Get ready for a big, artful summer, as several museums and prominent art spaces in town open fantastic new exhibitions and shows in June.
Indoors, we’ve got ancient textiles that will always be in fashion, plus cool, cutting-edge shows of local and Texas contemporary art. Meanwhile, the streets of downtown Houston heats up with sizzling and giant new murals from a local and internationally renowned artists.
"Big Art. Bigger Change" murals throughout Downtown Houston (ongoing)
Art grows everywhere in Houston, especially downtown, as we seem to spot another building-sized mural with each visit. So if you’re starting to suspect that the Downtown District has become one giant art gallery in the last two years, well that’s no artistic accident.
In fact, the Big Art. Bigger Change program, which began as a series of 10 large murals spanning a mile-long stretch of city blocks from Hilton Americas Houston Hotel to the Historic District, has grown this year to include 28 large-scale murals from a local, national and global lineup of acclaimed artists.
Apropos for our international city, this year’s artists hail from countries from all over the world: Ukraine, Iran, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, France, UK, Lithuania, Ghana, Italy, Holland, Germany, and South Korea.
The project also gives 3 Houston artists and one University of Houston Downtown college student a city-wide stage. Art-lovers and downtown explorers can even download a “Behind the Wall,” app that maps the murals and gives vibrant profiles on the art and artists.
“Ian Gerson: Tremble” at Art League Houston (now through July 22)
This exhibition of new works by the Houston artist showcases the interdisciplinary nature of Gerson’s work, incorporating sculpture, installation, and community engagement into the show.
Taken together, the work in “Tremble” investigates climate injustices, trans consciousness, and queer longing. Gerson weaves flimsy tapestries with ropes culled from Galveston Bay and the Houston Ship Channel, mylar, personal and hand-dyed clothing scraps, and dried plants as a way of centering the refused, the invisible, the marginal.
“Familiar” at Art League Houston (now through July 22)
The art duo of Big Chicken (Tsz Kam) and Baby Bird (Nat Power) have been collaborating since their art meeting as students at UT Austin. In their latest show, the art team bring viewers into a painted imagined world of mythological creatures and characters.
With themes of duality and pairings, their works create a new mythology that centers around the ambiguity of gender and the experience of shifting between girlhood and womanhood.
“The Big Show” at Lawndale Art Center (now through August 12)
The (figurative) curtain rises on the Big Show once again at Lawndale, and we can’t wait to see what local artists are up to this year.
For those not in the Big Show-know, every year Lawndale holds an ambitious open-call juried competition of artists practicing within a 100-mile radius. A long-time example of Lawndale’s commitment to supporting local and regional artists at various stages in their career, the program also showcases a different juror each year, adding a unique perspective on the local art scene.
Selecting 113 works by 112 artists from 400 entries, this year’s juror, Dr. Kanitra Fletcher, stated “the entries represented the extraordinary range and richness of creative expression in Houston, making my task as difficult as it was inspiring.”
“Woven Wonders: Indian Textiles from the Parpia Collection” at Museum of Fine Arts (now through September 4)
Step into the galleries of new, MFAH-organized exhibition to see such a vivid array of colors and textures and you’ll never doubt the creation of textiles can be its own wondrous art form.
Spotlighting key pieces from the collection of Banoo and Jeevak Parpia, who have assembled one of most significant private collections of Indian textiles outside of India, “Woven Wonders” features 70 textiles spanning the 14th to the early 20th century.
The exhibition depicts a broad range of textile techniques, including painting, block printing, ikat, tie-dye, brocade, tapestry and embroidery, reflects the diversity of regional textile production within India.
“Banoo and Jeevak Parpia have over recent years brought their insight and expertise to programs and to our collections of textiles from India,” explains MFAH director Gary Tinterow. “With this exhibition from their exceptional collection, we will be able to further our representation of the rich cultural heritage of Houston’s South Asian community, while exploring the history of one of India’s most treasured art forms.”
“Layla Klinger: Hot House" at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (now through September 9)
The patterns of the natural world, specifically electricity, meet the delicacy and intricacies of human-made textile, specifically lace, in this exhibition by the Brooklyn-based fiber artist, Layla Klinger.
The show features contemporary lace creations and large electroluminescent installations. Klinger uses electroluminescent wire to create large-scale, light-emitting, bobbin lace installations, which generate incredible variations in light patterns.
Displayed in dark rooms, Klinger says the holes in the lace artwork become defined not by the physical reality of the wires but by the light.
“Gabo Martinez: The Land of Flowers” at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (now through September 9)
Photo by Egidio Narvaez Photography
“Unity” by Alex Arzu is just one of the many Big Art. Bigger Change Murals recently painted in Downtown Houston.
The other big summer exhibition from HCCC centers around San Marcos-based artist Martinez’s reclamation of indigenous identity through craft production, using materials and motifs with ties to prehispanic cultures.
“Land of Flowers” features ceramics and printmaking with images of the mythical, flower-filled paradise, known in Nahuatl as xochitlalpan. Martinez inscribes glazed terracotta vessels and large-scale prints with motifs like the flower, a deeply significant symbol in the poetic tradition of Nahuatl speakers, known as In xochitl In cuicatl (Flower and Song).
“John Guzman: Flesh and Bone” at Blaffer Art Museum (June 23-September 24)
This new survey of the award-winning Texas artist focuses on large-scale works produced in the artist’s hometown of San Antonio and the Texas debut of paintings completed during, and immediately following, time at the NXTHVN Studio Fellowship Program in New Haven, Connecticut.
Guzman translates reflections on traumatic childhood experiences into paintings of distorted, tangled, and deteriorated figures confined in cramped domestic spaces, concealing their behaviors from others and themselves.
The Blaffer notes that through his work, Guzman “visualizes inexpressible yet consequential conditions of suffering and, in so doing, articulates a departure from cyclical patterns of self-destruction becoming his own reality.”
“William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows” at Museum of Fine Arts (June 25-September 10)
This traveling exhibition of the acclaimed South African multimedia artist surveys 35 years of the celebrated Kentridge’s career, and features more than 80 works touching on every aspect of his art explorations into the visual arts, film, and theater.
"In Praise of Shadows" will survey his world-renowned charcoal drawings and animated films, as well as prints, bronzes, tapestries, and theater models. The show also has a special focus on Kentridge’s use of paradoxes in light and shadow in his work that directly engages with the aftermath of colonialism, the recording and memory of historical narratives, and how the artist’s studio can disrupt the certainties of long-held belief systems.
“William Kentridge brings a profound humanism and collaborative spirit to every aspect of his work,” says MFAH’s curator of modern and contemporary art, Alison de Lima Greene. “He surveys the world around us with an attentive and critical eye, uncovering stories that are at once viscerally personal and universally relatable.”
