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Artcrawl

TWO MAJOR ART COMMISSIONS COMING THIS FALL

University of Houston Comprising large-scale permanent and temporary installations by international artists, the new works will support the institution’s mission to present accessible, diverse and thought-provoking art that enriches the cultural and intellectual character of the communities it serves.

Public Art of the University of Houston System (Public Art UHS), an arts organization that enriches and serves multiple campuses across the UH System, with one of the most significant university-based art collections in the United States announces the installation of two new site-specific commissions and the acquisition of 20 works by some of the most dynamic artists working from Houston today, all of which will be on public view this fall. Commissions include a permanent light sculpture by the American artist Leo Villareal for the new Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine and a temporary, largescale architectural installation by Mexico-based Cuban-American artist and sculptor Jorge Pardo for Wilhelmina’s Grove, both at the University of Houston. These new installations and acquisitions further the mission of Public Art UHS to collect and show artworks that are representative of and accessible to the diverse communities that it serves throughout greater Houston and Southeast Texas. “As one of the most significant university-based art institutions in the United States, displaying works that are exemplary of a dynamic, engaging and diverse arts community is of the utmost importance to us,” said María C. Gaztambide, Public Art UHS executive director and chief curator. “During a period of strategic planning timed to the institution’s 50th anniversary, we took the time to assess our current collection of nearly 700 works. With this stewardship completed and a plan established to guide collection development moving forward, we are thrilled to continue adding to our collections and programing, particularly with these important commissions and recent acquisitions.” This fall, Public Art UHS will also unveil Folly by Jorge Pardo, one of the artist’s most ambitious largescale architectural installations to date. The immersive piece features a pavilion-like structure made of steel and waterproof panels, with an interior adorned by laser-cut, hand-painted wood wall panels and illuminated by Pardo’s signature sculptural chandeliers. All works will be on view beginning fall 2022.

Rendering of Leo Villareal installation at University of Houston College of Medicine. Courtesy of Pace Gallery Houston’s Original & Official 30th Anniversary Downtown Artist’s Warehouse ARTCRAWL will take place Saturday, November 19th, 2022, from 10am - 9pm. Time-tested ARTISTIC SURVIVORS of floods, freezes & gentrification for over THIRTY YEARS! This small, neighborhood cluster of artist’s warehouses, galleries & businesses hidden in this historical pART of downtown Houston will open their doors for their annual ONE DAY ONLY event of working Artist’s studios, exhibition spaces, galleries & local businesses. The event is FREE & open to the public. This secret neighborhood has undergone radical cultural climatic changeroos – come see what is happening in the studios/galleries & on the streets of these daring Artist’s as “urban pioneers” that risked & settled a once upon a time “unwanted jailville real estate!” MOTHERDOG STUDIOS, the oldest surviving artist run warehouse in Houston will be headquarters again. Past participants include: Hardy Nance Street Studios, Bisong Gallery, David Adickes sculpture studio – last year special guest appearance was CHALK CRAWL Houston!!!- more participants to be announced… For more info contact: motherdogstudios@ earthlink.net or 713 229-9760

FotoFest Biennial 2022

The FotoFest Biennial 2022 central exhibition, If I Had a Hammer, considers the ways artists utilize images to unpack the ideological underpinnings that inspire collective cultural movements around the globe. Together, the twenty-three included artists propose alternative techniques of seeing and engaging with the world, working with both conventional and new media to shed light on the systems that encourage social theories and political imaginaries to become dogma at the click of a shutter or tap of a button.

If I Had a Hammer explores both artistic and activist interventions into the structures of contemporary image-production, calling attention to how these structures both reflect and inform our perception of the world, historical narratives, and the agency to engage in collective cultural discourse. The exhibition proposes that the systems and structures that support ideological formation such as historical archives, digital media networks, sociopolitical organizing campaigns, and infrastructural and territorial developments, are inextricably linked to the history and development of photography and image technology. Through disparate approaches, the artists in If I Had a Hammer offer strategies to resist and replace legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and systemic violence by exploiting the language and material of image-production and media circulation. In doing so, the artists show how images can be used to both support progressive movements as well as reinforce and bolster systemic inequities. The exhibition borrows its title from Pete Seegar and Lee Hays’s 1949 protest song of the same name, which was written as a response to growing ideological divides and violence against progressive artists and thinkers in the U.S. during the era of Red Scare McCarthyism. Throughout this period, artists, activists, authors, and musicians, including Seegar and Hays, were made to testify in broadcasted congressional hearings and defend their right to free speech and protest. This exhibition uses the historical context within which “If I Had a Hammer” was written as a starting point to explore how those who assert ideological supremacy often do so by employing the very tools used by the communities and individuals they hope to suppress. They use the tools of discursive circulation: broadcast media, text, song, art, and images. The scope of If I Had a Hammer is expansive, including international perspectives on ever-changing ideologies in relationship to the contemporary, global nature of media circulation and ideological development. At the heart of this interrogation is an examination of the methods artists employ to create archives that subvert the hegemonic anthropological and documentary gaze, play against traditional forms of photography, and imagine alternative political scenarios while resisting a singular, finished, final, or decisive image. The FotoFest Biennial 2022 takes place September 24 November 6, in Houston, at Sawyer Yards in Arts District Houston and throughout the city. The exhibition and its related public programs are co-curated and organized by Steven Evans, Max Fields, and Amy Sadao. Grand Opening: Sept. 24, 8–11pm, Silver Street Studios.

From left: Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, I am not data (video still), 2021–22. Computer-generated film on loop, 4:30 minutes. Bruce Yonemoto, Boy Peeling a Fruit, 2010. From the series Beyond South: Vietnam (Caravaggio), 2010. Pigment print. Photos courtesy of the artists.

Mark your calendar for October 7–9, for the Chinati Weekend 2022, and plan to start the weekend on Friday evening with Made in Marfa events at venues throughout downtown. Chinati will host Open House viewing of the collection on Saturday and a special Sunrise Viewing on Sunday morning. The Benefit Event is planned to take place Friday evening, October 7. A special exhibition presenting a new installation by Sarah Crowner and work by John Chamberlain in the permanent collection will open over Chinati Weekend. chinati.org

Donald Judd, 15 untitled works in concrete, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX. Photo by Florian Holzherr.

BLUE MAN GROUP

Performing Arts Houston

More than 35 million people around the world have experienced the smash hit phenomenon that is Blue Man Group and now it’s your turn! Blue Man Group returns to Houston for a limited engagement on their new North American tour, November 5 & 6 at Jones Hall. It’s everything you know and love about Blue Man Group— signature drumming, colorful moments of creativity and quirky comedy—the men are still blue but the rest is all new!

A Holiday Shopping Wonderland

Houston Ballet Nutcracker Market has become the signature holiday fundraising shopping event in Texas that kicks off the holiday season! Hundreds of merchants offering unique items for everyone and proceeds from each admission and special event ticket purchased, plus 11% of merchandise sold, goes back to Houston Ballet Foundation. This year the event will take place at the NRG Center, Thursday, 11/10 – Sunday 11/13 General Admission $20 Tickets available at Ticketmaster.com, H-E-B Business Centers beginning 10/17 or at the door.

PHILIP GUSTON NOW

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Over his 50-year career, Philip Guston shifted from figuration to abstraction and back again. Guston Now, the first retrospective of the influential artist’s work in nearly two decades, features paintings, prints, and drawings—both wellknown and rarely seen—from public and private collections. On view at the Audrey Jones Beck Building from October 23, 2022 until January 16, 2023. In 1967, Life magazine published a groundbreaking profile of Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael, with images and reporting by photographer Gordon Parks. The exhibition Gordon Parks: Stokely Carmichael and Black Power features the five images by Parks from the article, along with nearly 50 additional photographs and contact sheets never before published or exhibited. Also included in the presentation is footage of Carmichael’s speeches and interviews. On view exclusively at the MFAH, October 16, 2022–January 16, 2023.

Gordon Parks, Untitled, Watts, California, 1967

NEW FLAGSHIP EVENT

Paris+ par Art Basel

The inaugural edition of Paris+ par Art Basel will bring together 156 leading French and international galleries to present exceptional artworks across all media – from painting and sculpture to photography and digital works. From curated presentations of 20th century masterpieces to solo booths by emerging artists, Paris+ par Art Basel will present a global showcase of the highest quality, firmly embedded in Paris and its cultural scene. A strong line-up of galleries from France will be joined by exhibitors from across Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America, and the Middle East. Paris+ par Art Basel will take place at the Grand Palais Éphémère from Thursday, October 20 to Sunday, October 23, 2022, with the Preview Day on Wednesday, October 19.

This fall, the Menil Collection presents the most comprehensive survey ever mounted of the drawings of Robert Motherwell spanning the artist’s career from the 1940s through the 1980s, with more than 100 works.

The youngest and most scholarly of the artists who came to be identified as Abstract Expressionists, Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) explored a personal, spontaneous language of mark-making throughout his life, creating drawings in a wide variety of techniques and styles that he sometimes used concurrently. Robert Motherwell Drawing: As Fast as the Mind Itself brings together works from the Menil’s own holdings and from two dozen public and private collections to show the full range of the artist’s practice revealing the cohesiveness underlying Motherwell’s remarkable array of motifs, styles, textures, and moods. Rebecca Rabinow, Director of the Menil Collection, said, “The Menil Collection is proud to present the drawings of Robert Motherwell, whose lifelong fascination with drawing was at the core of his significant artistic achievements. From early Surrealist works to the artist’s late drawings, this exhibition will provide an invaluable opportunity for visitors to experience the boldness and intensity of Motherwell’s extraordinary career.” Edouard Kopp, John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator of the Menil Drawing Institute, said, “Inspired by Surrealism and the practice of automatic drawing, Robert Motherwell embraced the suggestive potential of his drawing materials, blending the accidental and the intentional in the creative gesture, whether a stroke of the pen or brush or a tear in paper. He did not draw to imitate reality, but to give form to his intuition of the inner workings of the world, through a practice geared toward invention and variation. While the work evolved stylistically, it remained united by its continuities and his desire to draw ‘as fast as the mind itself.’” The exhibition explores several aspects of Motherwell’s practice, including his dialogue between the geometric and organic, and his diverse approach to calligraphic mark-making. Motherwell loved paper for the natural beauty of its surface and for its inherent resistance to corrections and second thoughts, which allowed him to be spontaneous. As he wrote of his Lyric Suite, “it came to me in a flash: paint the thousand sheets without interruption, without a priori traditional or moral prejudices or a posteriori ones, without iconography, and above all without revisions or additions upon critical reflection and judgment. Give up one’s being to the enterprise and see what lies within, whatever it is. Venture. Don’t look back. Do not tire. Everything is open. Brushes and blank white paper!” On view November 18, 2022–March 12, 2023

Robert Motherwell, Three Figures Shot, 1944, pen and ink and ink wash on paper. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York