As the summer sizzles on, Houstonians have the opportunity to contemplate some cool new art around the city. As some art institutions get ready for big fall blockbusters, this month's list highlights some intriguing gallery exhibitions and smaller shows that have popped up this month.
Along with showcases of ancient and contemporary textile work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Ismaili Center, art gets wild, teal, and tattooed over at Sawyer Yards. Plus, a new mural in Southwest Houston builds international bridges, and DiverseWorks invites art lovers to a new kind of amusement park.
"Between Flame, Stone, and Tide” at Mitochondria Gallery (now through August 29)
Though using very different practices and mediums, artists Alex Peter Idoko, Chika Idu, and Ejiro Fenegal create work that explores how elemental forces shape narratives of memory, identity, belonging, and environmental responsibility. Idoko uses a blowtorch on canvas and paper, exploring themes of destruction and renewal. Fenegal sculpts in marble, using the classic medium to preserve individual stories while affirming collective identity. Idu’s textured oil paintings depict children in aquatic landscapes to depict the relationship between vulnerable communities and threatened environments. When taken together, the exhibition helps viewers reflect on the enduring relationship between material, place, and the environments that sustain us.
"Beyond Skin Deep: Tattoo Artist Showcase” at Sawyer Yards (now through September 12)
Painter, tattoo artist, and exhibition curator Julian Solis wants to defy distinctions between fine art and folk art, making the case for body art as fine art. Solis has organized the exhibition around local tattoo artists’ works in a variety of media. These pieces done in oil, graphite, ink, and more prove their rightful placement on gallery walls, yet they also reveal the unique visions of the artists who usually create on a canvas of human bodies. Visitors to the exhibition will discover traditional flash paintings alongside portraits in oils, with both displaying the relationship tattooers have between their personal art practices and art made for clients
"Transformative Teal” at Sabine Street Studios (now through October 10)
Instead of organizing this group show around a theme or genre, this exhibition asks Sabine artists working in a variety of mediums — including painting, sculpture, photography, and digital media — to contemplate the color teal and its constant metamorphosis between blues and greens. The artists find meaning in the color in a myriad of ways, from intimate narratives of identity and healing to expansive meditations on nature and society. The organizers note that the works showcased reveal how the concept of transformation is at once an external phenomenon and an internal journey.
“WILD” at Sabine Street Studios (now through September 12)
For its biennial exhibitions the WiVLA (Women in Visual and Literary Arts) organization selects a theme and members form collaborative partnerships of two or three artists from different disciplines to create visual and written works in conversation with each other. This year’s “Wild” theme inspires the artists to create work untamed and unconfined. Whether literally or abstractly these artists will decide what wildness means to them, opening their art up to risk, intensity, and freedom.
Persia to Paisley: Global Luxury and the Kashmir Shawl at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (now through November 29)
This special installation within the MFAH’s eminent Hossein Afshar Art of the Islamic Worlds Galleries examines how one piece of clothing, the Kashmir shawl, changed and shaped cultures of its time. Handwoven from pashm, the under hair of Himalayan goats, Kashmir shawls represented the height of luxury for hundreds of years across, Asia, Africa, and Europe. These shawls also became the ultimate piece of wearable art, as it took months of coordinated labor among expert designers, dyers, and weavers to create one piece.
The show will feature extraordinary Kashmir shawls and textiles from the early 17th century to today, including a later 19th century European Long Shawl, signed by Antony Berrus, director and designer of one of the most successful textile ateliers in Paris, an early 17th century Waist Sash from Mughal India, and depictions of Kashmir fashion in classic paintings.
“Painted Bridges” located at 9750 Bellaire Blvd. (ongoing)
Led by Houston’s own street art–and beyond–superstar GONZO247, six emerging Taiwanese artists and designers offer the city a seat at an international art table with this new mural in the Southwest Management District. The six artists are the inaugural cohort of Meridian Fellows from EpNex, an organization based in Taiwan with a network across the U.S. and Asia-Pacific, which has a mission to design programs that connect people across cultures.
With GONZO247 acting as mentor, the artists designed and painted a permanent public mural inspired by the theme of “The Space Between.” The final vision honors Houston’s connection with its oldest official sister city, Taipei, while also telling the story of a "shared feast,” with one empty seat at the center. The space left open holds a dual meaning: one of honoring those who have passed from our lives, while also reminding the viewer that "There is always a seat for you.” The astronaut at the table represents Taipei-born Houston astronaut Dr. Kjell Lindgren.
Jesus Benavente: "NeustroWorld" presented by DiverseWorks at 5601 B Navigation Blvd. (August 13-September 13)
For this DiverseWorks-commissioned project, Brooklyn-based, Texas-born artist Jesus Benavente uses humor to explore how cities such as Houston constructs its identity. Playing with images and ideas from Houston’s past, and our mythologizing of that past, Benavente eschews the traditional gallery show by creating a fictional visitors center for “NeustroWorld.” The title is a Spanglish phrase meaning "The World Is Ours,” and, of course, a spin on AstroWorld.
This “NeustroWorld” will merge concepts of visitors center, gift shops, and amusement parks into an immersive art space containing large scale banners, Tejano music paired with a custom neon video sculpture inspired by Selena’s rodeo performances, and a 13-foot blimp roaming through the gallery. Visitors can also pick up a free NuestroWorld Amusement Guide and purchase limited-edition merchandise, including custom screen-printed t-shirts, mugs, and stickers. That Amusement Guide will also serve as a kind of art map inviting “NeustroWorld” goers to explore other parts of the city, asking viewers to think about them in new ways, perhaps even as adventure rides in the amusement park we call Houston.
“Imagined Ancestors” at the MFAH Glassell School of Art (August 15-October 4)
This exhibition highlights the work of Patrick Palmer, dean of the Glassell School. With both paintings and sculptures, Palmer depicts the generations of people who shaped his life in both profound and small ways. The pieces are inspired by “the impossible idea” that the art can portray a single moment. Palmer investigates quiet moments to better understand how the past and present are forever connected.
“Article” at Ismaili Center (August 15-January 10)
The Ismaili Center continues to champion local artists with this solo show from textile-based works by Houston artist Gabriel Martinez. Using garments collected from the streets of the city as his medium, Martinez’s pieces ask viewers to think about how material circulates and the different values people place upon everyday objects. The title work of the exhibition is a 30-foot wall-sized composition sewn entirely by hand without assistants or machinery.
While visiting the Center, be sure to take time to find and marvel at the new commissioned and site-specific installation “No. 1573 Reflectors” by acclaimed Bangladeshi-British artist Rana Begum that the Center has just added to its permanent collection. Installed in the east atrium, the 20 feet high pink-and-white reflective piece explores the nature of the infinite.
Jesus Benavente, A Life A Home and A Horse Named Triste, 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.
