Austin Art Exhibition
Blanton Museum
215 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, TX 78712
https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibitions-calendar/

12/11/21-09/04/22

This installation celebrates major acquisitions made possible by funds from an anonymous donor to purchase work by contemporary Black artists based in the United States. Acutely aware of the underrepresentation of works by artists of color in museum collections, she offered to support acquisitions over a multiyear period, culminating in this special presentation of work by twelve artists. Her motivations were also personal: as the descendent of slaveholders, she was eager to support art that sparks critical thinking and conversations around race. A forthcoming catalogue will also be published to foster new scholarship and amplify the voices of emerging writers and curators of color.

Assembly includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, textiles, and a monumental print, all produced between 1980 and 2019. Although diverse in style and subject matter, many of the works have ties to Southern history and reveal what scholar Saidiya Hartman refers to as “the long afterlife of slavery.” For example, the shared surname of two—unrelated—quiltmakers in the exhibition, Arie Pettway and Sally Mae Pettway Mixon, is that of the plantation owner their enslaved ancestors were forced to serve in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Kevin Beasley’s resin sculpture incorporates raw cotton from his family’s farm in Virginia. Nari Ward’s immersive installation honors overlooked places, people, and traditions in Savannah, Georgia. Cauleen Smith made her recent neon work in memory of Sandra Bland, a Black woman who died in police custody after a routine traffic stop in Waller County, Texas.

The title of the presentation, Assembly, embraces the heterogeneity of work made by Black artists, refusing generalization, essentialization, and definitive interpretation. As theorized by the late British cultural critic Stuart Hall and expanded on by American philosopher Paul C. Taylor, with “assembly” comes the potential for disassembly and reassembly. In this gathering, we encounter acts of representation, resilience, reclamation, and resistance.

The installation includes works by Emma Amos, Kevin Beasley, Genevieve Gaignard, James “Yaya” Hough, Arie Pettway, Sally Pettway Mixon, Robert Pruitt, Noah Purifoy, Deborah Roberts, Lorna Simpson, Cauleen Smith, and Nari Ward. View the presentation in the Huntington gallery, located on the second floor of the museum.

Organized by Veronica Roberts, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

Austin Art Exhibition
Blanton Museum
213 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, TX 78712
https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibitions-calendar/

12/18/21-07/10/22

Terry Allen presents a three-channel video installation and a related group of drawings, all part of the same series titled MemWars. The video presents Allen, with his wife and frequent collaborator, artist and actress Jo Harvey Allen, performing autobiographical dialogues to introduce related songs. Allen then performs the song, accompanying himself on keyboards, in front of a changing landscape image. There are nine songs in total. The exhibition reflects the artist’s interest in short, evocative theatre pieces called sintesi (synthesis), associated with the Futurist movement. He sees them as “little stabs of memory,” and scripts some of his own in several of the drawings, which have cues specifically for theatrical staging. Other drawings have collaged texts telling stories inspired by incidents in Allen’s own life, with related imagery. Mythology, lore and metamorphosis are strong undercurrents. The punning title for the series suggests the slippery nature of memory itself: one might set out to write a memoir, but if memory is at war, what form would that take?

Content Advisory: This video installation includes images and dialogue that some viewers may find disturbing, including graphic images of war and verbal descriptions of violence, torture, drug use and suicide.

Organized by Carter E. Foster, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, Blanton Museum of Art

Special Event 2/18/22: In conjunction with this exhibition, The Paramount Theatre presents Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band: CIVILIZATION, a concert of songs and stories by Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band (with special guests). Visit their website to learn more and book tickets HERE.

Austin Art Exhibition
The Contemporary Austin
699 CONGRESS AVENUE AUSTIN, TEXAS 78701
https://thecontemporaryaustin.org/exhibitions/

01/22/22-06/30/22

Although best known as a musician, Daniel Johnston (b. Sacramento, California, 1961; d. Waller, Texas, 2019) was also an extraordinarily prolific visual artist. Inspired by comic books, he populated his artwork with a fantastical cast of characters and symbols that he developed throughout his lifetime.

Commissioned as part of the artist’s posthumous retrospective, Daniel Johnston: I Live My Broken Dreams, this mural features images and details taken directly from Johnston’s artwork. Alongside good-hearted monsters, winged eyeballs, and ducks, we see some of Johnston’s most prominent characters: the Beast, a multi-headed creature referencing the Book of Revelation; Jeremiah the Innocent, a symbol of pure innocence anchoring his landmark “Hi, How Are You,” 1993, mural; Vile Corrupt, Jeremiah’s evil, multi-eyeballed nemesis; and Casper, the ghost of Jeremiah and symbol of spiritual redemption.

The Daniel Johnston mural was commissioned by The Contemporary Austin with funds provided by Vans No-Comply.

Special thanks to The Daniel Johnston Trust, Story of an Artist (a project of Electric Lady Studios), Tito’s Handmade Vodka, and Topo Chico.

Art Exhibition |
Blanton Museum
212 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, TX 78712
https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibitions-calendar/

02/20/22-06/05/22

Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia is the first retrospective of this Colombian artist’s work in the United States. Since the late 1980s, Muñoz has sought to reinvent the medium of photography through non-traditional materials and techniques. While he doesn’t consider himself a photographer, Muñoz strives to “hacer memoria”—“make memory”—in his works by turning photographic processes inside out: “I am interested in the instant and the processes that occur so that an image can become consolidated, or not, in memory.” Philosophical at their core, Muñoz’s artworks frequently use ephemeral materials like light, water, fire, and dust to illustrate the fragility of an image as a metaphor for the fragility of life. Although the images Muñoz creates often change or disappear, they stay transfixed in our minds.

Invisibilia spans five decades of Muñoz’s radical career and includes approximately 40 of his most evocative works, in which he combines photographic processes with drawing, printmaking, installation, video, sculpture, and interactive elements. Long overdue, this exhibition invites U.S. audiences to experience the invisibilia behind Muñoz’s poetic and innovative practice with works rarely seen outside of Colombia.

Organized by Vanessa Davidson, Curator of Latin American Art, Blanton Museum of Art

Chronology / Cronología
We are delighted to share a chronological framework that seeks to contextualize Oscar Muñoz’s work in relation to key artistic, cultural, and historical events that have taken place in Cali (where he resides) and in Colombia at large since the late 1940s.

Austin Art Exhibition
Blanton Museum
214 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, TX 78712
https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibitions-calendar/

03/05/22-08/14/22

From arabesques to grotesques and from sphinxes to snails, French printmakers combined ancient decorative motifs with newly invented ones to create designs for everything from jewelry to architectural façades. Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century with ornamentation for the royal hunting lodge of Fontainebleau, through garden designs at the palace of Versailles, to patterns for eighteenth-century home furnishings, prints were important sites of invention and served as vehicles for the proliferation of decorative motifs across a variety of media. Drawing primarily from the Blanton’s extensive holdings of French prints, this exhibition invites visitors to look closely at exquisite details, marvel at fantastic forms, and take delight in ornate embellishments that celebrate the creativity of artistic imagination across three centuries.

Curated by Holly Borham, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and European Art, Blanton Museum of Art

Art Exhibition |
Stephen L. Clark Gallery
08 Baylor Street Austin, TX
https://www.artnet.com/galleries/stephen-l-clark-gallery/

03/12/22-05/21/22

Art Exhibition |
Wally Workman Gallery
1202 West 6th Street Austin, Texas 78703
https://wallyworkmangallery.com/

04/02/22-05/01/22

For this show, Fowler returns to the landscape of his youth in the hills of Austin, Texas. He revisits ‘the Whiskey Tree’ that was his pirate ship and home base for adventures as well as where moonshiners hid whiskey for his grandfather during Prohibition. He explores ‘Little Bee Creek’ that runs below on its way to Lake Austin. Fowler describes the Texas landscape as “a hardscrabble, difficult landscape with a myriad of abstract possibilities for painting. Mostly, the forms aren’t simple shapes. This makes painting more exciting but also more challenging. I’ll keep painting this beautiful landscape as long as we both last.”

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Texas State park system, Fowler was chosen to paint Honey Creek in Mason County for their upcoming Art of Texas Parks 2023 traveling exhibition. This tributary of the Llano River inspired multiple additional paintings that are included in Texas: An Abstract Landscape.

preview show· artists talk and show video

Established in 1980 and located in a 120 year old historic house in Austin’s art district, the Wally Workman Gallery specializes in emerging and collected talent. Known for encouraging their artists’ professional and creative growth, the gallery has advanced local artists onto the national stage for decades. It is the combination of these long-standing relationships and the potential of new partnerships that make the gallery’s program dynamic and accessible. The gallery has two stories of exhibition space where one can view the 50 artists currently represented, including the contemporary talents of Sarah Ferguson, Joyce Howell and Will Klemm as well as the figurative work of Patrick Puckett and America Martin.

Parking is available in the lot behind the gallery, accessed from the alley off Blanco and Harthan Streets. There you will find three dedicated spots as well as other parking options. Unrestricted street parking is available on Blanco St. and parking is allowed after 7pm on Harthan St.

Austin Art Exhibition
The Contemporary Austin
700 CONGRESS AVENUE AUSTIN, TEXAS 78701
https://thecontemporaryaustin.org/exhibitions/

04/09/22-08/14/22

Winner of the 2022 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, Tarek Atoui (Lebanese, born 1980 in Beirut) is a Paris-based artist and composer whose work explores the medium of sound. He begins by acknowledging that sound is not limited to the sense of hearing. Sound requires transmission through physical materials, within particular spatial and social environments, and in relation to our individual bodies. He asks questions such as: What happens to sound as it travels through materials like metal, wood, and water? How can we perceive sound by listening not only with our ears but also with our eyes, our fingers, our bones—our whole bodies?

Atoui’s research and compositional process is highly collaborative and generates networks of community involvement. He works with other musicians, composers, and instrument makers around the world to develop custom materials he calls “tools for listening,” which conduct and amplify sounds in multisensory ways. In tandem with this process, he invites participation from people where his projects are located to involve musicians and non-musicians alike in creative explorations. For the project in Austin, three experimental musicians were invited for residencies within a lab prior to the exhibition opening. The residents experimented with materials Atoui provided alongside invited music collaborators and members of local youth organizations, generating community around the project and deepening its connection to Austin.

The exhibition comprises two installations, each occupying one floor of the Jones Center. On the first floor, Atoui presents his newest project, The Whisperers, which began as a series of workshops he conducted with his son’s kindergarten class in Paris. Together with this young audience, Atoui found ways to generate collective discoveries through four exploratory questions. How can we amplify spaces by using speakers and microphones immersed in solids, liquids, and gases? How can we create non-repetitive sounds using objects that rotate or spin? How can we use our bodies to articulate sounds through gestures and performance? How can we translate sounds into sources of motion and energy? From these inquiries, he developed The Whisperers, an ongoing project that explores sound transmissions in relation to material, space, motion, and perception.

On the second floor, Atoui presents The Wave, an accumulation of projects he developed throughout the last decade, including WITHIN (2012–16), The Reverse Sessions / The Reverse Collection (2014–16), and The Ground (2017–18). Each project generated a series of custom instruments, which Atoui designed with teams of collaborators to explore specific questions. Developed together with Deaf and hard of hearing communities worldwide, the WITHIN instruments explore the relationship between sound and deafness and engage listening through the whole body. The Reverse Collection instruments evolved through layered investigations into the sounds of ancient instruments in the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. The Ground evolved from Atoui’s extensive travel in southern China, where he investigated how traditional and contemporary agricultural practices might inform his compositional approach. The resulting composition in The Wave is a synthesis of knowledge and experiences, reflecting the interconnectivity of Atoui’s collaborative and ever-evolving practice.

Atoui’s dynamic installations are both sound environments and spaces for activation through occasional live performances. Visitors are invited to explore the environments and attune their bodies to how sounds develop and interact in the spaces over time. In addition, throughout the exhibition’s duration, the three musicians-in-residence and their collaborators will periodically activate The Whisperers through scheduled performances and improvisational demonstrations. We encourage visitors to attend these events to experience the full range of the artist’s inquiries and to appreciate the community of collaborators involved in the project.

In conjunction with the exhibition, The Contemporary Austin has commissioned from Atoui a new outdoor sound installation, which will premiere at the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria in May. Using an assemblage of cisterns housing underwater microphones, the work will create a soundscape encouraging visitors to slow down and listen to the surrounding environment.

Tarek Atoui: The Whisperers will travel to The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, where it will be on view October 1 through December 10, 2022. An exhibition catalog co-published by The Contemporary, FLAG, and Radius Books is forthcoming in 2023.

This exhibition is funded by Suzanne Deal Booth and The FLAG Art Foundation.

GALLERY
IMAGES

Art Exhibition |
Davis Gallery
835 West 12th Street Austin, TX 78701
https://davisgalleryaustin.com/

04/23/22-05/28/22

Artist Statement: CALM. Making marks. One after another, after another, after another. The brush is quiet, but I feel the swish and the beginning of a dance as the watercolor marks slowly appear. Repetitive. Calming. Introspective. Seeking peace and renewal. My focus the past five years has been how line, color, and form can alter our sense of well-being. The new work inspired by living with my daughter during her cancer treatment in California, and my morning walks on the beach that were my tranquil refuge. Seeking peace. Now. I am slowly healing, learning more about art therapy, grief, and its importance on this journey. Repetitive marks, spheres, color, and rhythmic lines, lifting the spirit, and hopefully communicating a tranquil place. “Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word. I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance. Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.” ― Mary Oliver

Austin Art Exhibition
Artworks

https://artworksaustin.com/exhibitions

04/30/22-06/11/22

Featuring: Austin Pastel Society, a 501C non-profit organization in Austin, TX.

Judge of Awards: Mike Etie

Opening reception: Saturday, April 30th, 2 – 5 pm

Mike Etie will select five award-winning paintings for each of the Emerging Artist and Established Artist categories.

Austin Art Exhibition
Davis Gallery
836 West 12th Street Austin, TX 78701
https://davisgalleryaustin.com/

06/11/22-07/23/22

Austin Art Exhibition
Blanton Museum
210 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, TX 78712
https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibitions-calendar/

07/23/22-12/04/22

Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby has described her motivations as an artist to “unapologetically center Black life, my experience as a Black woman, and the complexity of Black life—and to infuse every piece I make with love and joy, and this deep love I have for my Black experience.”

This intimate exhibition presents four new works by Akunyili Crosby. Still You Bloom in this Land of No Gardens, the largest work in the show, depicts the artist holding her young child on the outdoor terrace of her home, enveloped by lush plants and vines. She decided to create this painting on paper to counter the relative absence of images of loving Black mothers, to make “the images I wish to see.”

The other three paintings in the exhibition are new works made during the pandemic and exhibited publicly for the first time here at the Blanton. All prominently feature Akunyili Crosby’s distinctive photo-transfer technique that use reproductions culled from a vast image bank of photos of her family in Nigeria; magazine spreads depicting notable Nigerian athletes, models, musicians; and Vlisco clothing catalogues she has amassed “as a way of staying connected to home.”

The teeming presence of plant life, such as plumeria, fruit trees, and rubber trees, is also notable in these recent works. Their abundance suggests the garden as a space of sanctuary, but also the artist’s nascent interest in “cosmopolitan plants” that thrive in her native country of Nigeria and hometown of Los Angeles. While departing from her past focus on domestic interiors, these lush paintings reflect a continued interest in creating hybrid spaces that combine aspects of Nigerian and American life: “When you are an immigrant, no matter where you are, the histories and the cultures of where you grew up are always with you.”

Organized by Veronica Roberts, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Blanton Museum of Art

Credit
Njideka Akunyili Crosby is organized by the Blanton Museum of Art.

Generous support for this exhibition is provided by the Kahng Foundation, with additional support provided by Suzanne Deal Booth and Ellen and David Berman.

Austin Art Exhibition
Davis Gallery
837 West 12th Street Austin, TX 78701
https://davisgalleryaustin.com/

08/06/22-09/03/22

Austin Art Exhibition
Blanton Museum
211 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Austin, TX 78712
https://blantonmuseum.org/exhibitions-calendar/

08/27/22-11/27/22

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015), whose monumental last work, Austin, is in the Blanton’s permanent collection, is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His abstract paintings, sculptures, and prints are masterworks in the exploration of line, form, and color. In a lesser-known part of his practice, Kelly made collaged postcards, some of which served as exploratory musings and others as preparation for larger works in other media. From 1949 to 2005, Kelly made just over 400 postcard works. They show a playful, unbounded space of creative freedom for the artist and provide an important insight into the way Kelly saw, experienced, and translated the world in his art.

Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards will present a comprehensive survey of Kelly’s postcard collages, with 150 works on view. Many postcards reveal specific places where Kelly lived or visited, such as Paris, where Kelly lived in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and where he often returned, or other areas in New York City—My New Studio (1970), is a picture postcard of downtown Old Chatham, New York, with a stapled arrow pointing to the second-floor windows of his new studio building.

This kind of overt biography and revealing details make the postcard collages unique among Kelly’s works. Flashes of the artist’s playfulness show through, which is less visible in his formally rigorous paintings and sculpture.

Credit
Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards is organized by The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and curated by Ian Berry in collaboration with the Ellsworth Kelly Studio, and with Jessica Eisenthal, Independent Curator.

The Blanton’s presentation is organized by by Carter E. Foster, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs.

The exhibition and accompanying catalogue are supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Jack Shear, and the Friends of the Tang.