Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, “Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens,” 2021, acrylic, photographic transfers, colored pencil, and collage on paper, 96 x 108 inches.
1. Njideka Akunyili Crosby
Blanton Museum of Art (Austin)
July 23 – December 4, 2022
From the Blanton Museum of Art:
“The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin announces Njideka Akunyili Crosby, the tenth Contemporary Project in the museum’s rotating series of innovative work by contemporary artists. This intimate exhibition by Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby showcases four recent works made during the Covid-19 pandemic. Known for her signature photo-transfer technique using images sourced from her native Nigeria and life in the U.S., Akunyili Crosby’s artistic practice embraces her experiences as a Black woman and immigrant negotiating two cultures.
For these four paintings, Akunyili Crosby shifts her past focus on domestic interiors to exterior spaces—and plant life, exploring cultural hybridity through species found in Los Angeles and Lagos, Nigeria, occasionally merging the two to imagine new ‘cosmopolitan plants.’ The monumental work Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens depicts the artist sitting on her back porch with her young child, surrounded by vegetation. Such lush green foliage is the main subject of three brand-new works in the show, which will premiere at the Blanton.”
Robyn O’Neil, “The Paradise Fields (Spine)” detail, 2022, graphite on canvas, 37 7/8 x 26 1/4 x 3/4 inches.
2. Robyn O’Neil: HELL and the Paradisal
Inman Gallery (Houston)
September 17 – November 5, 2022
“In HELL and the Paradisal, O’Neil presents a body of new work which are reactions and responses to her epic 2011 drawing HELL (2011), which is installed in the south gallery. In the main gallery, a group of graphite on canvas works collectively titled The Paradise Fields, are accompanied by other recent graphite drawings on canvas and paper. Directly informed and inspired by the HELL triptych, the Paradisal works are a reflective exercise for O’Neil as she looks back on this monumental piece in the context of her present-day practice.
There are several formal commonalities between HELL and the new works in the Paradisal: ferns growing from above, abstracted floating tree branches, dramatic cloud formations, shapes, and ghostlike enigmatic imagery. The tone, however, is entirely different. HELL is about death and destruction, while the Paradisal pieces are about growth, connection, beauty, thriving, nature, and calm, the latter the antidote to the former. ”
Ho Baron, “One,” 1994, bronze, 67 x 22 x 16 inches. El Paso Museum of Art, Gift of the artist, 2009.6. Photograph by Marty Snortum.
3. Ho Baron: Gods for Future Religions
El Paso Museum of Art
September 22, 2022 – January 15, 2023
Read about Ho Baron in this 2021 profile by Mary K. Cantrell.
From El Paso Museum of Art:
“Gods for Future Religions highlights the prolific career of local El Paso artist, Ho Baron. For more than fifty years, Baron has created surreal narratives in bronze and cast stone sculptures, pen and ink drawings, photographs, and assemblages. Working intuitively, he creates motifs that reflect his unique and personal style of anthropomorphic figures.”
Ann Stautberg, “3-18-12, P.M. Abilene,” 2012, oil on silver gelatin print, 38 1/8 x 54 1/2 inches. Collection of The Grace Museum, gift of Sindy and David Durham, Ann Stautberg, and Barry Whistler Gallery.
4. TEXAS! Selections from The Grace Museum
Tyler Museum of Art
August 28 – November 27, 2022
From the Tyler Museum of Art:
“Organized by the Tyler Museum of Art, this exhibition features selections by Texas artists from the collection of The Grace Museum in Abilene.”
5. Fooling Ourselves
The Cedars Union (Dallas)
October 22 – November 19, 2022
From the Cedars Union:
“Fooling Ourselves, a group show by current Cedars Union community members and cohort artists, will unfold across two venues: the historic Boedeker Building and nonprofit exhibition space The MAC. Located within walking distance of each other in the Cedars neighborhood, the two locations frame an exhibition that features the Cedars Union, a nonprofit art incubator, as a creative locus within the North Texas arts ecosystem. Featuring works of painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and new media, Fooling Ourselves highlights the ways artists engage in discourse, collaboration, and cross-pollination at the Cedars Union. Themes, textures, and marks echo across the two venues, together forming a picture of what it looks like to be thinking about and making art in Dallas, now.
Participating artists include Taylor Cleveland, Laura Davidson, Inyang Essien, Angel Faz, Ammie Felder-Williams, Daniel Flores, Carlin Flores, Tiara Unique Francois, Beronica Gonzales, Gemma Guiomard, Maria Haag, Rachael Henson, Taylor Hinchliffe, Lisa Horlander, Natalie Lammers, Laura J. Lawson, Lori Maclean, Tina Medina, Claire Moore, Grace Nicole, Cat Rigdon, Hannah Rotwein, Brantly Sheffield, Kai Siebert, Darin Triplett, Ashley Whitt, Matthew “Woody” Wood, and Phallon Lauderback Wright.”
