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In
The Brown Foundation Gallery:
No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston
George Hixson
Shark Car, 1993
Gelatin silver print
20 x 24 inches
Courtesy the artist
On view: May 9 – October 4, 2009
Free from the land-use and zoning ordinances that shape other large American cities by separating residential, commercial, and industrial areas, Houston allows a mixed-use approach where disparate architectures and functions blend. In this often chaotic, jarring urban topography, many Houston artists have been able to carve out spaces and opportunities for themselves, their work, and their communities. No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston is the first museum exhibition to consider the current and past efforts of regional artists working in the urban environment.
The exhibition will feature work by approximately 18 individuals and collaborative teams. Participants contributing new projects include The Art Guys (Michael Galbreth and Jack
Massing), who will present a performance that involves marrying a tree; Mary Ellen
Carroll, who is reconfiguring an abandoned tract house in the southwestern Sharpstown
neighborhood; and Rick Lowe, who celebrates residents of the Third Ward in billboards.
Also included is work by current and former Houston artists Bill Davenport, Ben
Tecumseh DeSoto, Sharon Engelstein, The Flower Man (Cleveland Turner), The
Fundred Dollar Bill Project (Mel Chin et al.), Andrea Grover, collaborators Dan Havel
and Dean Ruck, George Hixson, Lauren Kelley, KnittaPlease (Magda Sayeg et al.), Eric Leshinsky, Lee Littlefield, Benjy Mason and Zach Moser of Workshop Houston, Jim Pirtle, and
Nestor Topchy.
No Zoning will include examples and documentation of important city interventions and
visionary structures from the 1980s to the present. The exhibition will incorporate a
combination performance, lecture, and video screening space that will present special
programs during the museum's extended Thursday evening hours. In addition, a series
of special artistic programs and educational tours will be located throughout the city.
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In
the Zilkha Gallery:
Perspectives 166: Torsten Slama
Torsten Slama
Walt Whitman Memorial Refinery/Walt-Whitman-Gedenk-Raffinerie, 2005
India ink on illustration board
28 x 40 inches
Collection Beth Rudin de Woody, New York
Opening reception: Thursday, May 14, 2009, 6:30–9:00 PM
On view: May 15 – August 2, 2009
The first solo museum exhibition of the work of innovative, Berlin-based artist Torsten Slama, Perspectives 166 will feature a selection of approximately 35 large drawings, paintings, and works in airbrush on paper. Slama’s architectural and landscape scenes and his figurative images are filled with meticulous detail and mysterious narratives. The works often depict post-apocalyptic worlds filled with abandoned avant-garde architecture, esoteric technology, and humans engaged in symbolically charged psychodramas.
Employing an unsettling and captivating style of Magic Realism, Slama’s works share the vertiginous perspectives of traditional Chinese landscape painting and the scathing satire of German Neue Sachlichkeit, or “New Objectivity,” painters and drawers like George Grosz and Otto Dix. Slama’s concerns, however, collapse past and future to reflect the perennial forces shaping individuals and civilizations.
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