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Houston Center for Contemporary Craft presents "Treachery of Material: The Surrealist Impulse in Craft" opening day

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Photo by Julia Maria Künnap

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft presents "Treachery of Material: The Surrealist Impulse in Craft," featuring Michael Crowder and Julia Maria Künnap, two artists who use surrealist strategies and references in their work. The exhibition offers a series of puzzling and beautiful objects made from cast glass, fine metals and gemstones, along with nontraditional materials like ash and soap, to highlight the unexpected relationship between Surrealism and craft.

Known for its outlandish and irrational imagery meant to express the power of imagination and the unconscious mind, Surrealism has maintained its strong cultural relevance since its introduction in the 1920s, becoming a mainstay not only in art museums but in ad campaigns, films, fashion, and household objects as well.  Both Surrealism and craft incorporate a range of materials and traditions that have proven difficult to categorize as a whole. Many of the Surrealist masters, notably Salvador Dalí, Méret Oppenheim, Max Ernst, and Pedro Friedeberg, made forays into craft media during their careers, producing work in jewelry and metals, fiber and furniture. Their influence on craft continues today, as seen in the works of Crowder and Künnap.

Though he creates much of his sculpture from kiln-fired glass, often employing a pâte de verre technique that fuses glass particles into an open crystalline structure, Michael Crowder incorporates a range of particulate mediums like soap, sugar, chocolate, marble dust, wax, and ashes in his cast objects. His body of work, L’heure bleue, was completed during a fellowship at the home of Dora Maar (which she shared with Pablo Picasso) in Ménerbes, France. In the series, which references the “blue hour” between daylight and dark, he portrays 20th-century art historical icons that are sculpted and cast from nontraditional materials, which would be self-obliterating if ever used for their intended purpose.  From a wax pipe referencing Magritte’s famous painting, The Treachery of Images (1929), to a cast-glass tire alluding to Robert Raushenberg’s Untitled (glass tires) (1997), each of Crowder’s sculptural objects is made from materials that defy its function.

Künnap, on the other hand, applies her mastery of lapidary stonecutting to form gemstones that visually defy and denature the material itself.  Through an incredibly precise and time-consuming process, she captures a sense of wonderment in her work, creating gemstones that appear to be in an eternal state of melting, dripping, and splashing.  By capturing impossibilities that seem conceived of in a dream state, her pieces hold a strong conceptual link to some of the most famous visual strategies of Surrealism, such as the “melting” clocks depicted in Salvador Dalí’s seminal painting, "The Persistence of Memory" (1931).

"Treachery of Material" was curated by HCCC Curatorial Fellow, Sarah Darro, who traces a lineage of Surrealism in craft media through the exhibition. Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on view until April 15.

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft presents "Treachery of Material: The Surrealist Impulse in Craft," featuring Michael Crowder and Julia Maria Künnap, two artists who use surrealist strategies and references in their work. The exhibition offers a series of puzzling and beautiful objects made from cast glass, fine metals and gemstones, along with nontraditional materials like ash and soap, to highlight the unexpected relationship between Surrealism and craft.

Known for its outlandish and irrational imagery meant to express the power of imagination and the unconscious mind, Surrealism has maintained its strong cultural relevance since its introduction in the 1920s, becoming a mainstay not only in art museums but in ad campaigns, films, fashion, and household objects as well. Both Surrealism and craft incorporate a range of materials and traditions that have proven difficult to categorize as a whole. Many of the Surrealist masters, notably Salvador Dalí, Méret Oppenheim, Max Ernst, and Pedro Friedeberg, made forays into craft media during their careers, producing work in jewelry and metals, fiber and furniture. Their influence on craft continues today, as seen in the works of Crowder and Künnap.

Though he creates much of his sculpture from kiln-fired glass, often employing a pâte de verre technique that fuses glass particles into an open crystalline structure, Michael Crowder incorporates a range of particulate mediums like soap, sugar, chocolate, marble dust, wax, and ashes in his cast objects. His body of work, L’heure bleue, was completed during a fellowship at the home of Dora Maar (which she shared with Pablo Picasso) in Ménerbes, France. In the series, which references the “blue hour” between daylight and dark, he portrays 20th-century art historical icons that are sculpted and cast from nontraditional materials, which would be self-obliterating if ever used for their intended purpose. From a wax pipe referencing Magritte’s famous painting, The Treachery of Images (1929), to a cast-glass tire alluding to Robert Raushenberg’s Untitled (glass tires) (1997), each of Crowder’s sculptural objects is made from materials that defy its function.

Künnap, on the other hand, applies her mastery of lapidary stonecutting to form gemstones that visually defy and denature the material itself. Through an incredibly precise and time-consuming process, she captures a sense of wonderment in her work, creating gemstones that appear to be in an eternal state of melting, dripping, and splashing. By capturing impossibilities that seem conceived of in a dream state, her pieces hold a strong conceptual link to some of the most famous visual strategies of Surrealism, such as the “melting” clocks depicted in Salvador Dalí’s seminal painting, "The Persistence of Memory" (1931).

"Treachery of Material" was curated by HCCC Curatorial Fellow, Sarah Darro, who traces a lineage of Surrealism in craft media through the exhibition. Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on view until April 15.

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft presents "Treachery of Material: The Surrealist Impulse in Craft," featuring Michael Crowder and Julia Maria Künnap, two artists who use surrealist strategies and references in their work. The exhibition offers a series of puzzling and beautiful objects made from cast glass, fine metals and gemstones, along with nontraditional materials like ash and soap, to highlight the unexpected relationship between Surrealism and craft.

Known for its outlandish and irrational imagery meant to express the power of imagination and the unconscious mind, Surrealism has maintained its strong cultural relevance since its introduction in the 1920s, becoming a mainstay not only in art museums but in ad campaigns, films, fashion, and household objects as well. Both Surrealism and craft incorporate a range of materials and traditions that have proven difficult to categorize as a whole. Many of the Surrealist masters, notably Salvador Dalí, Méret Oppenheim, Max Ernst, and Pedro Friedeberg, made forays into craft media during their careers, producing work in jewelry and metals, fiber and furniture. Their influence on craft continues today, as seen in the works of Crowder and Künnap.

Though he creates much of his sculpture from kiln-fired glass, often employing a pâte de verre technique that fuses glass particles into an open crystalline structure, Michael Crowder incorporates a range of particulate mediums like soap, sugar, chocolate, marble dust, wax, and ashes in his cast objects. His body of work, L’heure bleue, was completed during a fellowship at the home of Dora Maar (which she shared with Pablo Picasso) in Ménerbes, France. In the series, which references the “blue hour” between daylight and dark, he portrays 20th-century art historical icons that are sculpted and cast from nontraditional materials, which would be self-obliterating if ever used for their intended purpose. From a wax pipe referencing Magritte’s famous painting, The Treachery of Images (1929), to a cast-glass tire alluding to Robert Raushenberg’s Untitled (glass tires) (1997), each of Crowder’s sculptural objects is made from materials that defy its function.

Künnap, on the other hand, applies her mastery of lapidary stonecutting to form gemstones that visually defy and denature the material itself. Through an incredibly precise and time-consuming process, she captures a sense of wonderment in her work, creating gemstones that appear to be in an eternal state of melting, dripping, and splashing. By capturing impossibilities that seem conceived of in a dream state, her pieces hold a strong conceptual link to some of the most famous visual strategies of Surrealism, such as the “melting” clocks depicted in Salvador Dalí’s seminal painting, "The Persistence of Memory" (1931).

"Treachery of Material" was curated by HCCC Curatorial Fellow, Sarah Darro, who traces a lineage of Surrealism in craft media through the exhibition. Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on view until April 15.

WHEN

WHERE

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
4848 Main St.
Houston, TX 77002
https://www.crafthouston.org/exhibition/treachery-of-material/

TICKET INFO

Admission is free.
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