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In
the Brown Foundation Gallery:
The Old, Weird America
May 10 – July 20, 2008
Jeremy Blake, video still from Winchester, (2002)
DVD: color, sound, 18 min. continuous loop
Courtesy Kinz Tillou and Feign, New York
The Old, Weird America will be the first museum exhibition to explore the widespread resurgence
of folk imagery and history in American contemporary art. Curated by Contemporary Arts
Museum Houston senior curator Toby Kamps, the exhibition illustrates the relevance and appeal
of folklore to contemporary artists, as well as the genre’s power to illuminate ingrained cultural
forces and overlooked histories. The exhibition borrows its inspiration and title—with the
author’s blessing—from music and cultural critic Greil Marcus’ 1997 book examining the
influence of folk music on Bob Dylan and The Band’s seminal album, The Basement Tapes.
The Old, Weird America will feature approximately 75 recent paintings, sculptures, drawings,
photographs, installations, and video works from nearly 20 artists and collaborative groups,
including Eric Beltz, Jeremy Blake, Sam Durant, Barnaby Furnas, Brad Kahlhamer, David McDermott and
Peter McGough, Aaron Morse, Cynthia Norton (a.k.a. Ninny), Greta Pratt, Dario Robleto, Allison
Smith, Kara Walker, and Charlie White.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a 200-page fully-illustrated catalogue that will provide
cultural and historical context through essays by Kamps and other writers and cultural historians.
It will also contain reproductions of the exhibited work, as well as biographical and
bibliographical information on each artist.
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In
the Zilkha Gallery:
Perspectives 160: Dawoud Bey
March 14 – May 11, 2008
Kevin
digital C-print
40 x 30 in.
© Dawoud Bey
Since 1992 Chicago-based photographer Dawoud Bey has been working
exclusively on large-scale portraits of American teenagers. These
photographs reveal the individual character of members of this age
group. In his recent work Bey, made in high schools around the
country, Bey has included texts that the subjects have written about
themsleves. For Bey, the creation and presentation of these portraits
and texts allows for a more complex and nuanced representation than
the photographic portrait alone. Perspectives 160: Dawoud Bey marks
the artist’s debut at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, where Bey
will collaborate with the Museum’s Teen Council.
Perspectives 160: Dawoud Bey is organized by Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to
photography and the visual arts, and installed at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston by
curator Valerie Cassel Oliver. It will be accompanied by a Perspectives-format catalogue with an
interview of the artist by Cassel Oliver, reproductions of exhibited work, and documentation on
the artist’s career.
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