Houston

Hooks-Epstein Galleries
Featured Show: Mark Greenwalt, I Spot Eye Spots
Jan. 20 -Feb. 17

Beauty and the beast emerge as one and the same for Mark Greenwalt. Describing the surfaces of his drawings as “pregnant with evolutionary potential,” the artist coaxes faces and figures that challenge ideals of beauty, monstrosity, and normality in exquisite detail. Grotesque, macabre images seem to drift across the page, their asymmetrical facial features, disproportionate limbs, bulbous growths, and fused appendages come to life under Greenwalt’s classical draftsmanship and careful attention. The artist explains: “These drawings serve as objects of meditation about the nature of suffering and the enduring human spirit,” and further “I am simply reorganizing forms until some symbolic potential is suggested.” His solo exhibition I Spot Eye Spots at Hooks-Epstein Galleries in Houston features all new works.

Inman Gallery
Featured Show: Demetrius Oliver, Heliacal
Jan. 20 -March 2

Inman Gallery opens its 2024 season with Heliacal, an exhibition of new painting, video, and photography by Demetrius Oliver. Gallery owner Kerry Inman explains that the works in the show “continue the artist’s enduring interest in representing elements of our natural world, especially air and water. Known for his use of quotidian materials to describe cosmological phenomena, Oliver’s works reclaim the wonder that we imagine our ancestors felt upon gazing at the stars. The artist is also interested in promoting a world view that prioritizes the agency of the nonhuman.” In 2014, The Print Center (Philadelphia) introduced audiences to the artist’s work with the exhibition Canicular, and in particular, Sirius, sometimes called the Dog Star. “Because of its pervasive presence,” says Inman, “Sirius was important to the ancients, who personified the sky by describing constellations as animals, insects and in one case, a human (Orion). For Heliacal, the audience will drop to their hands and knees to enter the south gallery through a large ‘dog door’ in order to view a new video Breed, which comprises a close view of a whistle suspended in a clear liquid, bubbles emanating from the whistle, as if it is breathing. Additionally, Heliacal introduces a suite of paintings…an articulation of palpable atmospheric space.”

 

Dallas

Erin Cluley Gallery
Featured Show: Interwoven: Kaleta Doolin, Catherine MacMahon, and Sarita Westrup
Feb. 17 – March 23

Erin Cluley Gallery in Dallas debuts new basketry, textiles, and metal sculpture with Interwoven, an exhibition of works by Dallas-based artists Kaleta Doolin, Catherine MacMahon, and Sarita Westrup. “Engaging with the gendered associations of domestic and craft-based art, these three women transgress binaries of masculinity and femininity through sculpture,” according to the gallery, and “they coax the rigid nature of metal and stones into expressive gentility and organic fibers into sturdy, self-supporting structures.” Doolin is “a feminist artist known for her interdisciplinary application of industrial materials and found objects, and for her cultural engagement with the community.” MacMahon’s installations, sculptures, and drawings embody universal themes of memory, repetition, and form. Westrup, who identifies as a “craft-based artist and art educator of mixed Mexican descent,” creates “sculptural basketry works that are inspired by her upbringing in the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas-Mexico border.”

Keijsers Koning
Featured Show: Brent Birnbaum, solo exhibition
March 30 – May 4

Brent Birnbaum searches the world for found objects that have not been used in an artistic context and that contain the potential to be manipulated into something new and powerful. Examples of his collections include price tags, treadmills, treasure troll dolls, and every hue of porcelain toilets ever made. The result? Surprising combinations, arrangements, and associations that eschew an object’s original function while tapping into the power of humor and absurdity to create new meanings. Birnbaum’s continued interest in society’s compulsive consumption is on view and up for gallery visitors’ consideration in his solo exhibition at Keijsers Koning, which serves as a homecoming of sorts for the Dallas native. Whether feeling an affinity for the artist’s “Pound Puppy” or basking in the glow of neon letters from a ceded Toys “R” Us sign (perhaps now dimmed by the realities of adulthood), gallery visitors can go along for the nostalgic ride as Birnbaum continues his “lifelong quest to create new perspectives on overlooked and bygone materials and build upon the readymade lineage with gusto.”

SAN ANTONIO

Fl!ght Gallery
Featured Show: Purple Like a Bruise
February 1-25

The Fl!ght Gallery show Purple like a bruise juxtaposes the works of artists from Washington and Texas, two states that are often positioned on either end of a political spectrum described in terms of left and right or red and blue. The title refers to political columnist and anthropologist Sarah Kendzior’s statement, “the United States is not red or blue, it’s purple like a bruise.” The artworks explore issues that gravely impact the lives of U.S citizens, from gun violence, reproductive and LGBTQ rights, to war and climate change. Curated by Fl!ght Gallery founder Justin Parr, the show includes works by San Antonio-based artists Aaron Muñoz, Ed Saavedra, José Villalobos and Seattle-based artists, Casey Gregory, Sean Hennessy, Charles Mudede, Holly Ballard Martz, Mary Coss, Paul D McKee and Tommy Gregory. In the summer, the show travels to Seattle, Washington.

—NANCY ZASTUDIL