Category: exhibitions

CRUZ ORTIZ
ICE COLD

June 27 – August 5, 2009

This is another intergalactic ballad de Spaztek: he just landed-its another hot Texas night-at a dancehall between Poteet and Bandera-Spaztek has been walking for 300 miles and his boots are down to flappy chanklas? The sounds of cumbias calientes and the soft sexy whispers of mala lovers fill his brain-something tells him este noche is gonna get picoso to the max.

Spaztek Stuka Krash: Spaztek has been traveling for 8 earth days-all of his navigation instruments are not working-his rickety Stuka Spaceship has just crested over the
Olympus Mons mountain range-everything is going wrong-the radio might be his only hope.

Live performance by Cruz Ortiz @ 8:15PM, June 27, 2009

About the Artist:
Cruz Ortiz lives and works artist in San Antonio, Texas. Ortiz’s work has been exhibited at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Artpace (San Antonio), Ev+a (Limerick, Ireland), The Louvre (Paris) and ARCO (Madrid). He will have a solo exhibition of his work at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston in May 2010.

I AM NOT SO DIFFERENT

Curated by Rachel Cook

Artists:
Duncan Ganley
Anna Krachey
Jessica Mallios
Adam Shreiber
Erin Shirreff
Augusta Wood

June 27 – August 5, 2009

I Am Not So Different illustrates the affinities and dissimilarities that may be found in a chosen group of photographs. The selected images, while being abstract, are not so far from being grounded in our experience of reality. Each artist works within the “frame” of photography to produce images that evoke an uncanny, even eerie quality. The works’ subjects include mundane or banal objects found at the Harry Ransom Center, objects the artists have collected, ordinary handmade yet elusive clay objects, text from memory inserted into the landscape, and the collusion of real and fictional spaces. Gathered into a collective viewing, the photographs present their differences as a place for shared common ground. It is through these differences that an overlap and intersection is revealed.

About the Artists:
Duncan Ganley’s practice examines the extent to which our experience of the real is informed by the language of fiction. Ganley is based in London where he is conducting research at the Kingston Museum’s Eadweard Muybridge Collection. Ganley is represented by Inman Gallery, Houston and working on a solo exhibition for Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University, London.

Anna Krachey questions materialism and the real pleasures (tangible and intangible) that come from the act of photographing materials, hence creating a new material. Krachey currently has a solo exhibition entitled Trophies at Box 13 Artspace in Houston. She lives and works in Austin and is represented by Marty Walker Gallery in Dallas.

Jessica Mallios incorporates a studio practice that manipulates artifice and de-masks objects in space, as well as confuses the context by creating dislocated perspectives. Mallios lives and works in Austin and teaches at the University of Texas and Texas State University. She has been recently exhibited at the Creative Research Laboratory and Okay Mountain in Austin.

Adam Schreiber’s photographs reposition institutional objects within an isolating framework and highlight aspects of a mundane, heightened reality in the process of absorption. Schreiber lives and works in Austin and teaches at St. Edwards University and the University of Texas. He has been exhibited at The Harry Ransom Center in Austin and Lawndale Art Center in Houston.

Erin Shirreff explores how we create meaning day to day, how we anthropomorphize familiar things or project narratives onto our surroundings and ourselves. Shirreff will be presenting a solo exhibition of photographs at the 2009 Frieze Art Fair in London this fall. She lives and works in New York City and is represented by Lisa Cooley.

Augusta Wood is interested in ways of mapping the relationship between spatial and linguistic experience, memory and photographic space. Wood’s work was recently presented in 1999:The Ten Year Anniversary Show at China Art Objects and Cottage Home in Los Angeles. Augusta Wood lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by Cherry and Martin.

STERLING ALLEN – USE YOUR ILLUSION

Sep 3 – Oct 24, 2009

“Seeing is when you forget the name of what you are looking at.” – Paul Valery
“The daydreamer must visualize the dream so vividly and insistently that it becomes, in effect, an actuality.” – James Thurber

Art Palace gallery is pleased to present Use Your Ilusion, a solo exhibition by Austin-based artist Sterling Allen. The works in the exhibition, which consist of video, photography, sculpture and drawing, are centered on the artist’s engagement with optical illusion, visual perception and trickery.

The way in which our eyes and brain communicate can be understood in terms of anatomy and physiology, but almost just as well through games and tricks one can do at home, or in this case, in the studio. Allowing your eyes to play tricks on you can cause a sense of disorientation and confusion, as well as euphoria and delight; much like a dream. This sensation is central to many of these new works. The ability to see and dream up alternative possibilities within a given object or image has been an underlying element with Allen’s work in the past, and the works in Use Your Ilusion are an attempt to collectively focus on and confront that experience. The way in which we see is a mystery that employs neuroscientists, artists, and magicians alike. Conducting research within, but not limited to, these varying fields has led to a number of strange connections and correlations, the results of which, are materialized in this new body of work.

About the Artist:
In the two years since his last exhibit at Art Palace, Writesy Drawsy, Sterling Allen has exhibited his work at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, Artpace, VOLTA NY, Houston’s Optical Project, and Dallas’s Road Agent. He has completed residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska, as well as the Artpace International Artist-In-Residence Program in San Antonio, Texas. His works have been collected by The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Austin Museum of Art, as well as several important private collections throughout the United States. Sterling Allen received his BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003, and currently lives and works in Austin where he founded, and co-directs, Okay Mountain.

JESSICA HALONEN
RX GARDEN

Sep 3 – Oct 24, 2009

Art Palace gallery is pleased to present Rx Garden, a solo exhibition by Austin-based artist Jessica Halonen. Jessica’s recent work is interested in the relationships between the body, nature and medical world.
Rx Garden explores the issues surrounding the use of genetically modified plants in the pharmaceutical industry. It includes a series of gouache on paper portraits of plant-based drugs, as well as sculptures inspired by biopharming (a process that uses genetic modification to ‘grow’ chemical components, including human proteins, in plants that are harvested to make drugs). The drawings borrow from botanical illustrations, infusing their once sterile forms with a sense of playfulness and animation. In the sculpture, colorful synthetic materials are introduced to found organic objects.
Thank you to the Artist Foundation of San Antonio and Artpace for their generous support in the creation of this body of work.

About the Artist:
Jessica Halonen received a MFA in Painting in 1999 from Washington University in Saint Louis and a BA from Kalamazoo College. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, notably at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Park Project in Los Angeles, the University of Texas in Dallas and San Antonio, and the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art. Her work is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and The Museum of Southeast Texas. From 2000-2001, she was a Core Fellow at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and was recently an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.  Halonen is an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Trinity University.  She lives and works in both Austin and San Antonio.

ONE ON ONE

October 31 – December 5, 2009

One wall. One week. One (and in one case, two) artist(s). In this space and time, artists from Art Palace’s roster and a few special guests are invited to present a new idea or recontextualize existing work. Come see what Sarah Frantz, Matthew Rodriguez, Sonya Berg, Jules Buck Jones, Sterling Allen, Michael Sieben & Nathan Green, Erick Michaud, Erin Curtis, do with these parameters.

JONATHAN MARSHALL
DOUBLED VISION

January 15 – March 6, 2010

The search for truth in our universe is futile, but the act of seeking is of the utmost importance. A continuation of the premises presented in The Book of Lenny, Doubled Vision is set in a post-catastrophe landscape. We follow Lenny and Johan Pilgrim, two everyman-survivors on a quest to find meaning. Using various approaches to image-making, including painting, drawing, video and sculpture, Marshall reflects on ideas of survival, landscape and vision quests to create his own folk-mythology and D-I-Y hero’s journey. Marshall uses exploration as a metaphor for the practice of both art-making and the art of living: not just a means to an end, but valid, in and of itself. Marshall urges us to embark on this search as both rationalists and dreamers, for it is through journeys of body and mind that reality comes to know itself.

About the Artist:
Fresh off a solo exhibition at Man&Eve gallery in London, Jonathan Marshall’s Doubled Vision will be the Virginia-Based artist’s first show at Art Palace since the accaimed Book of Lenny opened in the fall of 2007. Working with impressive dexterity in a variety of media, Marshall is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies and is included in the collections of both the Jack. S. Blanton Museum of Art and the Austin Museum of Art. Jonathan Marshall received his BFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003, and is currently pursuing his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Artists:
Elaine Bradford
Margarita Cabrera
Ali Fitzgerald
Jessica Halonen
Lauren Kelley
Bari Ziperstein

March 12 – May 1, 2010

Art Palace’s first group exhibition in Houston brings together the work of six distinctly different artists. Together, these artists create surprising intersections and uncomfortable conversations. These works force us, the viewer, to re-evaluate our understanding of the works, ourselves and what we take for granted.

Art Palace, at Isabella Court, proudly introduces… LADIES FIRST

About the Artists:
Elaine Bradford received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts and is now living and working in Houston, Texas. Currently an artist in residence at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Bradford has been mining the shelves of hobby stores for everyday craft materials to create fanciful microcosms and bizarre hybrid creatures.   She is a founding member of Box 13 ArtSpace.  Bradford’s work has been exhibited in numerous group shows throughout the United States and she is a recent recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from the Houston Arts Alliance.

Margarita Cabrera was born in Monterrey, Mexico, received her MFA from Hunter College and was a 2008 ArtPace resident. She is a visiting assistant professor at University of Houston and a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant.  Her work explores issues of border relations, Mexican immigration, economic exchange and notions of the “American dream.”  Cabrera’s current work  is made in collaboration with Mexican immigrants that chronicles personal stories of transformation in hand-embroidered soft sculpture. This work will debut as part of In Lieu of Unity, a group exhibition at Ballroom Marfa, later this spring.

Ali Fitzgerald was born in Oakland, California, received her MFA from the University of Texas and now lives and works in Berlin, Germany.  In her new series of small works, Fitzgerald draws from an elaborate lexicon of girlhood mytho-sexual fears and startling transformations.  First staging modest, quirky sculptures and dioramas, Fitzgerald subsequently translates these into elegant, unnerving and often funny painted vignettes. Most recently, Fitzgerald’s work was included in There Goes My Hero at The Center For Book Arts in New York City; The Scene at KUB Galerie in Leipzig, Germany; and Berliner Liste, in Berlin, Germany. Her work has been featured in Art in America, The New York Times,Beautiful/Decay, Artlies! and Glasstire.

Jessica Halonen received her MFA from Washington University and is now an assistant professor at Trinity University. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, notably at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Park Project and Dallas Center for Contemporary Art. Her work is in the permanent collections at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Museum of Southeast Texas. From 2000-2001 she was a Core Fellow at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston and was recently an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.  Halonen’s recent work explores the relationships between the body, nature and medical world as it explores the issues surrounding the use of genetically modified plants in the pharmaceutical industry.

Lauren Kelley is an inaugural recipient of the New Museum’s Altoids Award as well as the  Artadia Houston Prize.  She received her MFA from The Art Institute of Chicago.  Kelley was a resident of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Design, a Fellow in the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Core Program and currently is an artist in residence with the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. The work featured in LADIES FIRST reflects a project she started during her residency with the Core program last year.

Bari Ziperstein was born in Chicago, Illinois, received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts and now lives and works in Los Angeles, California.  Ziperstein works as a site-specific sculptor, photographer, collage and ceramic artist interested in activating space through intervention and organization. Most recently Ziperstein’s work was the focus of Perk, a solo exhibition at PDC in West Hollywood, California.  She debuted a collection of sculptures, transforming  an empty design showroom into an uncanny quintessential model domestic space.

July 9 – August 21, 2010

Meaning is fluid in Seth Alverson’s most recent body of work, as each painting builds upon the others in an open and uncategorized way. By refusing to lead us in a specific direction, images that initially seem to be homeless remnants of the lives of others, reveal themselves to be much more complex, encompassing all elements of the human condition. These anxiety-ridden works highlight the trail of inquiry, giving them weight and presence.

Using memory and haunting imagery as catalysts for his self-reflexive paintings, Alverson distills the most essential elements until they are heightened to a level of transformation. This transformation occurs through the act of painting by placing intention on the images, and in turn helps us find rationality in futility to apply meaning in our everyday.

About the Artist:
Seth Alverson received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Houston, in 2002 and his Master of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2010.  This will be Alverson’s second solo exhibition with Art Palace, he has also exhibited his work in group exhibitions, includingDeath of a Propane Salesman, Fort Worth Contemporary Art Center, Fort Worth, TX (2009); Group Show, Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA (2009); 30th Anniversary, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX (2009); Where Are We Going?, Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX (2008); Houston Area Exhibition,Blaffer Gallery, Houston TX (2008); The Siren’s Song, Arthouse at Jones Center, Austin, TX (2007) and New Texas Painting, DiverseWorks, Houston, TX (2006).

PEAT DUGGINS
ST. BONIFACE’S LAST DAYS

September 10 – October 23, 2010

In 723, Germany’s patron saint, St. Boniface chopped down Donar’s Oak while taunting the gods of the dumbstruck Germanic tribesmen who held the tree sacred.  Afterwards, he used the lumber to build the chapel, which served as the home base for his missionary outreach. St. Boniface’s felling of Donar’s Oak can be seen as a symbol that heralded a new relationship between Europeans and their environment, with a new concept of time and history.

From meditations on illogic, violence, natural and synthetic beauty, this exhibition reaches back in time to further explore Peat Duggins’ focus on man’s relationship with nature.  Originating with the idea of chopping down a chapel and using the wood to build an oak tree, St. Boniface’s Last Days presents a thoughtful reversal of history. As in previous exhibitions, Duggins’ mastery of materials is evident as he presents a bold new direction in his work.

About the Artist:
After studying Film/Video at the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, Peat Duggins moved to Austin, Texas, where he co-founded the non-profit contemporary art gallery, the Fresh Up Club, and later the celebrated no-profit gallery & collective, Okay Mountain. Duggins’ work has been exhibited internationally and collected by both The Blanton Museum of Art and Austin Museum of Art.  Other distinctions include a fellowship from the Pritzker Foundation, and numerous residencies including the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and the Corporation of Yaddo, as well as a grant from of the Dallas Museum of Art. He currently lives and works as a practicing artist in Cambridge, MA.

IT’S BETTER TO REGRET SOMETHING YOU HAVE DONE…

October 29 – January 8, 2011

Artists:
JILLIAN CONRAD
NATHAN GREEN
KARA HEARN
JIM NOLAN
LINDA POST
BARRY STONE

Art Palace is pleased to present a group exhibition, It’s better to regret something you have done…, featuring the works of Jillian Conrad, Nathan Green, Kara Hearn, Jim Nolan, Linda Post and Barry Stone.  The exhibition generated from several conversations with Janet Phelps who helped bring together artists who show a keen wit and a fresh perspective. Though these artists explore different paths, engaging in dialogues range from the formal to the eccentric, each offers a us a peek into the gallery’s future.

About the Artists:
Jillian Conrad recently completed Core Artist-in-Residency program at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and is currently a professor at the University of Houston.  Her work has been exhibited at Nurture Art, Brooklyn, the Bronx Museum, and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. In January 2011, Conrad will present a solo exhibition at Art Palace, as well as participate in a group exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island.

As founding member of Okay Mountain Collective, Nathan Green has recently presented new works at Freight & Volume, New York; Pulse Miami (Pulse Prize Winner), and the Austin Museum of Art. Green will present a solo exhibition at Art Palace and will be featured in the 2011 New Art in Austin exhibition at the Austin Museum of Art.  Next year, the Collective will present new work at the University of Houston’s Blaffer Gallery and Prospect 1.5 New Orleans.

Jim Nolan‘s work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York, Tastes Like Chicken Art Space, Brooklyn and DEEPSPACENEWYORK. Most recently, Nolan collaborated with Mick Johnson on (v)=Variable Project. His work has been covered in Time Out New York, New Art Examiner, and Artnet.

Kara Hearn completed Core Artist-in-Residency program in 2009, before moving to New York. In 2010 she completed a residency at Recess Activities Inc., New York, where she completed her most recent feature length film, Tremendous.  Hearn has exhibited her work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, White Columns, New York, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and New Orleans Museum of Art.

Linda Post has exhibited her work at PS.1 Contemporary Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum. Most recently, Post’s video Moon (Watch) was exhibited in CPQ: CQ100 at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Post has been covered in New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and Time Out London.

Barry Stone has exhibited nationally, at venues including International Center of Photography; the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin; the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore; Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, Brooklyn, and Marcia Woods Gallery, Atlanta. Stone is a professor at Texas State University in San Marcos