree with the sentiment that this show was "a 25 cent idea with a million dollar budget."
Rod Northcutt's Indigenous Genius at Art League. This is a case where an artist had an idea that must have initially then seemed clever and beat it into the ground. The notion of beavers as indigenous artists, in addition to being kind of an insult to the real issues surrounding indigenous art, was like a one page comic strip in Mad Magazine inflated until it popped. The feeble concept simply could not sustain a major art exhibit.
Tara Conley and Tria Wood, My Life As a Doll at Diverseworks. I hate to include this show on the "worst" list because I like Tara Conley's work (her show at Laura Rathe Fine Arts was really good). But the overblown execution of this piece, combined with the smug and condescending content, was awful. It was heavy-handed preaching to the choir.
This is Displacement, curated by Carolyn Lee Anderson and Emily Johnson at Diverseworks. Most of the art in this group exhibit of Native American artists was simply bad and some of it seemed amateurish. Diverseworks' description of the show was that it "offers audiences multiple views of displacement from indigenous perspectives and encourages dialogue and critical commentary on the intersections of art and identity." I say, in order to accomplish something like this, it has to reach a minimal level of artistic competency, which it didn't.
Patricia Hernandez, Parody of Light by Patricia Hernandez. A parody should have the ability to show us the emperor's naked fat ass, to show us the cliches and bad faith in a piece of art. This show smugly told a bunch of sophisticated art fans what they already know--that Thomas Kinkade is an awful artist and a crass person. This was not a revelation that required an entire gallery.
The Spectacular of Vernacular, curated by Darsie Alexander at the CAMH. Pablo Helguera once wrote that for curators stuck for an idea, they should "a) open a dictionary and point a finger to any page randomly; b) take the 'selected' word as the topic of the exhibition and search Google using this word along with the phrase "contemporary art"; c) generate a preliminary artist list based on the names that will come up from the mentioning of this subject." (Manual of Contemporary Art Style). This curatorial algorithm is what I thought of when I saw this show.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Robert Boyd's Best of 2011
by Robert Boyd
There were lots of enjoyable exhibits and performances this year. It's really hard to choose the best--it's even hard to choose my favorites because they keep changing. Ask me in three months, and my list might be different. That said, below are my list of my 10 favorite 2011 exhibits in Houston as of December 21, 2011 (plus a long list of honorable mentions). The shows below are not listed in any sort of ranked order. Each was excellent in its own way.
John Wood and Paul Harrison, video stills
John Wood and Paul Harrison, Answers to Questions at CAMH. I don't dislike video art, but sometimes I find it tedious to look at in a museum or gallery setting. It is a credit both to these hilarious but deadpan videos and to the CAMH's exhibit design that I sat for hours and watched Wood and Harrison's videos.
Charles LeDray, Hole, fabric, thread, plastic, wood, metal, 19 1/4 x 13 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches, 1998
Charles LeDray, workworkworkworkworkwork at MFA. A Houston art world figure called this show "disgusting." But I loved it. It thought it was rich and beautifully wrought. The empty suits spoke of absence--which as they were made at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s is appropriate. The little sculptures and tableaux appeal to me in a visceral way. I visited this show several times.
Havel-Ruck Projects, Torrent at the Houston Permitting Center
Houston Permitting Center. This will be the subject of a post in the next few days. Not all art happens in galleries or museums. In this case, Studio Red took an old warehouse and turned it into a fairly fantastic city building. But what gets it on the top 10 is the art by Dick Wray, Serena Lin Bush, Jesse Sifuentes, Kaneem Smith, Geoff Winningham, Metalab Studio, Havel-Ruck Projects, Agnes Welsh Eyster, GONZO 247 and artist/curator Mary Margaret Hansen. It's like there was another museum in Houston that you never heard of.
Man Bartlett puts a price on your dreams at Skydive
Man Bartlett #24hclerk at Skydive. For a 24-hour period, you could Tweet your dreams to Man Bartlett. He would ponder your dream for a couple of minutes, then announce its price. He would set a price gun to that price and put a label with that price on a large piece of white paper on the wall. (Meanwhile, Nancy Douthey sat off to the side transcribing the proceedings on an old electric typewriter.) A camera captured the action live on Bartlett's website. I loved this idea and enjoyed dipping in from time to time during the day as he kept on pricing dreams from around the world. I came to see him in person at Skydive at the very beginning of the performance and the very end.
Exurb, Input/Output at the Joanna
Exurb, Input/Output at the Joanna. This was a large, multichannel digital/analog sound sculpture by Exurb, a five person collective. It was loud and weird and I loved it. Yet another example of technological art, I loved that it employed both archaic analog electronics with cutting edge software.
Mark Flood, Another Painting, fluorescent paint
Mark Flood at Cardoza Gallery. For years I had wanted to see Flood's art, but he had no gallery in Houston. So while people in Berlin and New York could see his work, I could only see jpegs. Until this show. And it not only lived up to my expectations, it blew them away.
Larassa Kabel, Any Minute Now, Bay, colored pencil on paper, 2011.
Larassa Kabal at Peel Gallery. How Peel Gallery found this relatively obscure Iowa artist, I don't know. But these beautifully rendered life-size drawings of horses falling are not likely to be forgotton once you've seen them. Unnerving yet beautiful, this was a small show with a large impact.
Jeremy DePrez, 5 out of 194 Countries I Have Never Been To, oil and acrylic on canvas with country selection assistance by http://www.randomcountry.com, 2011
33rd School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition at the Blaffer. Some of my favorite artists in town got their MFAs this year--Francis Giampietro, Britt Ragsdale, Emily Peacock, and Jeremy DePrez. Seeing them all together showing some of their best work (along with excellent work by other grads) was terrific.
Natural Resources by The Bridge Club
The Bridge Club, Natural Resources at Lawndale. While the idea behind this performance seemed a little obvious, that was beside the point. What mattered was the staging--the identical costumes of the four performers, the hyper-deliberate, slow movements of each performer, the low lighting, the glass jars. It was a dream-like, hypnotic performance, and I fell in love with Annie Strader, Christine Owen, Emily Bivens and Julie Wills (or at least fell in love with their characters) as I watched.
Lane Hagood, Detourned Bust, mass-produced statuary, foam, acrylic paint, 2010
Lane Hagood, The Museum of Eterna at the Joanna. I've been a fan of Hagood's since I first saw his work at Gallery 1724. This show was like a museum, with each room dedicated to a different artist who all happened to be Lane Hagood. This Fernando Pessoa-like strategy worked brilliantly--it allowed him to try wildly different approaches to working. This show reinforced Hagood's literary side. As a bookish guy myself, I love that Hagood is a bookworm.
When I look at this list, I can see it says a lot more about me and my tastes than anything else. I don't claim to have an absolute conception of "good art." I'm not Clement Greenberg, and thank god for that. I'm more of a follower of Thomas McEvilley, who thinks the best you can hope for is an educated personal taste. I think we saw that with the best shows as chosen by the Houston art community. Between their top six list and my top 10, there was only one overlapping choice. This is not to say everyone's opinion is equal, but even among people who know a lot about art and who have well-developed tastes, there is little consensus.
Next up--Honorable Mentions, shows I liked a lot but that didn't make the top 10. and the Worst Shows of 2011.
There were lots of enjoyable exhibits and performances this year. It's really hard to choose the best--it's even hard to choose my favorites because they keep changing. Ask me in three months, and my list might be different. That said, below are my list of my 10 favorite 2011 exhibits in Houston as of December 21, 2011 (plus a long list of honorable mentions). The shows below are not listed in any sort of ranked order. Each was excellent in its own way.
John Wood and Paul Harrison, video stills
John Wood and Paul Harrison, Answers to Questions at CAMH. I don't dislike video art, but sometimes I find it tedious to look at in a museum or gallery setting. It is a credit both to these hilarious but deadpan videos and to the CAMH's exhibit design that I sat for hours and watched Wood and Harrison's videos.
Charles LeDray, Hole, fabric, thread, plastic, wood, metal, 19 1/4 x 13 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches, 1998
Charles LeDray, workworkworkworkworkwork at MFA. A Houston art world figure called this show "disgusting." But I loved it. It thought it was rich and beautifully wrought. The empty suits spoke of absence--which as they were made at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s is appropriate. The little sculptures and tableaux appeal to me in a visceral way. I visited this show several times.
Havel-Ruck Projects, Torrent at the Houston Permitting Center
Houston Permitting Center. This will be the subject of a post in the next few days. Not all art happens in galleries or museums. In this case, Studio Red took an old warehouse and turned it into a fairly fantastic city building. But what gets it on the top 10 is the art by Dick Wray, Serena Lin Bush, Jesse Sifuentes, Kaneem Smith, Geoff Winningham, Metalab Studio, Havel-Ruck Projects, Agnes Welsh Eyster, GONZO 247 and artist/curator Mary Margaret Hansen. It's like there was another museum in Houston that you never heard of.
Man Bartlett puts a price on your dreams at Skydive
Man Bartlett #24hclerk at Skydive. For a 24-hour period, you could Tweet your dreams to Man Bartlett. He would ponder your dream for a couple of minutes, then announce its price. He would set a price gun to that price and put a label with that price on a large piece of white paper on the wall. (Meanwhile, Nancy Douthey sat off to the side transcribing the proceedings on an old electric typewriter.) A camera captured the action live on Bartlett's website. I loved this idea and enjoyed dipping in from time to time during the day as he kept on pricing dreams from around the world. I came to see him in person at Skydive at the very beginning of the performance and the very end.
Exurb, Input/Output at the Joanna
Exurb, Input/Output at the Joanna. This was a large, multichannel digital/analog sound sculpture by Exurb, a five person collective. It was loud and weird and I loved it. Yet another example of technological art, I loved that it employed both archaic analog electronics with cutting edge software.
Mark Flood, Another Painting, fluorescent paint
Mark Flood at Cardoza Gallery. For years I had wanted to see Flood's art, but he had no gallery in Houston. So while people in Berlin and New York could see his work, I could only see jpegs. Until this show. And it not only lived up to my expectations, it blew them away.
Larassa Kabel, Any Minute Now, Bay, colored pencil on paper, 2011.
Larassa Kabal at Peel Gallery. How Peel Gallery found this relatively obscure Iowa artist, I don't know. But these beautifully rendered life-size drawings of horses falling are not likely to be forgotton once you've seen them. Unnerving yet beautiful, this was a small show with a large impact.
Jeremy DePrez, 5 out of 194 Countries I Have Never Been To, oil and acrylic on canvas with country selection assistance by http://www.randomcountry.com, 2011
33rd School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition at the Blaffer. Some of my favorite artists in town got their MFAs this year--Francis Giampietro, Britt Ragsdale, Emily Peacock, and Jeremy DePrez. Seeing them all together showing some of their best work (along with excellent work by other grads) was terrific.
Natural Resources by The Bridge Club
The Bridge Club, Natural Resources at Lawndale. While the idea behind this performance seemed a little obvious, that was beside the point. What mattered was the staging--the identical costumes of the four performers, the hyper-deliberate, slow movements of each performer, the low lighting, the glass jars. It was a dream-like, hypnotic performance, and I fell in love with Annie Strader, Christine Owen, Emily Bivens and Julie Wills (or at least fell in love with their characters) as I watched.
Lane Hagood, Detourned Bust, mass-produced statuary, foam, acrylic paint, 2010
Lane Hagood, The Museum of Eterna at the Joanna. I've been a fan of Hagood's since I first saw his work at Gallery 1724. This show was like a museum, with each room dedicated to a different artist who all happened to be Lane Hagood. This Fernando Pessoa-like strategy worked brilliantly--it allowed him to try wildly different approaches to working. This show reinforced Hagood's literary side. As a bookish guy myself, I love that Hagood is a bookworm.
When I look at this list, I can see it says a lot more about me and my tastes than anything else. I don't claim to have an absolute conception of "good art." I'm not Clement Greenberg, and thank god for that. I'm more of a follower of Thomas McEvilley, who thinks the best you can hope for is an educated personal taste. I think we saw that with the best shows as chosen by the Houston art community. Between their top six list and my top 10, there was only one overlapping choice. This is not to say everyone's opinion is equal, but even among people who know a lot about art and who have well-developed tastes, there is little consensus.
Next up--Honorable Mentions, shows I liked a lot but that didn't make the top 10. and the Worst Shows of 2011.
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