Alexis Pye
Visions via Riding High
On View: February 23 – April 20, 2024 I Front Gallery
Opening Reception: Friday, February 23, 2024 | 6 - 8 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, February 24, 2024 | Starting at 2 PM
Visions via Riding High is a series of works by Alexis Pye that deals with the relationship between cars and memory based on concrete sights with embellishments that lie in the fantastic. Using the backdrop of Tom’s Market, a now-defunct corner store nestled in the neighborhood of the east side of Detroit as a setting, the car becomes a moving exploration of Black culture within and outside of its marginalized constructs. Constructs that often dictate what black culture is but does not often fully represent it. These images challenge perceived ideas of Blackness that are constantly moving forward and becoming looser and abstract. Blackness is a vehicle, and if you are not careful it will speed right by you.
Artist Bio
Alexis Pye (born 1995, Detroit, MI) is a Houston-based artist whose practice explores the tradition of portraiture to express the Black body outside of its social constructs. Placing her subjects in leisurely, luscious, nature-rich and even fantastical settings, her works evoke, playfulness, wonder and Blackness, as well as the joys amidst adversity. Her formal strategies include an integration of mixed media within painting, including embroidery and punch-stitch needlework.
Pye received her BFA in Painting from the University of Houston in 2018. In 2019, she was awarded the Juror’s Choice Prize for the 20th Annual Citywide African American Artists Exhibition held at Texas Southern University, selected by Kanitra Fletcher. She has been included in group exhibitions at David Shelton Gallery (Houston, 2019), Inman Gallery (Houston, 2020), Community Artists Collective (Houston, 2021), Martha’s Contemporary (Austin, 2021), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (Houston, 2022), Women & Their Work (Austin, 2023), and Fort Worth Contemporary Arts at the Art Galleries at TCU (Fort Worth, 2023). She has completed residencies with Project Row Houses (Houston, 2018), Lawndale Art Center (Houston, 2022) and the Asia Society (Houston, 2023). Her first solo institutional exhibition, You really livin: A world that was always full of yellow sun, green trees, and blue sea and black people, debuted at Lawndale Art Center in Spring 2023. She has forthcoming solo exhibitions at Inman Gallery and The Art League Houston in Spring 2024.
Instagram: @pyealexis