New Exhibits Opening Friday @ Lawndale

Aug 21, 2008 by Monica Danna    No Comments    Posted under: arts + events

Three new exhibits open at Lawndale this weekend, with an opening preview party on Friday night.

Opening Reception Friday, August 22, 2008, 6:30-8:30 PM
Artist talks at 6:00 PM

Check it out, yo.

(Re)Vision: A Preservation of Houston’s
Inner Loop | Shannon Duncan

Project Space

Shannon Duncan has a compulsion to collect and photograph discarded and otherwise overlooked objects, reviving their once precious nature by excessively archiving and/or documenting what she finds. For her installation in the Project Space, Duncan extends her interest in abandoned property to include real estate. Between January 1st, 2008 and June 30th, 2008, Duncan synced her life in tandem with the City of Houston’s on-line permits website, then visited residential properties scheduled for demolition within the inner loop. She captured these fugitive places using (the now discontinued) Polaroid film, and retrieved what personal items she found on site. (Re)Vision encapsulates her six-month project, with the collection of images gridded off by zip code and accompanied by selected found objects.
http://www.communitywalk.com/revisionhouston

Transcendental Smoothie
Mary Magsamen +Stephan Hillerbrand

John M. O’Quinn Gallery

• Psychedelic Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich store front facades
• Magical bottled water crystal palaces
• Strange Star Trek space anomaly looking pictures of our kids!

Transcendental Smoothie is a video installation by the collaborative husband and wife team of Magsamen + Hillerbrand. Through a playful and unexpected use of materials and camera viewpoints, Magsamen + Hillerbrand transform the John M. O’Quinn Gallery into a kaleidoscope world of cookie dough, vultures and monumental peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that bring questions and ideas of perception, identity, family and everyday pressures. “Transcendental” refers to Kant’s theory that our experience of things is about how they appear to us, but not about those things as they are in and of themselves. “Smoothie” refers to our use of food and everyday objects and the blending of many items to make something delicious.

What’s in a Line?
Judith Cottrell and Alex Lopez

Mezzanine Gallery

Alex Lopez and Judith Cottrell approach their exhibition with a simple question, what is the purpose of a gallery? The purpose of a “gallery” is considered by many as a place to exhibit works of art. Their answers lead them to examine the gallery as a finite area of space with interesting, challenging and complex architectural situations. “Would the gallery space be defined by the work or would we propose the question that perhaps the space itself could be the artwork?” Through an investigation and visual documentation of the Mezzanine Gallery they were able to determine that the space was in fact the challenge and “line of sight”, or point of perspective, would be one of their primary focuses. Their exhibition will combine independent and collaborative sculptural drawings that involve an investigation of methodology, approach, and comment on how line and space can be articulated, integrated, viewed, and accessed. Through installation and various media, Cottrell and Lopez challenge the modes of traditional genres with a new consideration for line.

The Grand Tour, Texas
Omar Vera

Grace R. Cavnar Gallery

Inspired by the ‘Grand Tour’ collections of Europe, Vera’s The Grand Tour, Texas is a grouping of charcoal and ink drawings and terracotta maquettes executed on site in the small and somewhat obscure Texas cities that take their names from iconic European meccas: Paris (311 miles from Houston), Florence (197 miles from Houston), and Roma (383 miles from Houston). The subject of these studies is the architecture, public artwork, and other local symbols whose role it is to fill the hopelessly large art-historical shoes of their namesakes. “Despite the implicit cynicism in undertaking this project, I have found that there is a tangible sincerity in the act of traveling to and venerating these locales not usually ennobled by the rhetoric of ‘The Grand Tour’, “explains Vera.

Got anything to say? Go ahead and leave a comment!