A boost for cultural tourism?

Texas Contemporary Art Fair organizers tout Houston as America's next great artfair city

Max Fishko, left, and Jeffrey Wainhause of Texas Contemporary

"When it rains, it pours."

That's the way Jeffrey Wainhause, managing partner of the Texas Contemporary Art Fair, describes the crowded art fair scene in Houston this fall. Despite an abundance of wealthy collectors and a thriving environment for the visual arts, the Bayou City has largely been bypassed on the fine art fair circuit.

Until now.

Two major art fairs will be held in the Bayou City for the first time, within a month of each other. The Houston Fine Art Fair takes place next week (Sept. 16-18, with preview party Sept. 15) at the George R. Brown Convention Center. And about a month later (Oct. 21-23, with preview party Oct. 20), the Texas Contemporary Art Fair opens in the same location.

Why is Houston suddenly so hot in the cool art world?

Texas Contemporary Art Fair director Max Fishko believes that Houston is an untapped market as dealers look beyond the traditional art capitals of New York, London and Los Angeles to expand. "You have a fantastic young professional community here. And when you have the sixth best endowed museum in the country (the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), along with the Contemporary Arts Museum and the Menil, it's just a matter of time before people pay attention," Fishko said over a recent breakfast interview while in town to tout the fair.

"The fact that there's been nothing here (before) is perfectly ridiculous. Instead of people asking why are there two fairs, they should be asking why aren't there 10?"

Much has been made about the odd timing of two big art fairs coming to Houston within a month, but Fishko brushes aside questions of whether there are enough art aficionados to support both events. "The fact that there's been nothing here (before) is perfectly ridiculous. Instead of people asking why are there two fairs, they should be asking why aren't there 10?"

As the name suggests, the Texas Contemporary Art Fair will focus on modern works of art, with 60 gallery dealers from New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Chicago, Tokyo and Buenos Aires who will set up shop at the George R. Brown. Participating Houston galleries include Texas Gallery, Inman Gallery, Wade Wilson Art, Moody Gallery and Sicardi Gallery, as well as San Antonio's David Shelton Gallery and Austin's Champion Gallery.

To tie in closely with the Houston contemporary art community, the duo has enlisted such entities as Art League Houston, DiverseWorks, Project Row Houses, Skydive, The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, The Orange Show, Spring Street Studios and Winter Street Studios as cultural partners. The preview party on Oct. 20 will benefit the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

Wainhause and Fishko, whose artMRKT Productions organizes annual art fairs in San Francisco and the Hamptons, believe the Texas Contemporary Art Fair will be distinctive because it will feature a lot of new contemporary work, including promising regional art. "You cannot go to New York, Miami or LA to see this art. We have a collection of dealers who are really unique," Fishko said.

And, in a salute to Houston's status as the nation's energy capital, energy-themed art projects like Mexico City-based artist Edgar Orlaineta's Solar Nothing, a mixed media work inspired by Charles Eames' Solar Do-Nothing Toy, will be highlighted at the fair.

The duo believes that the Texas Contemporary Art Fair can draw 10,000 art lovers and the art curious to Houston, which is, coincidentally, the same figure organizers of the Houston Fine Art Fair are using. Whether upwards of 20,000 will attend the two fairs remains to be seen, but Wainhause and Fishko are convinced that Houston can support both fairs and would like to make the Texas Contemporary an annual event.

"It helps bring more people to Houston and creates cultural tourism. But it doesn't happen overnight. You need to do that for several years," Wainhause said.

Texas Contemporary Art Fair will take place Oct. 21-23 at the George R. Brown Convention Center, with benefit preview party for Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and VIP preview party Oct. 20. One-day ticket $20, three-day ticket $40, three-day ticket plus CAMH and VIP preview parties $100. Click here for information.

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Movie Review

Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

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Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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