Austin
personal, political, mysterious This group show features presumably personal, political, and mysterious works by Louise Bourgeois, Ben Durham, Richard Forster, Ewan Gibbs, Robert Gober, Nancy Grossman, Carl Hammoud, Jim Hodges, Dashiell Manley, Donald Moffett, Tom Molloy, Frank Selby, Robert Therrien and Mickalene Thomas. Nov. 9-Jan. 11, Lora Reynolds Gallery.
Still Life: Nocturne: Nick Brown The Los Angeles artist presents heavily impastoed oil paintings based on photographs taken at low tide of the plants and animals left behind by receding waves. The show comes with a soundtrack created especially for the exhibition by the Los Angeles duo Cardoo (Aniela Marie Perry and Marisa DeMeglio). Through Nov. 30, Tiny Park.
Ricardo Paniagua: Hard Edge in Da Paint Geometric, Op Art-related works by the Dallas artist, who told Glasstire in March that his work emerges out of “the opposition of energetics. It has to do with breaking the physical constraints or parameters or boundaries that life presents before you. When you do that, you become innovative because you don’t let it rest.” Last chance: Through Nov. 17, Big Medium.
The Singing Bone: Stephanie Chambers, Katy Horan & Kathleen Lolley Three artists bring visual, narrative form to themes of identity, memory, storytelling and history. Horan’s mixed-media collages examine historical female roles and representation. Lolley, who lives in the dark forests of western Pennsylvania, draws on surrealism and folk art to create work that’s “not about humans having a spiritual experience, but the spirits having a human experience.” Perhaps bridging the two, Chambers, who identifies as a genderqueer artist, says her acrylic paintings redirect the cultural tendency to organize people by age, gender, income and other “checked-off boxes” to the unruliness of the natural world: “I live with enough ambiguity projected onto me through assigned labels.” Last chance: Through Nov. 17, grayduck.
Marianne Vitale In Laguna Gloria’s lower meadow, the New York-based Vitale has installed a series of nine altered railroad “common crossings” or “frogs,” thousand-pound solid-steel components that are the switches or guides responsible for changing the direction of trains. At the Jones Center, Vitale presents a large-scale sculptural structure of two intersecting bridges that she built from wood and burned before transporting them to Austin. Through Jan. 5, The Contemporary Austin.
Dallas/Fort Worth
FOCUS: Terry Haggerty The London-born, Berlin-based artist “draws on the vocabulary of abstract art to create his illusory paintings and large-scale wall works. The artist’s central motif is created by painting patterned lines that alternate a light and dark color, such as white and blue. When juxtaposed, these colors play off each other, appearing to advance and recede.” Nov. 17-Jan. 5, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Vernon Fisher: Flaubert’s parrot Schrodinger’s cat hey look monkeys throwing shit The celebrated painter unveils a new body of work with “a wide range of pop cultural and literary references that highlight the artist’s play with imagery, association, and possible meaning.” Nov. 2-Dec. 14, Talley Dunn Gallery.
Concentrations 56: Stephen Lapthisophon—coffee, seasonal fruit, root vegetables, and “Selected Poems For his first U.S. museum show, the artist has created a series of tableaux incorporating anachronistic objects with more recent works on paper. The gallery will feature architectural elements inspired by his studio space. Through March 30, Dallas Museum of Art.
Jackie and Main Street Clothes lent by Vintage Martini and photographs and ephemera explore the influence of Jacqueline Kennedy on fashion retail during the early 1960s, joined by ephemera, mug shots, fingerprints, and documentation of crime scene locations from the Dallas Police Department investigation into the JFK assassination. H. Paxton Moore Fine Art Gallery at El Centro College.
Sadie Hawkins Leigh A. Arnold curates this group show of “of women artists whose work focuses on challenging traditional gender expectations, role-reversal, and Feminist/post-Feminist sensibilities.” Participating artists include: The Bridge Club, Celia Eberle, Linda Finnell, Susan kae Grant, Margaret Meehan, Nina Schwanse, and Faith Wilding. Through Dec. 14, CentralTrak: The University of Texas at Dallas Artist Residency.
Joe Andoe: Paintings and John-Paul Philippe: Wabi-Sabi: Sculpture + Paintings A pairing of two New York-based artists with Oklahoma roots. Read Andoe’s Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed before you go if you really want to set the mood. His five recent paintings are joined by Philippe’s steel sculptures, which “reference tall bird perches while doubling as figurative bird like poems,” and muted paintings of hill-like forms. Through Nov. 30, Barry Whistler Gallery.
Amy Blakemore/Sarah Williams This two-person show presents “Sarah Williams’ haunting paintings of isolated buildings, void of human presence in the quiet ‘after-hours’; along with Amy Blakemore’s offbeat photographs of ordinary events and people that provide an introspective view of human activity.” Last chance: Through Nov. 16, The Gallery at UTA.
Moore to the Point, 2013
Photo by Allison V. Smith for the Nasher Sculpture Center.
NasherXChange The Nasher Sculpture Center marks its 10th anniversary with an ambitious constellation of citywide public art commissions by Rick Lowe, Charles Long, Vicki Meek, Lara Almarcegui, the Good Art/Bad Art Collective, Rachel Harrison, Liz Larner, Ruben Ochoa, Ugo Rondinone and Alfredo Jaar. Through Feb. 16, Nasher Sculpture Center and various sites.
Marshall Harris: Death Do Us Part The Fort Worth-based winner of the 2013 Hunting Art Prize makes his solo debut with a selection of graphite-on-Mylar drawings, photography, cast-resin sculpture and video work. “Death typically refers to a finality,” Harris says. “But I’m interpreting it instead as a transition.” Last chance: Through Nov. 16, Red Arrow Contemporary.
Black Box: Photographs by Misty Keasler Formal portraits of the foam armament of taxidermy animals by the Dallas photographer. “The base of the work already exists in the world in fairly prolific, common places (it is easy enough to encounter taxidermy) but we aren’t accustomed to seeing the hairless amoebic forms here,” the artist writes. “They are simultaneously lifelike and at the same time they never look like real things in the world.” Last chance: Through Nov. 16, The Public Trust.
John Hartley Much as David Levinthal’s War Games series depicts combat through staged photographs of toy soldiers, the Fort Worth-based Hartley draws from his interest in toy collecting and the human figure to create oil paintings that explore militaristic, religious and social themes. Last chance: Through Nov. 30, Artspace111.
The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from the Art Institute of Chicago The Kimbell’s second Art Institute of Chicago loan show in five years features landmark paintings such as Matisse’s Bathers by a River (1909-16). This is as top-drawer a selection of European modernism as North Texas is likely to see anytime soon. Through Feb. 16, Kimbell Art Museum.
Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold Smaller, gold-plated versions of Ai Weiwei’s globetrotting bronze Zodiac Heads have made their way to a city that’s thriving in our new Gilded Age. Through March 23, Crow Collection of Asian Art.
El Paso
Navigating Art Languages: The James M. Shelton, Jr. Collection A hit-parade of modern and postmodern masters from one of El Paso’s most important private collections, featuring Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Hans Hoffman, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Donald Judd, Sol Le Witt and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Through Feb. 2, El Paso Museum of Art.
Houston
Antonio Berni: Juanito and Ramona Starting in the late 1950s, the Argentine master abandoned painting to make assemblages chronicling the tales of Juanito Laguna and Ramona Montiel, two fictitious characters he created and constructed out of trash, machine parts, and other castoffs. Their experiences exposed the undercurrents of Argentinean society. Nov. 10-Jan. 26, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Weavers’ Stories from Island Southeast Asia Organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the exhibition lets weavers and batik artists speak for themselves in videos recorded at eight sites in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and East Timor. The videos are accompanied by newly made textiles created by each of the featured weavers and batik makers. Nov. 7-Feb. 9, Asia Society Texas.
Raychael Stine: a little ways away from everywhere In the Albuquerque-based artist’s first Art Palace show, “multiple ways of image-making live together to record the shift that happens from life into death through pictorial, formal, and material painterly explorations.” Nov. 1-Dec. 21, Art Palace.
Danielle Frankenthal The veteran artist, whose work is included in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston’s big abstract painting show Outside the Lines, returns with her characteristic multi-panel resin paintings. Nov. 1-Dec. 7, Wade Wilson Art.
Outside the Lines CAMH fills both its floors with a six-part exhibition presented in two rounds — all devoted to contemporary abstraction. Texas artists David Aylsworth, Christopher Cascio, Joseph Cohen, Gabriel Dawe, Nathaniel Donnett, Christian Eckart, Mark Flood, Nathan Green, Geoff Hippenstiel, Floyd Newsum, Susie Rosmarin and Shane Tolbert will be represented alongside such figures as David Hammons, John Outterbridge, Amy Sillman and Charline von Heyl. Through March 23, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Believers and Deceivers, 2013
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Barbara Davis Gallery.
Rebecca Ward: shucked & silked The New York artist unravels painted canvas and stitches it back together in a process that sounds messy but yields beautiful Minimalist-influenced paintings. The example I saw at the Texas Contemporary Art Fair was ravishing. Through Nov. 30, Barbara Davis Gallery.
Howard Sherman: Metaphysical Batman
Metaphysical Batman
acrylic, marker, and acid-free paper on canvas
83″ x 76″ x 13″
Courtesy of the artist and McMurtrey Gallery.
It was about time for a shift in the Houston painter’s work, which for the past several years has been characterized by cartoonish figurative elements duking it out with a whirling array of abstract elements from hard-edged to splashy. His latest show plays out similar tensions in what appear to be large-scale paper décollages reassembled onto large canvases. Last chance: Through Nov. 27, McMurtrey Gallery.
Rahul Mitra: Race, Religion, Politics, Art and Sex at the end of the world The Houston artist presents paintings, drawings and box constructions exploring dystopian-inflected themes of poverty, ennui, custom, love, strangeness, technology and linguistics. Last chance: Through Nov. 27, Hooks-Epstein Galleries.
Joan Brown: Paintings and Works on Paper Works dating from the 1970s by the San Francisco painter who died in 1990. “From heavily impastoed oils, Brown quickly transformed her work to the larger, flatter, more emblematic paintings she is best known for,” a gallery release says. “Her travels to Mexico, Egypt and India began at this time to also inform her work as Images and symbols gathered from these trips begin to appear.” Last chance: Through Nov. 16, Texas Gallery.
Nadezda Prvulovic: Blast Furnaces – Concluding the Series Prvulovic’s series of monumental gouaches on paper depicting industrial steel furnaces began in the early 80s, after the artist became inspired by the sight of abandoned melting cauldrons upon a visit to the steel factories in Thionville, France. Through Nov. 30, Anya Tish Gallery.
SPRAWL Co-curated by former Houston Center for Contemporary Craft curatorial fellow Susie J. Silbert and former HCCC curator Anna Walker, SPRAWL explores the urban landscape with works by 16 artists presented in three thematic sections loosely based on the three phases of urban growth. Through Jan. 19, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.
Marfa
Comic Future Curated by Fairfax Dorn, this group exhibition surveys political satire and cultural commentary since the 1960s through art movements from capitalist realism and contemporary pop. Arturo Herrera’s commissioned, site-specific wall installation will join early drawings by Sigmar Polke; collage by Walead Beshty; paintings by Carroll Dunham, Peter Saul, Dana Schutz, Sue Williams, Michael Williams and Erik Parker; and sculpture by Aaron Curry, Liz Craft and Mike Kelley. Through Jan. 26, Ballroom Marfa.
San Antonio
New Works: 13.3 Guest curator Paola Morsiani, director of the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, N.Y., presents work by international artists in residence Micol Assaël (Italy), who employs elements of science, mechanics, and natural phenomena to her artwork; Ivor Hartley Shearer (Houston), who works with film, video, and installation; and Erin Shirreff (New York), who creates sculptural works specifically for the camera that confuse perception. Nov. 14-Jan. 12, Artpace.
Re-enchant the Moment Guest curator Mark Harold Ponder presents work by Debra Barrera, Chuck and George (Brian Scott and Brian Jones) and Jonathan Armistead. Nov. 16-Jan. 4, Unit B.
Filmstills – The End, Tate, 2010
Digital C-Print
43-1/2 x 76-1/2 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Lora Reynolds Gallery.
Eight, Eighteen Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler present two video installations — Eight, which was first presented in 2002 at Artpace, and the world premiere of its follow-up, Eighteen — and a selection of other recent video and photographic work. Eight revolves around a young girl’s birthday party and her home on a rainy night. Almost a decade later, Hubbard/Birchler began searching for the actor and found her in Boston, where she has grown up to become a dancer. Through March 29, Linda Pace Foundation.
Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús: “Patron Saint of Texas” When San Antonio Museum of Art curator Marion Oettinger Jr. secured the long-term loan of two important paintings of the founder of San Antonio’s flagship mission, Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo , he began researching this pivotal but nearly forgotten local figure. This exhibition bears the fruits of that research. Through March 23, San Antonio Museum of Art.
New Spain, active 1722-1780
Frutos de la Santa Cruz de los Milagros (Fruits of the Holy Cross of Miracles), ca. 1770, oil on copper. On loan from Collection of the Family of Philip Wrench, L.2012.70. Photography by Peggy Tenison.
Baroque on the Border: Rigoberto A Gonzalez and La Linea: Alice Leora Briggs Born in Mexico, the Harlingen-based Gonzalez presents large-scale paintings depicting the hardships of life on the U.S.-Mexico border and the brutality associated with drug cartels and illegal immigration. The Lubbock-based Briggs’ woodcuts, sgraffito drawings and installation work respond to her visits to Juárez, Mexico asylums, rehabilitation centers, cartel death houses, and the city morgue. Last chance: Through Nov. 10, Russell Hill Rogers Gallery, Southwest School of Art-Navarro Campus.
Wichita Falls
Texas Sculpture Inside and Out: Invitational Exhibition This exhibition will be held in conjunction with the 2013 Texas Sculpture Network Symposium and will consist of three parts: outdoor monumental sculptures, indoor sculpture and works on paper made by sculptors. Nov. 1-Feb. 22, Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern State University.
— DEVON BRITT-DARBY Email visual-arts submissions with hi-res images by Nov. 15 to devon@artsandculturetx.com.
