Art League Houston (ALH) is pleased to present Inhaling the Spore, an exhibition of new sculpture and drawing by San Antonio based artist, Chris Sauter. Using imagery pulled from parasitology and internet memes, the work touches on the role neurotransmitters and hormones play in the development of belief and how beliefs relate to notions of self and national identity. The exhibition is built around a suite of small drawings of cordyceps infected ants with the protruding fungus replaced with neurotransmitter molecules. Memes espousing problematic ideologies are reproduced using cordyceps extract while others are printed onto panels then cut up to make objects. A greatly enlarged stress hormone is sewn from material cut from US flags and TikTok trends flicker on the opposite side of a brain hemisphere. This exhibition is a culmination of a larger body of work reflecting on the current political climate in the US and is funded in part by a grant from the San Antonio office of Arts and Culture.

The exhibition runs December 15, 2023 - February 10, 2024, with reception on Friday, December 15, from 6-8 PM and artist talk Saturday, December 16 at 2 PM.

About the Artist

Chris Sauter is a visual artist based in San Antonio, TX. He works across-media primarily in sculpture, installation, drawing, and video. Pulling from varied sources such as agriculture, history, science, and religion his work addresses the links between material and meaning, biology and belief, the past and present. He has exhibited across the United States, Mexico and Europe. His works have been featured at the McNay Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Kohler Art Center, the Musee d’Art Moderne Saint-Etienne, France, The Drawing Center in New York, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, the Dallas Museum of Art, and MoMA PS1. Sauter has been a resident artist at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and Artpace, San Antonio. He is a member of M12, a collective of creative practitioners focused on rural issues. Sauter is associate professor of instruction at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is a local arts advocate, volunteering at various local non-profit arts organizations. He is a long-time designer and performer for Cornyation, a yearly satirical production benefitting local LGBT and youth organizations.

https://chrissauter.com/

Instagram: @chrissauterstudio

Exhibition on View: December 16, 2023 – February 10, 2024

Opening Reception: Friday, December 15, 2023, from 6-8 PM

Artist Talks: Saturday, December 16, 2023, starting at 2 PM

Hallway Gallery

Art League Houston (ALH) is pleased to present re-rite, an exhibition of paintings created by Doug Welsh over the past three years, each considered complete at various moments, and then not. An extension of his ongoing body of work, Life Raft, Welsh chose to re-enter each painting and re-rite his creative process to re-resolve the artworks. 

Navigating the world with music as his companion, Welsh paints while listening to a single song on loop. Historically, Welsh has completed paintings one at a time. For this show, Welsh initially worked on all of the pieces congruently, reverberating between works. To facilitate this new approach, they created a playlist of songs associated with each painting, and used the shuffle feature to determine which painting they would visit next, adding elements of chance and choreography. After looping a single song until that painting felt either harmonious or tenuous, he would press shuffle again, and move on to the next painting. The cyclical nature of his expanding practice provides a sense of stability. Anchored by the looped music, Welsh explores lyrical, balanced, disruptive, angsty, synchronized or tumultuous color and spatial relationships in each painting.

To re-establish a connection with these previously unfinished pieces, Welsh first assembled them together in the studio. He covered them with an assortment of objects, including a dried bouquet of flowers, a pair of fishnet gloves, bark from a recently felled tree next-door, plastic leaves, mementos from walks, leftover canvas scraps, discarded paper shapes from his classroom, and cutout wooden pieces from old paintings. Welsh spray painted through and around the objects to create new relationships on the surface of the paintings. From there Welsh carved out new lines, shapes and forms which guided the paintings to their eventual resolution, while looping each song with each companion painting. 

This show also debuts the artist’s first collaboration with musicians. Music by Taylor Marberry, Jenny Marshall, Mitch Pengra, and Alex Venzke were recorded and looped while painting Time and Song To The Siren.

About the Artist

Doug Welsh (he/they, b. 1991) is a queer painter, writer, curator and co-founder of the G5 Collective. He received his MFA from the University of Houston and his BA from Bates College. He has exhibited with Art League Houston, Pablo Cardoza Gallery, The Jung Center, F, Galveston Artist Residency, Jardín, Blaffer Art Museum, Foltz Fine Art, Anya Tish Gallery, Box 13, Sanman Studios, Hardy and Nance Studios, Elgin Street Studios, and Studio 9D in NYC. Welsh is a contributor to Glasstire. In 2022, his work was included in New American Paintings, edition 162.

www.douglaswelsh.com

Instagram: @dpw_art

And so it goes… | Carris Adams

Exhibition on View: December 16, 2023 – February 10, 2024

Opening Reception: Friday, December 15, 2023, from 6-8 PM

Artist Talks: Saturday, December 16, 2023, starting at 2 PM

Front Gallery

Art League Houston (ALH) is pleased to present And so it goes…, an exhibition featuring recent works by Carris Adams. Through a series of site-specific graphite wall drawings and large scale painted collages, the two bodies of work point to disappearing pasts, precarious presents, and unknown futures. The wall drawings of steel billboard frame-like structures are minimal in color and function as part space activation and part backdrop for the paintings. The drawings invite viewers to look upon the ghostly structure and imagine what could have been there before; whether informing passersby of what to buy, who to believe in, what to listen to or who to deny. While the wall drawings are minimal, the paintings are maximal; overloaded in color, texture, mark-making, and fragmented language. Through additive and subtractive processes that enhance or disrupt the legibility, the works become conceptually multi-layered. Accented with tape, intentionally messy, and somewhat confusing, the paintings work in opposition to the wall. Together the paintings and drawings take on double or triple meanings as they seek to guide viewers to recall a place, image, or space through abstraction.

About the Artist

Carris Adams is an artist currently based in Houston, Texas. Her work explores the signs/signifiers that mark our landscapes. Through the materiality of painting, drawing, and printmaking Adams attempts to embody the sense, shape, and experience of these markers. Her work describes the appearance of subjects found during her day-to-day travels, while also reflecting the various social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances under which we labor.  Adams received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin (2013) and her MFA from the University of Chicago (2015). Adams's work has been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem ( New York, NY) , The Logan Center Exhibitions at The University of Chicago (Chicago, IL), Produce Model Gallery (Chicago, IL) Tiger Strikes Asteroid Gallery (Chicago,IL) and The Courtyard Gallery at The University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX).

www.carrisadams.com/

Instagram: @carrisadams_

Exhibition on View: December 16, 2023 – February 10, 2024

Opening Reception: Friday, December 15, 2023, from 6-8 PM

Artist Talks: Saturday, December 16, 2023, starting at 2 PM

Sculpture Garden

Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Flag Diary - What Protects, an exhibition and workshop program by Houston-based artist Marley Foster. The first in a series of community protest quilts, Flag Diary - What Protects invites community members to participate in and witness the creation of a community quilt that tests how these complicated objects help us process the personal while also speaking the language of public discourse.

Quilts are offerings of love, markers of time spent, objects meant to comfort and protect. Their language of fabric patchwork speaks to adaptability generated by necessity and the meditative beauty of arranging, as well as to the construction of flags and protest banners seen throughout American history. 

The protective words embroidered on the What Protects quilt are all revelatory of personal and political structures, have everything to do with the political nature of bodies, and are typically invisible (or, more accurately, intentionally erased from public visibility and therefore from our own personal interactions). The first, self-made, side of the quilt will be installed on the side of the ALH building. During the exhibition, community members’ patches will accumulate in the sculpture garden, before they are assembled into the quilt’s other half.

This new side of the quilt made of community patches will be hung alongside the other in the sculpture garden, a pair of subversive flags marking time and developing a patina as they are affected by weather, grime, and passersby. Following the exhibition closing at Art League Houston, they will be assembled into a single, fully realized quilt. 

Visual languages of quilted americana - slow, subtle, intimate - and contemporary American protest - gestural, in your face, national - will operate dually over time as this work is installed publicly, made communal and multiplied, then returned to domestic form. Foster intends this work to bring the already political nature of quilts to heightened visibility - using it as an offering to her community and a tangible resource for working through the relationship between familial history and community politics.

About the Artist

Marley Foster (she/her) is a sculptor and educator from Houston, Texas. Alternating between labor-intensive sewing practices and intuitive collage and photography, Foster interrogates the material history of domestic objects through her experiences coming of age in the 2010s South. With humor and self-awareness, her materially-rooted pieces explore intersections of home, femininity, queerness, whiteness, and american-ness.

Foster is a recipient of the 2023 Idea Fund award, in support of community quilting workshops accompanying her current body of work, Flag Diary - What Protects. 

Foster earned her MFA in Sculpture in 2021 from the University of Houston, and her BA in both Studio Art and English from Rice University. In addition to her studio practice, Foster works as an educator and installation artist dedicated to using creativity and community engagement as tools for social change in the South. 

On View: September 22 - December 2, 2023
Opening Reception: 6-8 PM, Friday, September 22, 2023

Vincent Valdez In Conversation With Kathy Vargas
Saturday, September 23, 2023, at 2:00 pm

Art League Houston is proud to present 2023 Texas Artist of the Year: Vincent Valdez, featuring recent works and a curatorial installation by Vincent Valdez.

In his exhibition as the Art League Houston (ALH), 2023 Texas Artist of the Year, Vincent Valdez examines memory and remembrance from both personal and cultural perspectives. His installation piece, Siete Dias/Seven Days, features an installation of twenty-one banners suspended from the gallery's ceiling that showcase a handful of the over 150,000 individuals who have disappeared in Central and South America since the 1970s.  

Central to Siete Dias are fourteen haunting portraits of disappeared individuals drawn from an archival calendar originally published in 1980s Central America. These ghostly depictions exude a palpable presence, organized in a chapel-like arrangement, with three rows of portraits inviting visitors to contemplate the enigma of their absence. 

Seven single-word text panels are interwoven among the evocative images, each representing a day of the week in Spanish. These text panels poignantly symbolize the passage of time, amplifying the ongoing absence and uncertain fates of these missing individuals.

In addition to Siete Dias, Valdez recreates a personal memory of his first museum experience through a curation of work. In collaboration with Joe Diaz, a long-time collector and advocate for Latinx and Chicano art (and Valdez’s first collector,) Valdez aims to elevate and acknowledge the artists who inspired his dedication to his craft.

Works by Jose Luis Rivera, Roger Brown, Luis Jiménez, Peter Saul, Alex Rubio, Benito Huerta, Enrique Chagoya, John Hernandez, George Grosz, Ben Shahn, Kathy Vargas, John Valadez, Cesar Martinez, Delilah Montoya, Lucas Johnson, Adriana Corral, Raymond Pettibone, Gloria Osuna Perez, Mel Chin, and Valdez’s great-grandfather José M. Valdez will be featured alongside Valdez’s works.

The catalog Undercurrents: Vincent Valdez, published by ALH and designed by Cereal Box Studios, will be available in conjunction with this exhibition. The publication offers a perspective into the evolution of Vincent Valdez's artistic style and thematic continuity. Comprising eighteen meticulously crafted loose-leaf pages, three fold-out posters, and an illuminating essay penned by renowned curator and writer Lucy R. Lippard, this collection of work focuses on two pivotal phases of his artistic career: the formative first six years from 1999 to 2005 and the recent impactful period spanning 2015 to 2023. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Vincent Valdez, 1988, Courtesy of the Artist

Vincent Valdez (b.1977) blends large, representational paintings—the scale of which recall Western traditions of history painting as well as mural painting and cinema—with contemporary subject matter. He focuses on subjects that explore his observations and experience of life in the twenty-first century. The results are powerful images of American identity that confront injustice and inequity while imbuing his subjects with empathy and humanity. Valdez states, “My aim is to incite public remembrance and to counter the distorted realities that I witness, like the social amnesia that fogs our collective American memory.” 

His dedication to craft and skill along with his investment in presenting critical subjects, has earned him several accolades such as the Ford and Mellon Foundations Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors (2016), as well as residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting (2005), the Vermont Studio Center (2011), the Kunstlerhaus Bethania Berlin Residency (2014), and the Arion Press’ King Residency (2023),  Exhibitions and Collections include: The Ford Foundation, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and The National Portrait Gallery, among others. He lives and works in Houston and Los Angeles.

Valdez is now recognized for his monumental portrayal of the contemporary figure. His drawn and painted subjects remark on a universal struggle within various socio-political arenas and eras. He states, "My aim is to incite public remembrance and to counter the distorted realities that I witness, like the social amnesia that fogs our collective American memory. 

Valdez notes:

"It is safe to say that much of my work resonates like an alarm ringing nonstop in my head. I must depict what I witness. I create images as instruments to probe the past in order to reveal an immediacy to what is occurring today.”

“I am alarmed by the denial of history. Therefore, I create counter-images to defy our fateful desire to repeat history.  I offer this work as a report—-my visual testimony about a struggle for transformation, hope, love and survival in twenty-first century America.” 

Valdez’s first monograph, Vincent Valdez: In Memory, published by Radius Books, was released in April 2023. He was recently the inaugural artist-in-residence at Arion Press, where he created a series of drawings to illustrate Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, set to release in September 2023.  His upcoming exhibitions include: 2023 Texas Artist of the Year: Vincent Valdez, Art League Houston (Sept 2023);  Hidden Histories, Museum of Fine Arts Houston (Aug 2023); The Slaughterhouse Five Drawings: Vincent Valdez, The Drawing Center, NYC (Oct 2023; Vincent Valdez & Ry Cooder: El Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Nov 2023) and Vincent Valdez: Just A Dream (In America), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (Fall 2024) and MASS MoCA (2025-26).

Valdez currently lives and works in Houston and Los Angeles. 

Major funding and support for the exhibition and catalog were generously provided by the Jacques Louis Vidal Charitable Fund, Edaren Foundation, and Joe Diaz. 

https://www.vincentvaldezstudio.com/

Instagram: @vincentvaldez77

Art League Houston (ALH) is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition, Familiar, featuring the dynamic artistic duo Tsz Kam and Nat Power, also known as Big Chicken & Baby Bird. Through their bold and vivid paintings, Familiar invites viewers to explore the theme of duality and pairings. Kam and Power's works transform mythological creatures into characters with inevitable roles within an imagined world. The exhibition presents ornamental patterns that convey the rhythm of a dance, simultaneously known yet unfamiliar.

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Art League Houston (ALH) is pleased to present our sixth and final PLATFORM installation, I’m Always Here for You, by Thomas Tran. Through the large-scale acrylic painting, Tran transports the viewer into the imagined space he dubs the Only World, where  individualism is juxtaposed with the forces that cannot be controlled. 

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Art League Houston (ALH) is pleased to present WE OUTSIDE WIDDIT, a sculptural installation by Tyler Deauvea, a multimedia artist whose work features several re-occurring characters that explore the personal journey of a “Black Man in America.” WE OUTSIDE WIDDIT celebrates Deauvea’s entrance into a new medium and the unique interaction that his work has with audiences. Additionally, it displays the representation of a group of people who are often underrepresented in a space where heterosexual Black Men are not typically celebrated or rarely seen.

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Art League Houston (ALH) is pleased to present Amazonian Days, an exhibition of paintings by David Delgado, whose practice captures mundane objects that hold present but unspoken conversations about labor, material wealth, and capitalism. This body of work references objects from 2021-2022 that the artist was given while working at an Amazon warehouse and captures the occurrence of the employer-to-employee gifting dynamic. 

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