Rich Aste Reflects on His First Two Years at the McNay
“I arrived with very big ideas,” Rich Aste says, as he surveys his first two years as Director of the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio.
Visual Art
Texas Studio: Audrya Flores and Lisette Chavez
When I walk into Audrya Flores’s home studio in San Antonio, I find a wood-paneled room, with a carefully curated selection of objects—needlework, prints, collages, fabric pieces—paired with found things—a turtle shell, stones, a preserved bat, potted plants.
Capturing the Moment at San Antonio Museum of Art
The donated collection includes over 500 photographs, 75 of which will be on view Feb. 22 – May 12 in Capturing the Moment: Photographs from the Marie Brenner and Ernest Pomerantz Collection at SAMA alongside key works from the Museum’s existing photography collection.
Salon and Culture Jack bring New Artists and Ideas Together in Dallas
This is French Room Salon and Culture Jack, two distinctly different series of art events, both gifted to Dallas towards the end of 2018. Although varied in format and feel, both series bring people together in close proximity, where they are subject to new art and ideas on a monthly basis.
Texas Studio: Angel Oloshove
I visited ceramicist Angel Oloshove at her studio in the Houston Heights to talk about her process, what’s on the horizon, and how she got to where she is.
Texas Studio: Marshall Harris
The 2013 Hunting Art Prize winner describes the entire universe of a body or an object with subtle tones and pencil marks on translucent Mylar—a surface so delicate that one swipe of his hand could smudge it irreparably. In this way it is reminiscent of Buddhist sand mandalas, an effort of time and “intense study,” as the artist puts it.
Bold Cinema: Houston Iranian Film Festival at the MFAH, Rice Cinema and Asia Society
At the MFAH’s Houston Iranian Film Festival, now in its 26th year, the seats are always full. The festival, established by the MFAH and Rice Cinema, runs Jan. 18-26, with screenings at both venues and at Asia Society Texas Center.
REVIEW: Contesting Modernity: Informalism in Venezuela, 1955-1975 at the MFAH
In five sections, Contesting Modernity surveys twenty years of work in Venezuela by numerous artists, some of whom a Houston audience will already know from curator Mari Carmen Ramírez’s extensive catalog of groundbreaking, research-driven exhibitions at the MFAH.
REVIEW: Tammie Rubin, Everything You Ever at Women & Their Work
Tammie Rubin’s exhibition at Austin’s Women & Their Work (through Jan. 10) ostensibly takes the Texas ball moss as its subject.
REVIEW: Nicolas Moufarrege at the CAMH
The story of Nicolas Moufarrege is a sad one. Lost to the AIDS crisis in New York City at the age of 36, the artist had only been in practice for a decade and undoubtedly had much left to produce. Curated by Dean Daderko and on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston through Feb. 17, 2019, Nicolas Moufarrege: Recognize My Sign is the first solo museum exhibition for Moufarrege.
REVIEW: Ghada Amer at Dallas Contemporary
Fingers hover over lips and breasts, hair cascades over and around faces, kisses are blown and shared, pleasure is given and received: Ghada Amer’s ceramic sculptures shiver with ecstatic encounter.
Invoking the Body: Jasper Johns at Menil Drawing Institute
On view through Jan. 27, The Condition of Being Here at the newly-inaugurated Menil Drawing Institute (MDI) in Houston includes a selection of Jasper Johns’s drawings dating from 1954 to 2016, many of which get at the fragility of the body and its musings.