After three years of duking it out with the Houston Fine Art Fair for a slice of the local collectors' market, Texas Contemporary Art Fair appears to be settling into its own role as the hipper cousin to the HFAF's respected stable of high-end international galleries.
Large inflatable sculptures and a homemade mini-laundromat by the Los Angeles' Clayton Brothers greet guests as they enter Hall A of the George R. Brown, setting the stage for a generally light-hearted tone throughout the fair's public spaces. In the main central aisle, a giant stuffed Bigfoot by Tara Tucker holds court alongside a furniture set covered in live plants by Hannah Chalew of New Orleans.
Texas Contemporary's cadre of 70 galleries — including 13 from Houston (compared to eight at the HFAF) — seem to veer more towards canvas work in this year's fair.
San Francisco's Catharine Clark Gallery features bold new paintings by Titus Kaphar, who reworks images and iconography from 19th-century America. The Rena Bransten Gallery, also from the Bay Area, has a compelling 2013 work by Hung Liu while Freight + Volume from New York highlights two fresh canvases by Houston's Kent Dorn.
Be sure to visit the West Collection from Pennsylvania — which has turned its booth into a quasi-rooftop deck filled with art by Philadelphia artists — as well as the Blaffer Art Museum's selection of impressively-crafted design items by students at the University of Houston, many of which are for sale.
Click through the slideshow above for more highlights and check out the third annual Texas Contemporary fair at the George R. Brown through Sunday.
Hannah Chalew, Living Room, 2013, mixed media. Courtesy of Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans.
Photo by Tyler Rudick
Hannah Chalew, Living Room, 2013, mixed media. Courtesy of Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans.
Career revivals like the one that has happened to Ke Huy Quan are extremely rare in Hollywood. As a child, he scored two big back-to-back roles in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies. While he found occasional work after that, his career mostly went dormant starting in 2002 until he was cast in Everything Everywhere All at Once, a role that won him an Oscar.
Now, he’s the toast of the town, including his first-ever starring role as the lead in Love Hurts. Quan plays Marvin Gable, a relentlessly positive real estate agent who’s the top seller in his area. But from the beginning of the film, it’s clear that he has a hidden backstory, as he receives a veiled threat in a note from a woman named Rose (Ariana DeBose), who is seen early on defacing many of his advertisements around town.
When a heavy called The Raven (Mustafa Shakir) confronts Marvin at his office, he is pulled back into his old life, one where he was involved in the criminal enterprise of his brother, Knuckles (Daniel Wu). Soon he’s dodging attacks on multiple fronts, looking out for Rose, and all the while trying to keep up appearances at his day job.
Directed by Jonathan Eusebio (a stunt coordinator making his directorial debut) and written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore, the film is one big excuse to have Quan show off the martial arts skills he demonstrated in his Oscar-winning role. While there is some semblance of a story, it’s mostly to set up the various fight scenes; there’s little attempt to make the audience care about any of the stakes.
Instead, Eusebio and his team vacillate between moments of calmness and sequences with extreme violence. Quan and his fellow combatants (in addition to Shakir, he faces off against Marshawn Lynch, Cam Gigandet, and others) engage in a series of creative moves designed to inflict as much pain as possible. The juxtaposition of the seemingly mild-mannered Marvin with his abilities works relatively well, as does the variety of implements used as weapons (pencils, boba straws, feathers, and more come into play over the course of the film).
But the lack of a full story catches up with the film in the end, as instead of building to some kind of grand finale, there are diminishing returns with every scene. The filmmakers try to distract with a semi-amusing romantic connection between The Raven and Marvin’s assistant, Ashley (Lio Tipton), something that works much better than allusions to a bond between Marvin and Rose. There’s also a mini-Goonies reunion with Sean Astin as Marvin’s boss that’s kind of fun, but the antipathy between Marvin and his attackers never fully develops.
Quan is a joyful presence who does his level best to make himself into a lead actor, but he’s not served well in the film as a whole. DeBose, an Oscar winner herself, seems to be stuck in a rut of mediocre roles, ones that don’t allow her to show off her skills like West Side Story. Lynch shows again he’s reliable in comic sidekick roles, while Tipton and Shakir are the only other actors to make any kind of impact.
The Valentine’s theme of Love Hurts is not the only part of the film that feels tacked on. While the idea of letting Quan show off his skills is a good one in theory, very little thought appears to have been put into making that showcase effective. The result is a forgettable action comedy that puts more emphasis on ultraviolence than its story.