PAST EXHIBITIONS
2019
Re-Membering is the Responsibility of the Living
Taja Lindley
Exhibition Dates: November 15, 2019 – January 4, 2020
Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM, Friday, November 15, 2019
Artist Talk: 2:15 PM, Saturday, November 16, 2019 I Main Gallery
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PRESS - Houston Chronicle - The Must List: The Nutcracker Market, Shea Serrano
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Re-Membering is the Responsibility of the Living, a multi-media, performance based site-specific installation by Brooklyn based Artist Taja Lindley.
“As a memory worker, Lindley explores what has been abandoned, erased, silenced or distorted in our individual and collective consciousness. Moved by the non-indictments of the officers responsible for the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in 2014, Lindley developed “This Ain’t A Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering.” This performance based work served as the precursor for “The Bag Lady Manifesta” - an interdisciplinary project that combines ritual, performance, film and installation.
The Bag Lady is a primordial figure who communes with the ancestors and emerges from the rubble of forgotten histories. Through this central figure, Lindley draws parallels between discarded materials and the violent treatment of Black people in the United States. Rooting her creative process in research about Black lives that have been stolen, she transforms what has been considered disposable into something sacred.
Can we grow gardens out of graves? How can we recycle the energy of protest, rage and grief into creating a world where indeed Black Lives Matter? What is the role of memory in our movement building work? And who will be responsible for this labor? These are the questions that haunt the work of visual and performance artist Taja Lindley.”
-Text by Carre Adams and Taja Lindley for Remembering is the Responsibility of the Living exhibition at the George Washington Carver Museum, Austin, Texas, 2019.
ALH extends our gratitude to On Services a GES Company and Valspar Paint for their support of this exhibition.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Taja Lindley is an 80’s baby born in New York and raised in the South who currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, working as the Managing Member of Colored Girls Hustle. In 2007 she received her B.A. from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study where she designed her own major, concentrating in public policy and knowledge production with a focus on health and women of color. Lindley is a memory worker, healer and an activist. Through iterative and interdisciplinary practices, she creates socially engaged artwork that transforms audiences, shifts culture, and moves people to action. She uses movement, text, installation, ritual, burlesque, and multi-media to create immersive works that are concerned with freedom, healing, and pleasure. Her performances, films, and installations have been featured at the Brooklyn Museum; La Mama Theater; New York Live Arts; the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University; the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Carver Museum in Austin, Texas; the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California; and more. She has received coverage in the New York Times, VICE, ELLE, Blouin Art Info, Art Zealous and Artnet News, and ARTSY. Her 2017 residency at Dixon Place Theater culminated in the world premiere of her one-woman show The Bag Lady Manifesta in September 2017. This work is currently on a nationwide tour in the United States.
In addition to being an artist, Lindley is actively engaged in social movements as a writer, consultant, and facilitator. For over a decade she has worked with non-profits, research institutes and government on policies and programming that impact women and girls, communities of color, low/no/fixed-income families, queer people, youth and immigrants. Most recently, she served as a Sexual and Reproductive Justice Consultant at DOHMH, co-facilitating a community-driven process that created The New York City Standards for Respectful Care at Birth. She continues her work at the NYC Health Department as the current Public Artist in Residence, a program of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.
Her writing has appeared in Rewire, YES! Magazine, Feministe, Salon and EBONY. She is a member of Harriet's Apothecary and Echoing Ida.
Please click here to visit the artist’s website for more information and updates.
One by One
Arely Morales
Exhibition Dates: November 15, 2019 – January 4, 2020
Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM, Friday, November 15, 2019
Artist Talk: 1:45 PM, Saturday, November 16, 2019 I Front Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present One by One, an exhibition of recent paintings by Nacogdoches based Artist Arely Morales. This exhibition, featuring five recent paintings by Morales, explores her personal experiences as an immigrant. These monumental paintings visually portray the grace and humanity of immigrant workers with a religious-like aura, inviting viewers to engage with her subjects in a highly personal, emblematic and humanitarian way.
“My personal life experiences play a major role in my artwork,” states Morales. “Who I am and where I came from. I was born in Mexico and lived there until I was fourteen years old. At that time, I moved to the United States and I went through the experience of merging into a new culture. I often felt displaced, undervalued, invisible, and even faced discrimination in my school and in the community. I also witnessed others in my community go through the same thing. I became part of a minority group that in today’s political climate is targeted with negativity. This issue has not only caused fear amongst us, but it has caused discrimination and has continued to devalue us as human beings. We are perceived as invaders, or worse, have become invisible.”
Morales is interested in exploring issues of identity, humanity, invisibility and the vulnerabilities that take place within immigrant workers. Class-based exploitation, physical and emotional sufferings, and a sense of invisibility and general degradation are some of the issues that they are currently confronted with in the United States. Farm workers, day laborers and housekeepers are frequent subjects in her paintings, and are often close friends or family members.
Morales states, “As part of the process of creating my paintings, I talk to them about their experiences of moving to this country and their challenges of being an immigrant worker. In some occasions, I also go with my models to their jobs. As they go through their daily tasks I talk to them and I observe their body language. Through larger-than life portraits, I seek to bring focus to their lives. The slightest gesture in a person’s face, hands or posture can tell so much about the situation that we are in and how we feel physically and emotionally. I share with the viewer aspects of our lives that make us human that often are unseen, from the sweat in our face, blood from an injured hand, to a posture suggesting how tired we are after long shifts. In some of my pieces I also seek to bring elements that speak about our culture, such as vibrant colors or patterns from indigenous groups in my home state.”
The hard work that these individuals do on a daily basis mostly remains unseen and unappreciated. Morales seeks to bring light to these issues and to create a clarity that makes her subjects feel visible and present in this world.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Arely Morales was born in Mexico and moved to Texas at the age of 14. She received her BFA in Painting and Photography from Stephen F. Austin State University in 2015, and later received her MFA from the University of Washington in 2017, where she was awarded the de Cillia Graduating with Excellence Award for her research and artwork.
Currently Morales is teaching drawing as an adjunct professor at Stephen F. Austin State University. She is a 2019 recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant. The experience of merging into a new culture and being an immigrant in this country has influenced the subject matter of her work, which focuses on issues of identity, displacement, humanity and the invisibility that immigrant workers face through class-based exploitation, physical and emotional sufferings, and their vulnerability. Through her artwork that features portraits of immigrant laborers, viewers are offered the opportunity to recognize her subject’s strength and humanity. Her work was featured in a two-person exhibition, Displaced, with Artist Shaun Roberts at Kirk Hopper Fine Art, Dallas, in the spring of 2019. Her solo exhibition at Art League Houston is the Artist’s first time to exhibit in Houston.
Soft Listings
Daniela Koontz
Exhibition Dates: November 15, 2019 – January 4, 2020
Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM, Friday, November 15, 2019
Artist Talk: 1:30 PM, Saturday, November 16, 2019 I Hallway Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Soft Listings, an exhibition featuring recent works on paper by Houston based Artist Daniela Koontz. In her 20s, Daniela Koontz worked a number of field seasons on an archaeological dig in Central America. It was there she learned to make technical drawings of artifacts in a style that informs her work today. Before the internet made list-making ubiquitous, Daniela Koontz made illustrated lists of beautiful and interesting things united by themes of her own imagining. Rather than documenting the ancient past, the resulting works on paper explore categories of late capitalism, rock & roll, supermarket flowers, and food.
Koontz’s drawings are a mix of traditional still-life painting and the type of illustrations you might find in an academic journal, but her aesthetic sensibility is a bit “Pop.” Using the drawing techniques and realism of botanical or archaeological illustration, she makes lists of like objects and groups them together to carry new meaning. The arrangement is often humorous, and sometimes poetic. Working on paper lends the work an intimacy that you might find in the rare books section of a library. The work is meant to be thoughtful and quiet.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Daniela Koontz is an artist living and working in Houston, Texas. She is currently part of the collective at Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston, where she maintains a studio. Koontz has worked as a bartender, arranged flowers, delivered pizza, worked as a fry cook, slide librarian, and as an archaeologist in Honduras. From 2003-17, she worked as an Art and Art History teacher at Alvin High School and Alvin Community College, Alvin, Texas. She currently teaches Art and Art Appreciation at Manvel High School and Alvin Community College. Koontz received her MFA in Painting from the University of Houston in 2003. Prior to this, she studied Painting and Printmaking at UT El Paso (graduating in 2000 with her BFA), and received her BA in Art History from UC Berkeley, Berkeley, California, in 1990. Selected exhibitions include shows at Box 13 ArtSpace, Houston; Front Gallery, Houston; Houston Center for Contemporary Crafts, Houston; Lawndale Art Center, Houston; Women and their Work Gallery, Austin; and 500X Gallery, Dallas.
What Art Can Do
Margarita Cabrera
The Collaborative Act of Making
Art League Houston 2019 Texas Artist of the Year
Exhibition Dates: September 7 – November 2, 2019
Opening Reception: 6 -9 PM Saturday, September 7, 2019
Artist Talk: 7:15 PM I Main Gallery
PRESS - Art League Houston Announces Exhibition by Artist of the Year Margarita Cabrera
PRESS - Show Up: Margarita Cabrera
PRESS - Art review: Texan Margarita Cabrera tackles thorny immigration issues in cactus art
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present the 2019 Texas Artist of the Year exhibition, What Art Can Do: Margarita Cabrera – The Collaborative Act of Making, featuring artwork by El Paso Artist Margarita Cabrera. A catalog focusing on Cabrera’s community based art projects is being published in conjunction with this exhibition, including an essay by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Program Officer, Creativity and Free Expression, with the Ford Foundation, New York, NY. Founded in 1983, ALH established the Texas Artist of the Year award as a dynamic project documenting contemporary Texas art history. The award recognizes artists who have demonstrated exceptional creativity and outstanding achievement, and whose work has had a significant and positive impact on contemporary visual art in Texas. Those who have been recognized have already produced a significant body of work and stand apart as leading figures and visionary talents within the field of contemporary art in Texas.
Margarita Cabrera is recognized for her sculpture and installations featuring a diverse range of media, including fabrics, steel, copper, wood and ceramics. Her most recent monumental, public art community sculpture was recently unveiled this year in San Antonio, TX: Árbol de la Vida: Memorias y Voces de la Tierra. The “Árbol” highlights a key component of Cabrera’s career – her desire for and the importance of community collaboration and engagement. Cabrera is an educator and instructor on historical Mexican handicraft methods, encouraging those around her to learn by giving them agency and opportunity through her collaborative projects. Cabrera’s artwork, from her soft-sculpture border plants depicting various species of cacti and desert flora, to her ceramic tractors and farm tools adorned with fragile butterflies, emphasize her concerns with social-political issues surrounding immigration, border politics, just work environments, and the importance of transforming the local community through art. She often engages with community members through her projects by including them in the act of creation, resulting in a collaborative, public work of art reflective of community energies and the surrounding environment. Her projects give a voice to local communities and artists, encouraging their personal growth, artistic education, and support of each other. Cabrera’s Texas Artist of the Year exhibition highlights her community based activism as well as her artistic creations over the years, exemplifying her devotion to historical Mexican craft traditions and the idea of art as a progressive vehicle for social and political change.
Cabrera states, “My work centers on social-political community issues including cultural identity, migration, violence, inclusivity, labor, and empowerment. I create sculptures made out of media ranging from steel, copper, wood, ceramics, and fabric. I have worked on a number of collaborative projects at the intersection of contemporary art practices, indigenous Mexican folk art and craft traditions, and US-Mexico relations. In addition to studying and preserving endangered cultural and craft traditions, these projects have served as active investigations into the creation of just working conditions and the protection of immigrant rights. My emphasis is on creating a social consciousness through my work, generating solutions to these problems through my art and empowering all members of highly diverse communities.
In recent years, I have especially focused on community art collaborations, producing work that has engaged international and local communities in transformative practices. With these works, we have created art pieces that serve as cultural and historical artifacts that value and document the experiences, struggles, and achievements of those who have found their way, often through migration and exceptional sacrifice, to new places where they now work to contribute meaningfully within their communities. This work is both individually and collectively inspiring to all participants and local populations.”
Major funding for the 2019 Texas Artist of the Year catalog and exhibition was provided by The Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation and the Jacques Louis Vidal Charitable Fund. Further support was generously provided by Jay’s Frames, Houston, TX; Field of Study, Houston, TX; Hare & Hound Press, San Antonio, TX; Ruiz-Healy Art, San Antonio, TX; and Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, TX.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Margarita Cabrera is an assistant professor at the Arizona State University Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. She received her MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY. Recent exhibitions include: Margarita Cabrera: It is impossible to cover the sun with one finger, a solo exhibition at the Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX; Margarita Cabrera: Space in Between at the Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY; PERILOUS BODIES at the Ford Foundation Gallery, New York, NY; and Margarita Cabrera, presented by the Center of Southern Craft and Design at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA. Cabrera was also an exhibiting artist at Prospect 4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, New Orleans, LA. She exhibited in The U.S.-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility at the Craft & Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, CA, and SITElines.2016: much wider than a line in Santa Fe, NM.
Cabrera’s work has been featured in numerous galleries including Ruiz-Healy Art, San Antonio, TX; Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, TX; 516 Arts, Albuquerque, NM; Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, NY; Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Snyderman-Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. Her work is represented in permanent collections across the nation, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; the Sweeney Art Center for Contemporary Art at the University of California, Riverside, CA; the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Ketchum, ID; and El Museo del Barrio in New York, NY. In 2012, Cabrera received the Knight Artist in Residence award at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC. She is also a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. Cabrera unveiled her monumental, public art community sculpture entitled Árbol de la Vida: Memorias y Voces de la Tierra in San Antonio, TX, in 2019.
Entangled
Preetika Rajgariah
Exhibition Dates: September 7 – November 2, 2019
Opening Reception: 6 -9 PM Saturday, September 7, 2019
Artist Talk: 6:45 PM I Front Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Entangled, an exhibition of recent work by interdisciplinary, Houston based Artist, Preetika Rajgariah. In this exhibition, Rajgariah visually examines the relationship between identity and global capitalism as seen in her studies of beauty standards and the socio-consumerist practices that are prevalent in this storied history.
Rajgariah states, “Nationwide, the ideal standard for acceptable or “good hair” most closely resembles that of caucasian people, i.e. it is manageable, straight, smooth, and non-kinky. My interests lie in the participation of these European beauty standards by people of color across the world. From Hollywood entertainers to the black community, women spend thousands of dollars on hair extensions and weave in order to achieve beauty and success. What is often not discussed is the fact that some of the highest quality hair comes from the South Asian region. Temples in southern India take hair donated as religious offering and sell it to the western world for the production of weave products. In turn, the American economy capitalizes off of all brown and black bodies involved. Capitalism erases the “human-ness” of the bodies, which is what I would like to stop and consider.”
Rajgariah’s exhibition and installation directly examine these practices and entangled relationships. Through screen printing techniques, she has designed and created checkbook size boxes that also, through size and shape, resemble bricks of gold. These boxes are adorned with text that reads “Gold Standard,” “Beauty Supply,” and “Hair Supplement” – thus literally emphasizing the idea of beauty products and hair as consumerist currency. Each box is filled with a braided lock of human hair, reminding viewers of the history and individuals impacted by this practice. The installation will include hundreds of these boxes, as well as other recent works addressing the exhibition theme.
“This is a difficult subject matter that presents questions of agency, value systems, and global capitalism. My hope is to create a platform for productive conversation surrounding this intertwined relationship that ties together eastern and western worlds,” states Rajgariah, “which in turn forces a relationship between black and brown bodies that is otherwise not encouraged.”
ALH extends our gratitude to Michelle & Robert Raney and Robert Daniel & Julia O’Bryan Reynolds for their support of this exhibition.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Preetika Rajgariah is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Houston, Texas. Born in New Delhi, India, she received her MFA in Painting and Sculpture from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, IL (2018), and her BFA in Art from Trinity University in San Antonio, TX (2008). Rajgariah is a recipient of numerous awards, including residencies at Oxbow School of Art, Saugatuck, MI (2018); ACRE, Steuben, WI (2018), the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT (2014); and the School of Visual Arts Painting Residency, New York, NY (2010). Her work was published in New American Paintings, no. 102, Western Issue (2012). Exhibitions include features at Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX (solo, 2019); Roots & Culture, Chicago, IL (two person, 2018); Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL (group, 2017); Fort Gondo, St Louis, MO (group, 2016); and Art League Houston (solo Hallway Gallery exhibition, 2015).
Maintenance
Charis Ammon
Exhibition Dates: September 7 – November 2, 2019
Opening Reception: 6 -9 PM Saturday, September 7, 2019
Artist Talk: 6:30 PM I Hallway Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Maintenance, an exhibition of new paintings on canvas and paper by Brooklyn and Houston based Artist, Charis Ammon. Recognized for her thick, tactile and gestural application of paint, Ammon focuses on seemingly quotidian subject matter seen throughout our everyday lives. From disheveled construction scenes to barriers and maintenance sites, Ammon’s paintings create a visual record of our surroundings and instances we encounter daily that may otherwise go unnoticed. Ammon walks through the city collecting hundreds of photographs as source material for her work. The confidence and behavior of her marks and brushstrokes give these paintings a monumental quality, despite their small scale and commonplace imagery, presenting them as extraordinary visions of contemporary, urban life. The works in this exhibition feature city scenes in Houston and Brooklyn. Concurrently, Inman Gallery, Houston, TX, will feature a selection of recent, larger paintings by the artist.
Ammon states, “I am interested in the rhythm and cadence of the city space and how interruptions impact that space. Construction sites build rerouting systems for pedestrians and cars. These temporary structures bordering construction sites and public space hold a curious authority. I find myself drawn to the boundaries, pits and heaps of construction sites, finding an entanglement of the physical and psychological world in these scenes. I am investigating these scenes of construction as a physical, social, and political material through painting. The sculpting of curbs and sidewalks, the scraping, smoothing and patting of wet concrete to form paths feels like a parallel to my brush on the canvas – the contact of the workers trowel on the wet concrete with quick, gestural motions and slow, measured marks. My brushstrokes reveal my doubt, my joy, and my curiosity. The construction workers are the menders of the city, the caretakers of our urban environment.”
There is a sense of intimacy to Ammon’s paintings of the construction and maintenance sites encountered on her walks. She asks us, as viewers, to take a closer look, both visually and intellectually to the scenes around us and the laborers that live out their lives in these compositions. In this sense, Ammon’s work brings to mind masters of the nineteenth century, such as Courbet and his iconic Stone Breakers, or the later Diego Rivera and his frescoes depicting labor and the working class of the twentieth century. Ammon is similarly interested in labor and concepts of social realism. These currents dominate her inquiries into the sites she paints, and her interest is not so much in our building of “new” infrastructure and buildings, but in the repairs and unending construction that surrounds us. We are forever in a state of demolition, re-construction and progress.
“I was born into the ubiquitous world of concrete, where remedial construction is the norm. I do not see many new roads being made; instead I see roads being patched and widened. The mending feels as though we are always behind on delivering necessity. The city is in a constant state of flux, which brings with it a lack of clarity on what is need and what is desire. So instead of this being a glory of construction,” states Ammon. “It is more of an inquiry into what this work reflects.”
ALH extends our gratitude to Inman Gallery, Houston, TX, for their support of this exhibition.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Charis Ammon is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY, who also spends time in Houston, TX. Born in Dallas in 1992, Ammon is a recent graduate of The University of Houston where she completed her MFA in Painting in May 2018. Prior to her studies in Houston, Ammon graduated from Texas State University with a BFA in Painting in 2015. She is currently represented by Inman Gallery, Houston, TX. Ammon was featured in a solo exhibition, Still Hot in the Shade, at Inman Gallery, Houston, TX, in 2018; exhibited at the Project Gallery at the University of Houston in a solo show, Rhythm: Works on Paper, in 2018; and completed the Desert Unit of Speculative Territories (DUST) Residency Program in Marfa, TX, in 2017. She was a Hunting Art Prize Finalist in 2016, and her work is included in the permanent collection of The University of Houston.
PLACE, POSITION, PERSON
2019 Summer High School Studio Art Intensive Exhibition
Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM Friday August 2, 2019
Exhibition Dates: August 2 - 24, 2019
Front Gallery
Art League Houston is excited to present the 2019 Summer High School Studio Art Intensive Exhibition: place, position, person, an annual group exhibition by students from Art League’s High School Intensive Program. The Summer High School Studio Art Intensive Program serves 16 students ages 14-17 in Houston, TX over a twelve-week period in the summer. The program consists of three weeks of onsite workshops, talks, an offsite public art project, and field trips led by teaching artists, art historians, educators, curators and arts professionals to delve into a variety of mediums, practices and concepts. The fourth week consists of open studio time for students to create their final projects – including one-on-one studio visits from teaching artists and curators. Students are supported by ALH as they independently complete their projects, and the program culminates in a four week exhibition in the Art League Houston Front Gallery.
Participating High School Students: Althea Nigos, Ava Jiang, boya shi, Elissa Saenz, Elisse Gachupín, Emmy Smith, Ire Asojo, Julia Rossel, Marianna Pachon, Levy Cao and Perla Gomez
Participating Mentoring Alumni (M.A) Students: Adora Goodluck, Claire Waller, Kathryn Lloyd and Sophia Malik
Intensive Studio Assistant: Gabriela Sosa
Participating Teaching Artists: Armando Castellan, Dani Antelo, Emily Sloan, Grace Zuniga, Jamie Robertson, Jaz Henry, Lovie Olivia, Melissa Walter, Moe Penders, Nicolle Lamere, Nyssa Juneau, Qindeel Butt and Reyes Ramirez
Community Collaborators: Sawyer Yards (Grace Zuniga), Fresh Arts (Angela Carranza & Reyes Ramirez), The Station (Sophie Asakura), Box13 Artspace (Nicolle LaMere & Alberto Careaga), Mystic Lyon (Emily Sloan), CAMH (Adriana Benevides & Michael Simmonds), Lawndale (Emily Fens) and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (Natalie Scavina)
2019 ALH INSTRUCTOR EXHIBITION
Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM Friday August 2, 2019
Exhibition Dates: August 2 - 24, 2019
Hallway Space
Art League Houston (ALH) is excited to present the annual 2019 Art League Instructor Show, a group exhibition featuring works in sculpture, mixed-media, drawing, painting and ceramics by some of Houston’s exciting emerging and established artists who teach at the Art League School.
Participating Instructors: Ruben Coy, Gao Hang, Caroline Graham, Salli Babbitt, Susan Budge, Molly Koehn, Laura Spector, Nicolle LaMere, Polly Liu, Lucinda Cobley, Steve Parker, Cary Reeder, Erika Garrett, Alberto Careaga, Zain bin Awais, and Myke Venable
ABOUT THE ART LEAGUE SCHOOL
Founded in 1968, the Art League School seeks to develop Houston-area artists through its quarterly studio art classes and workshops. Each year, over 1,000 adult students of diverse backgrounds, skill levels, and ages enroll in over 100 classes and workshops annually at ALH. Led by professional artist instructors, classes and workshops take place in three fully equipped studio spaces where students work in painting, drawing, watercolor, printmaking, mixed media, collage, jewelry, and other media. To ensure individual attention and to accommodate varying skill levels, courses are maintained with a limited number of students. There are no prerequisites for enrollment and courses are offered at an affordable cost to allow broad access to anyone interested. Students also have access to exhibitions, lectures, public programs, and artist talks offered throughout the year to further their training as artists.
2019 ALH STUDENT EXHIBITION
Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM Friday August 2, 2019
Exhibition Dates: August 2 - 24, 2019
Main Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is excited to present the annual 2019 Art League Student Exhibition, a group exhibition featuring works in jewelry, drawing, mixed-media, ceramic, printmaking and painting by students who participated in classes through the Art League School during the past year.
Participating Artists: Ieda Acunzo, Zandra Addington, Ivanna Albertin, Erika Alonso, Sian Anamosa, Shaza Anderson, Deborah Blake, Nancy Bloching-Watkins, Haley Bowen, Susan Branisa, Johanna Brassert, Angela Buchanan, Kelley Busby, Emily Chiles, Katerina Chrisinis, DeAnn Christensen, Michelle Collins, Kimberly Crawford, Amie Cunningham, Tania DeJohn, Pat Engle, Ana Frey, Carvel Glenn, Candice Goodwin, Karen Greer, Erik Gronfor, Oscar Guzman, Mary Hallab, Johana Hartjen, Sheila Hetherington, Theresa Honeycheck, Danielle Husband, Jill Anne Jack, Kate Keating, Afshan Khan, Susanna Kieval, Binny Kim, PhD, Anson Koshy, Daniel Lacorazza, Randall Lamb, Kellie Lawrence, Michael Llewellyn, Yessenia Lopez, Gregory Lyons, Caroline Marcos, Holly Martinez, Gloria Marubio, Deborah Melanson, Anne Meng, Allison S. Miller, Anuja Nair, Tatyana Neal, Chris Noble, Alicia Oates, N. Blanca (Crystal Owens), Francis Peronard, Bridgette Phillips, Harold Prasatik, Joy Pulaski, Leslie Rahuba, Nancy Reid, Janet Rexroad, Ashley Rhoads, Martha Rollo, Elena Salvage, Esmeralda Sanchez, Carol Sepulveda, Lyra Sihra, Alexander Song, Peggy Steup, Jerrolyn Travers, Elizabeth Unruh, Kelly Vandersnick, Pamela Vangiessen, Ami Westrich, Terry Wheeler, Ronald Williamson, Jennifer Wingo, Teresa Winkler, Karen Wong, Onna Yeung, Yao You and Anastasia Zabelina.
ABOUT THE ART LEAGUE SCHOOL
Founded in 1968, the Art League School seeks to develop Houston-area artists through its quarterly studio art classes and workshops. Each year, over 1,000 adult students of diverse backgrounds, skill levels, and ages enroll in over 100 classes and workshops annually at ALH. Led by professional artist instructors, classes and workshops take place in three fully equipped studio spaces where students work in painting, drawing, watercolor, printmaking, mixed media, collage, jewelry, and other media. To ensure individual attention and to accommodate varying skill levels, courses are maintained with a limited number of students. There are no prerequisites for enrollment and courses are offered at an affordable cost to allow broad access to anyone interested. Students also have access to exhibitions, lectures, public programs, and artist talks offered throughout the year to further their training as artists.
Flicker Futures
Bill Brown + Sabine Gruffat
Exhibition Dates: June 7 – July 20, 2019 Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM Friday, June 7, 2019 Artist Talks and Live Cinema Performance of “Unsettling Texas”: 6:45 PM I Main Gallery
PRESS - Art review: Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown explore film’s future at Art League Houston
PRESS - Bill & Sabine Waltz Across Texas
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Flicker Futures, a 3-part analog-digital installation by the artist team Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This exhibition is comprised of a series of analog-digital operations that recontextualize and build on current discourses surrounding the idea of the film frame, screen, and projector. “Flicker Futures projects old school analog filmmaking onto the digital now. These three installations reflect on our moving image past and rehearse our moving image future,” states Brown and Gruffat. “As the technological and material conditions of motion pictures shift in an era of digital image making – as we move from the silver screen to the endless stream – it is high time to revisit our assumptions about the way motion pictures are created and how they are presented.”
Quicksilver, a 2017 installation by Gruffat, is a 2-channel video of 35mm film images accompanied by an original spatial soundtrack by sound artist Stephen Vitiello. The images were created by a computer-controlled laser cutter that etched away layers of emulsion, leaving behind abstract patterns. This innovative technique contrasts to traditional approaches in filmmaking, where light exposed emulsion is washed away during the film processing stages. Gruffat states, “In my artistic practice, machines, interfaces, and systems constitute the language by which I code the world. The creation of new ideas means inventing new tools, crossing analog and digital signals, or repurposing old machines to patch into new ones. By actively disrupting both current and outmoded technology, I question standardized ways of understanding the world around us.”
Brown’s 2017 installation, Moving Pictures, is a 3-channel slide projector installation that looks for movement both within and beyond the moving picture plane. Three automated slide projectors work together to create an animated image that is projected on a large, mobile rolling screen. Thus, the illusion of motion via the animated image is literally made real and translated into physical movement in space. Brown states, “I am increasingly excited by the ways digital technologies can extend the creative possibilities of analog media. The tension between presence and absence that marks the experience of film exhibition – screen time vs. real time, the projected image vs. the physical presence of an audience – has led me to experiment with the technologies of moving image projection, and to consider how the space of exhibition can be the site of a sculptural and spatial art practice.” In his Aura Retrieval Machine: aka 16mm Movie Digester (also from 2017), Brown responds to the industrial obsolescence of 16mm film. In this installation, Brown uses donated and deaccessioned 16mm film footage that is projected and then immediately destroyed by a paper shredder. The shredded film collects in an acrylic column, creating a memorial object that commemorates the final moment of exhibition of each frame of film.
JUNE 2 IN AUSTIN
Blanton Museum of Art, 2–4 PM Expanded Cinema Performance.
The Carpenter Hotel, 7:30–10:30 PM Screening of Film/Video.
JUNE 7 IN HOUSTON
Art League Houston, 6–9 PM Exhibition, Live Cinema Performance & Artist Talks.
JUNE 8 IN SAN ANTONIO
SALA DIAZ, 8–11 PM Screening of Film/Video.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Bill Brown is an artist living and working in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Originally from Lubbock, Texas, Brown currently serves as Professor of Media Production at the University of North Carolina. His artistic practice centers around media art as a series of operations and opportunities that enable us to explore social, historical, and political forces that produce moving images. He is also interested in ways time-based media can be viewed as a physical object, and how we consider the moving image in a physical space. Brown’s films and videos have screened at numerous festivals throughout the world, including the Rotterdam Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His new series of digitally-controlled analog devices called The Analog Playhouse were recently screened at Alchemy Film & Arts in Hawick, Scotland.
Sabine Gruffat is a French-American media artist who works with experimental video and animation, media-enhanced performance, participatory public art, and immersive installation. She currently lives and works in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she is Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina. Gruffat is also a filmmaker with a special interest in the social and political implications of media and technology. Her experimental and essay films explore how technology, globalization, urbanism, and capitalism affect human beings and the environment. Gruffat’s body of work includes digital media works for public spaces as well as interactive installations exhibited and screened at the Zolla Lieberman Gallery in Chicago, Art In General, Devotion Gallery, MOMA PS1 Contemporary Art Museum, and Hudson Franklin in New York, and The North Carolina Museum of Art.
So It Will Be
Daniel Heimbinder
Exhibition Dates: June 7 – July 20, 2019 Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM Friday, June 7, 2019 Artist Talk: 7:15 PM I Front Gallery
PRESS - Mixed Metaphors: Daniel Heimbinder’s Clutch City
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present So It Will Be, an exhibition of watercolor and ink on paper drawings by Houston based artist Daniel Heimbinder. Recognized for his monumental works on paper, Heimbinder depicts a complex, apocalyptic world with a meticulous and scrutinizing eye. His works are visually arresting and intellectually stimulating in their Bosch-like detail, telling a dystopian story of humanity where time and place are secondary to the narrative that unfolds. There is a surrealist and apocalyptic current running through the work that gives a sense of otherworldly timelessness and displacement – who are these beings, what is their story, where are they going and where have they been?
“We digest, and in many ways navigate our world through stories…narratives that have been ingrained in us since the beginning of time,” states Heimbinder. “Stories that are reductive and insufficient in capturing the enormous complexity that is our world, yet they have served as a navigator often revealing more about us than they advise or inform.”
So It Will Be is a body of work that exposes the complex and confusing nature of these stories, and how they unsuccessfully attempt to navigate the world around us. Heimbinder’s landscapes are purposefully nonreferential and confusing – symbolically referencing the complexities of the human mind. He is interested in how stories form a sense of community, both literally and philosophically, and what happens to a society where shared stories are no longer important. Heimbinder’s subjects stem from an amalgamation of different sources, including Biblical, Greek and Roman texts. This exhibition, comprised of three large-scale works on paper, chronicles stories often used as tools for navigating and understanding the scientific principles and moral codes of our world. In So It Was (2012), Heimbinder highlights contradictions found in his sources, stemming from Biblical, Greek and Roman texts; So It Goes (2015) looks at these contradictions through a more contemporary lens; and So It Will Be (2019) shows the result of these contradictions in our contemporary world, where civilization breaks down and mass paranoia reigns.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Daniel Heimbinder is an artist living and working in Houston, Texas, where he is recognized for his work as a draftsman and painter. Although he was born in New York City, Heimbinder grew up in Houston and graduated from the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Following graduation, the artist attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Skidmore College. Heimbinder’s work, which notably features intricate, intense drawings and paintings of the mind, has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Houston, as well as national and international venues. Numerous publications have covered his work, including the New York Times, Harper’s, NY Arts, WIRED Magazine, Houston Chronicle, and Time Out New York.
Ubuntu: I am because we are
Tijay Mohammed
Exhibition Dates: June 7 – July 20, 2019 Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM Friday, June 7, 2019 Artist Talk: 6:30 PM I Hallway Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Ubuntu: I am because we are, an installation by Bronx, New York based artist Ahmed Tijay Mohammed (Tijay Mohammed). Ubuntu (uu-boon-tuu) explores the vital and significant role of women, especially the lives of immigrant women, whose daily labor and work, necessary to their families and livelihood, often goes unnoticed. In this sense, Ubuntu is a group portrait, celebrating the familial and societal impact of their lives and work.
The installation consists of Ankara fabric scraps (African wax print) collected by the artist from seamstresses across Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, and New York. The collected scraps symbolically represent the shops women traditionally visit to buy special occasion clothing, such as dresses for weddings and funerals. For his installation, Tijay trims the Ankara fabric scraps into rectangular shapes and pastes them on yards of stiff fabric with a white glue. The swaths of thick fabric create a sort of wall that can suspend in and cover an area, transforming space and surrounding the viewer. The sense of total immersion created by the fabric, mirroring traditional brick arrangements, highlights the beauty of Ankara fabrics and symbolically emphasizes African heritage and shared immigration histories. The dynamic installation also highlights the traditional arts found in Sirigu, Ghana – a village known for murals created primarily by women and a lively arts community.
Another component of the installation are portraits of women created using an airbrush application technique with black and white acrylic paint on stiff fabric. In 2013, the artist solicited a call for portraits of women on social media – this collection of images comes from this call and depicts real women from a diverse range of experiences and lives. The artist states that his use of online imagery as source material for these portraits “breaks the shackles” of traditional portraiture that typically uses a live model. He rearranges the ears, nose, and mouth in the portraits so that a new image is created. There is a universal undertone to the installation through the collected fabrics and portraits that highlight the commonalities of all people and our shared experiences.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ahmed Tijay Mohammed (Tijay Mohammed) was born in Kintampo, Ghana and currently lives in the Bronx, NY. Integral to his artistic philosophy and practice is the necessity of community, and Tijay devotes much of his energies towards creating and volunteering in community-based programs. He has exhibited his work internationally, including features at the Longwood Art Gallery (NY), Green Drake Art Gallery (PA), Lincoln Medical Center (NY), The National Museum of Ghana (Ghana), and Ravel D’Art (Côte d’Ivoire). Tijay has also organized workshops and community based projects with numerous organizations including the Studio Museum Harlem (NY), Wallach Art Gallery (NY), University of Ghana Performance Art Center (Ghana), the Brooklyn Museum (NY), Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling (NY), and Pinto Road Community Centre (Arima, Trinidad and Tobago). In addition, he has received numerous accolades and grants and is a recipient of the Arts Fund and Artist for Community grant from the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Create Change initiative through The Laundromat Project (NY), and the Spanish Embassy Ghana Painters Award. He participated in the Global Crit Clinic, Asiko Artist Residency (Ghana), Harmattan Workshop (Nigeria), and Community Workers Training (NY). Tijay is currently completing a residency at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (NY).
Sustainable Lifeguard Chair Chicken Coop (SLICK)
Kasey Short
Exhibition Dates: June 7 – July 20, 2019 Opening Reception: 6 – 9 PM Friday, June 7, 2019 Artist Talk: 6:15 PM I Parking Lot
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Sustainable Lifeguard Chair Chicken Coop (SLICK), a new, interactive work by Houston based artist Kasey Short, funded in part by the 2019 Support for Artists and Creative Individuals Grant from the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. This project and site-specific installation underscore the artist’s interest in creative sustainability, society and consumerism. The passing of time and the viewer’s perception is integral to the work; the installation is viewable at all hours of the day, and guests are invited to interact with the piece. Originally interested in building a mobile, interactive, public work of art, SLICK is designed to stimulate a shelter that is a self-sufficient device acting as a place of home, occupation and source of food. The desire and importance of living up to societal standards is ingrained in us as humans. Kasey’s philosophical thought behind SLICK questions our innate desires to conform to society and whether a system that values creative modes of living is a possible resource and solution to our mass-consumeristic lifestyles.
“I am particularly intrigued by objects that have social and mobile qualities. SLICK is designed to be inhabited and reflects on the interaction between people and our environment,” states Short. “This project was originally conceived as something that could be accessible as a kit to consumers, but I am more interested in the translation of instructions and that kind of potential through experience rather than explicit guides.” SLICK is constructed using contemporary and unconventional approaches to sculptural practice, including metal, wood, new media and digital fabrication, in the artist’s hope to create a futuristic pod that serves as both a protective and producing resource for life and the idea of art as a tool for living.
In our overpopulated societies, residency and issues regarding population growth and resource scarcity are of growing concern. In this sense, SLICK deals with social mobility and survivalist modes, while also identifying ways of human adaptation and means for living in varied ecological realms. Kasey’s installation emphasizes how we, as humans, cultivate and effectively utilize minimal space. As the population rises, our modes of living must also adjust to accommodate societal changes, creating a sense of place in both interior and exterior worlds.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kasey Short is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living, creating and working in Houston, Texas. His creative practice and production straddles the categories of both installation art and sculpture – often blurring the lines between the two fields with his range of media and interactive, temporal explorations. Kasey received his BFA from Texas State University and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. His current artistic explorations address societal concerns and community needs through creative problem solving. He is a 2019 recipient of the Support for Artists and Creative Individuals Grant from the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. Kasey has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, most recently participating in the 2018 Art Rotterdam Fair and the 2013 Texas Biennial, as well as numerous solo exhibitions and projects slated for 2019.
Here, Ahora: Houston, Latinx, Queer Artists Under 30
Curated by Reyes Ramirez Participating Artists: Leticia Contreras, Jessica González, Romeo Harrell, Ángel Lartigue, Trevon Latin, Moe Penders, Isaac Reyes
Opening Reception: 6-9 PM Friday, March 22, 2019
Exhibition Dates: March 22 - May 4, 2019
Artist & Curator Remarks: 6:45 PM I Main Gallery
La Tierra Tuya Es El Tema De Mis Canciones / Performances + Artist Discussion featuring Jessica González, Erick Zambrano, Veronica Gaona, Antonia Claros, Farrah Fang and Ángel Lartigue: 7 PM, Tuesday, April 30, 2019 (click here for more information)
Reading organized by Reyes Ramirez, along with Lupe Mendez and Jasminne Mendez of Tintero Projects, HERE, AHORA: Houston Conversations, Queer ART + LIT: 7:30 PM, Thursday, May 2, 2019 (click here for more information)
PRESS - Houston, Latinx, Queer Artists Under 30: Questions for Reyes Ramirez and Moe Penders
PRESS - New Houston Exhibit Showcases the Work of Queer Latinx Artists Under 30
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Here, Ahora: Houston, Latinx, Queer Artists Under 30 curated by Reyes Ramirez and featuring artists Leticia Contreras, Jessica González, Romeo Harrell, Ángel Lartigue, Trevon Latin, Moe Penders, and Isaac Reyes. Houston boasts the fifth highest concentration of Latinxs in major American cities, proving itself as fertile grounds for diverse Latinx art. This exhibition, in conjunction with Latino Art Now! (LAN) highlights a particular aspect of the Latinx identity: young, LGBTQ artists of color working within Houston who show amazing potential to shape and innovate Latinx art and discourse, for Houston and beyond, in the years to come.
Latinx's are being dehumanized in our political climate. Latinx artistic discourse needs to be highlighted because our work acts as a counter spell to the political discourse that labels them as murderers, rapists, and drug dealers; we are poets, writers, and artists. More than that, Latinx identity is fluid and far-reaching. Latinxs can be men, women, gender-fluid, black, indigenous, LGBTQ, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran, Dominican, Peruvian, etc., many at the same time. However, American artistic discourse has barely scratched the surface of Latinx art. This exhibition illuminates the many intersections that fall within the Latinx identity, culturally and aesthetically.
Here, Ahora features some of Houston’s most talented emerging artists who represent different aspects of Latinidad and work in different media and practices. Featured artists include the following: Ángel Lartigue, a Mexican-American and queer artist, who works in sculpture, photography, painting, performance, etc.; Trevon Latin, an African-American and homosexual artist, who works in craft, fashion, and painting; Moe Penders, a Salvadoran and queer artist, working in photography; Isaac Reyes, a Mexican and queer artist, working in sculpture, installation art, performance, and drag; Romeo Harrell, a Latinx and bisexual artist, who works in photography, film, and digital media; Jessica González, a Honduran/Salvadoran American artist, working in sculpture and mixed media; and Leticia Contreras, an Afro-Chicana and queer artist, working in craft, performance, etc.; etc. This exhibition highlights LGBTQ artists working in photography, multimedia, sculpture, performance, fashion, etc. who identify as Latinx, Black, and much more. Here, Ahora seeks to progress Latinx identity, art, and discourse.
A reading in conjunction with Here, Ahora, featuring LGTBQ, Latinx writers from Houston and beyond in response to the visual art will be presented by Reyes Ramirez, along with Lupe Mendez and Jasminne Mendez of Tintero Projects, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 2, 2019, at Art League Houston.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Leticia Contreras is a queer interdisciplinary artist and cultural organizer born and raised in Houston. Her work explores themes of embodied memory, radical joy, and our relationship to each other and our environment. She uses materials that draw from the natural world for inspiration and creation. Leticia engages a variety of media, including photography, installation, and performance to unveil the stories of a place. She received a BA from Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, 2012, and is currently pursuing a MFA in Interdisciplinary Practices and Emerging Forms at The University of Houston, Houston, TX. In 2018, Contreras was a participating artist in the Desert Unit for Speculative Territories (DUST) program - Marfa, TX, an international research collaboration with The University of Houston and School Fine Arts De Nantes Saint-Nazaire, France. Leticia is an active member of Alternate Roots (since 2012), an organization based in the Southern USA whose mission is to support the creation and presentation of original art, in all its forms, which is rooted in a particular community of place, tradition or spirit. Shout out to her Mujers Malas colectivo! Group shows include Bloodlines, University of Houston, TX (2018), Between the Sun and Me, Marfa, TX (2018), El Chow: Frutos en Vaina, El Rincón Social, Houston, TX (2018), Lo Que Me Dijeron Was… performance with Mujeres Malas, Houston, TX (2017), Black Women Artist for Black Lives Matter, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX (2016), Creative Women Unite: Labels, blueOrange Gallery, Houston, TX (2016).
Jessica González is a multidisciplinary artist that works to dissect experience for comprehension and study. Drawing from memory, González curates and re-contextualizes documents, photographs, and nostalgic ephemera, while incorporating contemporary material to give form to her lived experiences. González is a member of Mujeres Malas, an artist collective that challenges ideas of Latinidad and different forms of oppression without censorship. She has featured her work in numerous galleries including Lawndale Art Center in Houston, Texas, and the Mulvane Art Museum in Topeka, Kansas. She is currently working on a BFA in Photography and Digital Media, BA in World Cultures and Literatures: Global Modernity Studies, and Spanish Minor from the University of Houston, graduating spring 2019.
Romeo Harrell was born, raised, and currently lives in Houston, TX. He is interested in the lives of young adults throughout Houston because he sees his generation as misplaced. He believes they are given this idea that they are the end, the reason that nothing good is going to happen. Contrary to this, he thinks the youth are the beginning and by sharing his work with you, he feels like he's doing good in making sure to get rid of that image. Harrell tries to reveal urban life's true underlying beauty through his photography. Harrell states: “What I'm trying to capture is the true aesthetic of Houston; the grittiness of it all, but the most important thing to remember is that it comes with living here in a truly inspirational place. My use of tape, box cut outs and poster concepts are a part of that - some people might see it as trash on the street of something it once was, but it's art in its own way. Its adversity in a world that isn't fair, but that mindset will not be maintained.”
Ángel Lartigue is an artist born and raised in Houston, Texas. Lartigue’s primary motivation is to investigate and redefine the relationship between the body and land through the use of organic matter as raw material. This concentration has led the artist to pursue academic study and training in forensic anthropology and human remains recovery. During this training, Lartigue produced artworks incorporating fungi, insects, and odors captured during fieldwork. Lartigue was recently invited to take part in the 2019 artistic-laboratory residency, SymbioticA (University of Western Australia, Perth, AU) to forward his research and artistic exploration.
Trevon Latin a.k.a. Shaturqua Relentless (b. 1987, Houston, Texas) is a Houston Multimedia artist and a Painting BFA graduate from the University of Houston School of Art, where his paintings were featured in annual student shows (2014 and 2015). He was also part of a group show at Inman Gallery, "Home-life" curated by Dana Frankfort and Gael Stack (summer of 2016). He is currently a candidate of the Yale School of Art: Painting program for 2019-2020.
Moe Penders is a Salvadoran artist, curator and educator whose practice is mainly framed in traditional photography. Their work explores the social construction of home, intersectionality of identity and gender expression. Moe is a part of El Rincón Social art studios (since 2015). Their most recent curatorial project was El Chow: Fruto en vaina, a show exclusively created with the intent of upholding latinx women and queer artists. They have worked at FotoFest International as the Volunteer and Special Projects Coordinator, as well as a teaching Artists for FotoFest’s education program, Literacy Through Photography. They received their BFA in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston and currently reside in Houston, Texas.
Isaac Reyes is a Mexican artist. He attended the University of Houston where he received his BFA in Sculpture. Reyes’s works are predominantly in the medium of sculpture and installation art. He has exhibited his work locally in spaces, such as Summer Studio Program at Project Row Houses, in Houston Community College art galleries, as well as SITE Houston. Reyes’s work was also at Breaking Boundaries IV as part of the international photography festival of Pingyao, China. He is the recipient of the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Scholarship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Reyes Ramirez is a cisgendered, straight, Latinx writer and Houstonian. Reyes won the 2017 Blue Mesa Review Nonfiction Contest, 2014 riverSedge Poetry Prize, and has poems, stories, essays, and reviews (and/or forthcoming) in: Cosmonauts Avenue, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Deep Red Press, The Latinx Archive, december magazine, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Texas Review, TRACK//FOUR, FIVE:2:ONE Magazine, Houston Noir, Gulf Coast Journal, Origins Journal, The Acentos Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. He's was a finalist for several contests, including Cosmonauts Avenue's 2018 fiction prize, december magazine's 2018 poetry prize, Iron Horse Literary Review's and Gold Line Press's 2018 poetry chapbook competitions. You can read more of his work at reyesvramirez.com.
Miriam Medrez: What Your Eyes Can’t See · LO QUE TUS OJOS NO ALCANZAN A VER
Curated by Mariana Valdes
Opening Reception: 6-9 PM Friday, March 22, 2019
Exhibition Dates: March 22 - May 4, 2019
Artist & Curator Remarks: 7:15 PM I Front Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present in conjunction with Latino Arts Now! (LAN) What Your Eyes Can't See · LO QUE TUS OJOS NO ALCANZAN A VER by Mexico based artist Miriam Medrez, curated by Mariana Valdes. This exhibition features seven life-size, figurative works that are corporal in their physicality and sculptural installation, focusing on Medrez’s explorations in feminism and the female body. Her use of fabric and embroidery, often relegated as a female and “artisanal” practice, asks viewers to reconsider techniques and the modes of contemporary art today, highlighting the historical significance of embroidery and female identity. Visually, Medrez’s embroidered figures draw comparisons to dolls - objects key to the formation, according to the artist, of a woman and her image. Concerned less with portraiture, Medrez views her sculptures as a collective, familial group of women.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Miriam Medrez was born in Mexico City in 1958. Medrez studied Plastic Arts at the UNAM and at Montreal’s Concordia University in Canada. She also studied at Jerusalem’s Bezalel University in Israel. In 1985, Medrez moved to Monterrey, located in the State of Nuevo León, where she developed her career in sculpture. She continues to search and explore different ideas and techniques in her art. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a First Place in Sculpting at the IV Bienal Monterrey Femsa (1998), as well as institutional awards at the Sistema Nacional de Creadores FONCSA/CONACULTA (2006 – 2009, 2010 – 2013 and 2015 - 2018). Medrez has exhibited her work in numerous museums, including solo retrospectives at the MARCO Museum of Monterrey (from 1995 through 2008), as well as other public and private institutions in Mexico and abroad.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Mariana Valdes is an art psychologist, curator and collector of modern and contemporary Mexican art. Since 1999, she has worked on projects promoting the understanding and cultural value of Mexican art. Significant projects in the USA and Mexico include exhibitions at Williams Tower, Houston (1999-2000), co-founder of the Navarro-Valdes Gallery, Mexico City and Valle de Bravo (in operation 2010-2012), and co-founder of Forma110, Houston (2017). Valdes’s curatorial focus centers around reimagining the past through daring works of contemporary art. Beginning in 2014, her activities expanded towards an individual’s sensory experience, with a mission to support artistic and transformative consciousness for participants. Her promotional framework is an expanded model that covers commercial and non-profit projects, facilitating the creation and presentation of artwork, engaging artists, academics, collectors and the public. Valdes creates and develops projects that incite awareness of contemporary social challenges, acting as a catalyst that encourages a solution. Centered around the importance of what is human, Valdes considers the vital role artists and their artwork play as a factor of positive change and well-being.
Liyen Chong: Houston Paintings
Opening Reception: 6-9 PM Friday, March 22, 2019
Exhibition Dates: March 22 - May 4, 2019
Artist Remarks: 6:30 PM I Hallway Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Houston Paintings by artist Liyen Chong. Chong’s art practice spans a diverse range of media and practices, including embroidery with hair, photography, ceramics, graphic design and collaborative community works. In 2016, after moving to Houston from Auckland, New Zealand, repeated visits to local museum collections sparked her return to painting. Using photographic images from the book Houston’s Forgotten History, Chong’s paintings re-interpret the content of these historical images and tease out new relationships to the present through her use of color. Chong goes on to explore photographic images from other sources, including videos from YouTube and children’s encyclopedias from the 1950s. Intrigued by the unique details of life in the images, she is simultaneously repelled by the books’ patronizing captions, which used the images to legitimize a dominant view of other ethnicities, women, children, and animals. Chong’s paintings employ the use of saturated color and meticulous techniques in a bid to tease out previously unnoticed details, to highlight the construction of the source images, or to emphasize the mythological or symbolic qualities that exist in the mundane. She uses color in a non-natural way to jolt the viewer out of taking what they see for granted.
These paintings follow a line of inquiry that allows for the instability of history, and that considers arrival in a new place in dialog with histories of colonization. In her painting of Margaret Mead and Fa’amotu, Chong is drawn to their sisterly relationship and the warmth of the original encounter, even as she questions the impulse underpinning Mead’s research. Her painting of the John Henry Kirby natatorium, built in 1901, revisits a photograph taken in the space before one of the most elaborate weddings in Houston history. The space is decorated but empty, an elegiac reminder of a family’s personal history and of the absent archives of other communities. There are complex forgotten interactions meshed into our collection of knowledge and the ways in which we connect to other histories and places. “Much like paintings that focus on the archive, such as the works of Luc Tuymans, my work functions as a re-evaluation of images, bringing audiences face to face with images from different contexts presented in a different scale and in a physical body, that of painting. I’m drawn to the content and composition of the images I choose to paint and as I’m making each painting, I think both about the internal logic of the image and the historical instability of its meaning,” states Chong.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Liyen Chong received her MFA from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and regularly exhibits in her adopted home country of New Zealand and abroad. Her works are included in prominent public and private collections in New Zealand and Australia, such as the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, University of Canterbury Art Collection and the Chartwell Collection in New Zealand. She is the recipient of multiple artist residencies including the McCahon House Artists’ Residency in New Zealand (2011), artist-in-residence programs at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea in Seoul, South Korea (2012), and Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2015). In 2014, Chong was awarded a solo show surveying her work, at Papakura Art Gallery. She was born in Malaysia and moved to New Zealand as a youth, where she lived for the next two decades. Chong moved to Houston in 2016 after an extended period of travel.
Click here to visit Liyen Chong’s exhibition website.
Molly Koehn: sans delineation
Opening Reception: 6-9 PM Friday, March 22, 2019
Exhibition Dates: March 22 - May 4, 2019
Artist Remarks: 6:15 PM I Sculpture Garden
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present sans delineation, a site specific installation by artist Molly Koehn. Originally from southwest Kansas, Koehn relocated to Houston in 2017. Her work, which incorporates drawing, weaving, and sculptural installation, is inspired by idealized understandings of nature. The vast expansion of Houston’s urban development is prime source material, offering infinite inspiration through the city’s landscaping and material construction.
Koehn’s installation, sans delineation, is the result of her observations since moving to Houston. Chaos and structure, symbolic of Houston’s unzoned infrastructure, are visualized through intersecting planes; our desire for idealized beauty is embodied in the hand-woven grid formed by these planes, created with fine threads of stainless steel, linen and silk. “Landscaping practices point to our idealization of nature, curating land to be what we find attractive,” states the artist. Koehn’s recent work is her response to these practices in Houston, as well as “...her own impulse to plant a palm tree, exploring why we choose to seemingly improve the aesthetic appearance of our surroundings by often eradicating the “natural” in preference of the artificial.” Koehn’s observation of her surroundings, including Houston’s gridded streets, buildings, wood, steel, and concrete, feed her creative process. “These works offer parallels between natural and synthetic, stable and decrepit, strength and fragility and embrace the temporal qualities of our fabricated environments,” states Koehn. The temporary nature of her installations stand in contrast to the stable ideals of architecture and exemplify the dualities in the constructed world around us.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Molly Koehn moved to Houston, Texas in 2017. Originally from southwest Kansas, Koehn is an environmental artist and received an MFA with an emphasis in fibers from Arizona State University (2017). Current artistic explorations continue to pursue the expressive qualities of her background and BFA in drawing from Fort Hays State University (2013). Koehn was awarded a residency at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2017-18) and received a full tuition scholarship to Tennessee’s Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft (2016).
Jade Yumang: In the Shadows
Exhibition Dates: January 26 – March 9, 2019
Main Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) presents In the Shadows, an installation featuring sculpture, textile and video by Chicago-based artist Jade Yumang. The exhibition is part of an ongoing body of work by the artist exploring the queer aesthetics of Film Noir. The work in this exhibition considers how film noir is constructed stylistically and narratively to disorient the audience to generate a level of uncertainty and deception, not just in its story arc, but more so on how queer characters implicitly and explicitly surface.
“My work primarily focuses on the concept of queer form,” says the artist. “I use a variety of techniques to convey notions of phenomenology, affect, and "queer" as a process, as a verb rather than a quality. My current work addresses the term "queer" and its aesthetics through three-dimensional, site-specific installation, and performative work as a way to see how the body resists or submits through materiality and technique vis-à-vis obsessive acts, strict parameters, repetition, and forms of discipline. This direction is guided through the tracing and summoning of historical amnesia, by means of myths, scandal trials, obscenity laws, and filmic tropes. I filter these procedures through meticulous techniques and create abstract shapes that initially come from a corporeal form. My compulsiveness to place things in order in reality breaks into pieces that expose the pressure placed on non-conforming bodies and their values.”
Using the materiality of costuming, lighting, and queer affect, the installation in ALH’s main gallery features a series of effigies of queer characters that emerged and navigated the strict movie moral codes in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. Additionally, the installation includes a looped video projection featuring clips from eight films that have been configured to only depict the scenes when queer characters are represented. Furthermore, the video is projected onto, and through, a large-scale abstract sculptural form in the center of the gallery, producing a distorted effect across the gallery walls, echoing the uncertainty that is built into noir’s central narrative. Most of characters' sexuality in the films are formulated through crime scenarios where gay men are portrayed as deviant dandies and lesbians as menacing sadists. These depictions, although contemporarily outdated, were important at that time, since these queer characters seep through the shadow and glare at the instability of heterosexuality as they act as a harbinger for the LGBTQ rights movement in the 1960s.
About the Artist
Jade Yumang was named after his mother’s beauty salon and from an earlier age has been obsessed with beautiful, yet slightly off things. His work primarily focuses on the concept of queer form through sculptural abstraction, installation, and performance. He received his MFA at Parsons School of Design with Departmental Honors in 2012 and his BFA Honors in University of British Columbia as the top graduate in 2008. He was born in Quezon City, Philippines, grew up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, immigrated to unceded Coast Salish territories in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and lives in Chicago, IL, USA. He is part of a New York-based collaborative duo, Tatlo, with Sara Jimenez and is an Assistant Professor in the department of Fiber and Material Studies at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Karen Lee Williams: a heel is half a rock, a slab is a slice
Exhibition Dates: January 26 – March 9, 2019
Front Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) presents a heel is half a rock, a slab is a slice, an installation of new sculpture and photograms by LA-based artist Karen Lee Williams.
Because they represent places far beyond our direct experience, images and artifacts of space exploration always have a surreal quality. The gap between the advances of astronomy and the public's understanding creates a void where doubt and imagination flourish. Lee Williams makes tactile proxies for those ideas and observations just beyond grasp. The work is inspired by moments when mainstream science and scholarship are infiltrated by superstition and mysticism.
Norman Mailer, while covering the first moon landing, bemoaned the loss of the moon’s mythic aura in the cold analytical hands of scientists and engineers. In search of some profound meaning in putting a man on the moon, Mailer projected all of his longing on a small piece of moon rock. Through an installation of mixed media sculptures that evoke charts, graphs and rock samples, Lee Williams plays to our collective desire for both truth and lore. By contradicting and disrupting supposedly objective methods of measurement, she opens up the potential for other epistemological approaches. The works on view rely on the senses to excavate the potential metaphorical power of objects while acknowledging the absurdity in always trying to reconcile reason with gut feeling. The exhibition draws on the physical and historical connection Houston has with the moon and references some of the city’s artworks that consider the monolith as a symbol of mystery.
About the Artist
Karen Lee Williams (b 1980 Los Angeles) makes sculptures and photographs that prolong the process of translating sensory information into understanding by engaging with and undermining certain assumptions about perception, natural phenomenon and materiality. Lee Williams has had recent solo exhibitions at Equity Gallery, NY and Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles. Her work has been presented in galleries and artist-run spaces including Albada-Jelgersma Gallery, Amsterdam; September, Hudson; Scott Charmin, Houston; and Visitor Welcome Center, Los Angeles. She received an M.F.A. from SUNY Purchase and a B.A. from UCLA. Lee Williams lives and works in Los Angeles.
Las Girls Collective: Fruit Series
Daniela Antelo & Brenda Cruz-Wolf
Exhibition Dates: January 26 – March 9, 2019
Hallway Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) presents Fruit Series, a site specific installation by Las Girls Collective, a Houston-based collaboration between artists Daniela Antelo and Brenda Cruz-Wolf. The exhibition continues the artist’s interest in the relationship between the urban landscape and the female body, and features a series of visually-rich videos using various colorful fruits to playfully interact with the body against a series of backgrounds that seeks to transform the visitor's perception and experience of the ALH hallway gallery. “We are very interested in the choreographic relationship between the objects, the body, and the physical landscape,” say the artists. “These videos configure sensory universes that are minimal and intimate yet produce a complex aesthetic that is both humorous and surreal.”
About the Artists
Artists Brenda Cruz-Wolf and Daniela Antelo have collaborated together for the last few years on various site-specific performances, creating experimental dance films. Their collaborative work merges the strength of their individual practices together by combining experimental movement/performance with video production. Together, they succeed in using the raw elements of each site to produce immersive installations that collapse the boundaries between abstract movement, the viewer and the physical space.