Reviews

critical analysis of visual & performing arts

‘Round 7’ at Lawndale Art Center

admin·
Why do we copy? Why do we appropriate imagery? Is it inherently different from the source? Perhaps these questions aren’t all asked overtly or even consciously in the Round 7 Lawndale Artist Studio Program Exhibition, but these themes percolate when considering the three artists together. The exhibition features work from [...]
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Steve Brudniak: The Science of Surrealism

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Comte de Lautréamont was a 19th-century poet whose famously cryptic line – “beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table” – was adopted as one of Surrealism’s aesthetic credos. Nearly sixty years later, André Breton, one of the founders [...]
ArtHoustonReviews

No Paint at Gallery Sonja Roesch

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In the 1970s and 80s modern land art was in its infancy, the steel industry was at its peak, and holograms were stunningly cool. No Paint at Gallery Sonja Roesch features a group of six artists whose art practices stem from this era with surprising relevancy and impeccable curation [...]
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Review: Fela!

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Raucous and defiant, electrifying and exhilarating, Fela! is a very different musical, blending a wide variety of attitudes and moods, sometimes angry, sometimes coy, sometimes soothing, sometimes sexy, sometimes groping for the mysterious and spiritual. Sprouting from the hybrid Afrobeat songs (jazz, funk, highlife, traditional Yoruban chants [...]
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Review: Diotima Quartet

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In acknowledgment their commitment to modern and contemporary music, the Diotima Quartet takes its name from Luigi Nono’s work, “Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima.” The French ensemble’s concert at Houston’s Menil Collection was presented by Da Camera Houston [...]
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Sean Shim-Boyle: Salt House

Devon Britt-Darby·
Rarely does such a potentially disruptive, even violent architectural intervention feel as organic and sensitive as Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Sean Shim-Boyle’s response to one of the historic Holman Street shotgun houses in Project Row Houses’ Round 38. Reacting to [...]
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Review: Il trovatore

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There are two sides to every story, but it’s easy to pick a favorite when the fight is between a sniveling Count and a fiery gypsy. Verdi’s ever-popular Il trovatore, Houston Grand Opera’s last production of the season, shows why revenge is something to savor. First performed in Rome in 1853, the music in this opera is structured very differently from Wagner’s [...]
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Review: Roger Winter

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Venerable artist Roger Winter shows new oil portraits and a decade or more of collage and photomontage works at Kirk Hopper Fine Art this month. His ease working in various media and with various levels of abstraction is demonstrated beautifully. The show contains three large new [...]
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