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IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT
by Fred Schmit-Arnalesis a three channel video installation, on view in the GAR main gallery space.
Fred Schmidt-Arenales is an artist and filmmaker. His projects attempt to bring awareness to unconscious processes on the individual and group level. He has presented films, installations, and performances internationally at venues including SculptureCenter and Abrons Arts Center, (New York), Links Hall (Chicago), The Darling Foundry (Montreal), LightBox and The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Artspace (New Haven), The Museum of Fine Arts and FotoFest (Houston), Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst und Medien (Graz), and Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna). His recent film Committee of Six is an official selection of the 2022-23 Architecture and Design Film Festival and was awarded a jury prize for best film at the 2023 Onion City Experimental Film Festival.
The Last Sky: Looking for Ghosts
by Juan JuarezJuan Juarez has exhibited in galleries and museums such as the Milwaukee Art Museum (Milwaukee), Haggerty Museum of Art (Milwaukee), Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi & Rio Terra San Vio (Venice), Aspex Gallery (Portsmouth), Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (Los Angeles), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse), and Gallery 400 at University of Illinois-Chicago (Chicago).
Crasis
(Andy Davis & Anne Lukins)
Preston Gaines
Devin T. Mays
May 18th - July 12th, 2024
by Masha Sha
March 2, 2024 - April 27, 2024
For this exhibition at the GAR Gallery, Masha Sha has created, new large scale graphite and crayon drawings on tracing paper. The images are made up of thousands of small expressive marks that culminate in a single word or phrase. Excavating new meaning from familiar words and phrases is the energizing force behind these drawings. In the making of the drawings for this show, the artist’s mind was engaged with the following questions: How to withstand a violent constant wave of time, which is permanently closing on you? How is it to be at the place where instant / immediate clashes with infinite / total? How daydreaming and diffused concentration on intent and meaning are saving graces to withstand the permanent pull in infinite directions? Masha Sha was born in Chukotka, RU in 1982. She graduated from Pro Arte Institute, St. Petersburg, RU (2005), and received an MFA from the University at Buffalo, NY with the Fulbright scholarship (2010). Masha then completed The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, NY (2011). She received the International Award of Recognition from STRABAG in Vienna, Austria (2014) as well as the Young Artist Prize Innovation in Moscow, Russia (2006). She has participated in many exhibitions and projects, as well as a few residences, including Yaddo and Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. Masha has works in many private and public collections including the Russian Museum in Saint-Petersburg, the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, and Anderson Museum of Contemporary art in Roswell, NM. Masha currently lives in Roswell, New Mexico. |
by James Elaine
GAR Gallery Project SpaceMarch 2, 2024 - April 27, 2024
"These small 2020-2023 paintings begin as cutting boards underneath papers and felts as I cut out shapes for larger paintings. The 'blind' razor cuts produced on these boards are the beginnings of new independent works. The cut lines are purely non objective but contain vestiges of the process of making other works. I try to uncover what used to be and create something new by adding layer upon layer of different types and colors of paint, sometimes mixing them together on the boards so that the different solutions react to one another in unexpected ways. The layering of paint covers up or erases what was before. In between the layering of paints I enhance certain cut lines with graphite, ink, or metallic paint then sand the surface down revealing hazy images of previous layers. This process repeats itself until I decide to stop." - James Elaine |
A specific focus of James Elaine's work is the act of reclaiming and restoring to a new identity what is lost, forgotten, or broken in life and culture. The materials reflect the body and soul of the individual as well as society as a whole. He is interested in different materials, purchased or found, that are not necessarily associated with painting or fine art, and ways to stretch mediums in new directions. Instead of starting a painting with a blank canvas many of Elaine's materials already have a history of their own, which, to some extent, directs the content of the work. James Elaine is an artist and curator living and working between Celeste, TX and Beijing, China. He holds a BFA from The University of North Texas, Denton. From 1989 to 2008 he served as the curator of The Drawing Center, NY and then the Hammer Museum, LA, as the Hammer Projects curator, a program Elaine founded in 1999. In 2012 he founded Telescope, a nonprofit-type gallery in Beijing, to work with and exhibit emerging artists of China and to demonstrate the benefits of a non commercial alternative system. As both an artist and curator, James Elaine fulfills a role of collaborator, and draws parallels between the two worlds. In his art practice he collaborates with the materials and imagery, and as a curator with emerging artists - helping them to find the best inside themselves as well as giving them exhibition opportunities and voice in the local and international art world. |
November 25th, 2023 - February 7th, 2024
“If I could talk to a coral reef, I would ask them to tell me how it is to live on the sea bed, in a parallel world but on this same Earth. I wonder about the adaptative superpowers of all the creatures that live there, and their voices too. I wonder if they know we are here roaming the dry soil and changing the Earth system at large. I wonder, if they can hear the sounds of our oil rigs and our motorboats, and if they enjoy the chatter of airplanes passing by the sky. I wonder if they know about deep sea mining and if, as trees in a forest, they also feel the death of neighbor reefs to blast fishing and trawling. I wonder if they can hear the silence emanating off their bleached bodies and I can’t fail to wonder if they might speak to us as well. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be cooked alive, in an ocean of warming, acidifying waters; but if I could, I would ask them to tell us their story, through the embodied knowledge that they are, as one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth.”
Voice of Coral is the latest chapter in an ongoing research project connected to the postnatural ecologies of coral reefs, and the sophisticated technologies being implemented at oceanic restoration sites, in an effort to accelerate the coral’s adaptation to the changing climate. The exhibition looks closely at the technique of acoustic enrichment, through a series of sculptural sound-based works that invite the viewer to experience the language of coral creatures and the fading voice of a soundscape predicted to disappear within the next century. As part of the exhibition the GAR Gallery will be donating a portion of the exhibition budget to Reef Renewal USA to help fund coral restoration and research. Visitors will also be given the opportunity to actively contribute to these efforts.
Miguel Sbastida (1989, Madrid, Spain) works at the boundary of visual arts and environmental studies to create interdisciplinary installations, situated performances and films that challenge the cultural constructions of our relationship to nature and unveil the interconnected processes of climate breakdown. Sbastida graduated from an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2017) with the full support of a scholarship from La Caixa Foundation. He completed a BFA at Universidad Complutense of Madrid (2007-12) after his BFA studies in Holland (2011) and Canada (2012). His work has been shown internationally at individual and group exhibitions, including the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels; Museo Centro Gaiás, Spain; Locust Projects, Miami; Korea Foundation Gallery, Seoul; CDAN Museum, Spain; CCE Montevideo, Uruguay; Boghossian Foundation, Brussel and the Netherlands Institute for Media Art, Amsterdam among others.
His work is included in the collections of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Joan Flasch Collection, Asia Culture Institute of South Korea, Harvard University, DKV Collection, BilbaoArte Foundation or the Oneminutes Foundation Netherlands.
Voice of Coral was curated by Regine Basha.
His work is included in the collections of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Joan Flasch Collection, Asia Culture Institute of South Korea, Harvard University, DKV Collection, BilbaoArte Foundation or the Oneminutes Foundation Netherlands.
Voice of Coral was curated by Regine Basha.
Coral Talk with marine biologist and former superintendent of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, George P. Schmahl.
Jan. 18th, 2024
6pm-7pm
Jan. 18th, 2024
6pm-7pm
Read Glasstire’s review of Voice of Coral, written by Carris Adams.
August 26th, 2023
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October 14th, 2023
October 14th, 2023
I remember being in the downstairs gallery at the CAMH in the winter of 1993 and seeing an exhibition of paintings by Robin Utterback. It seemed to me that the paintings had crept out from the sidewalks and streets of the neighborhoods surrounding the museum at the time. That show came to mind 30 years later when I was visiting the studio of the painter William Warden, who had just moved to Texas from Philadelphia and had never heard of him or seen his work.
Soon after, I ran into Alison de Lima Greene and she gave me a catalog of a show of Robin’s work at Foltz Fine Art. Thumbing through the catalog, I was struck by how quirky and weird, but also elegant the paintings seemed to me now. There was something that felt very honest about the range of the work; there was a poetic searching in the way one work shifted into another. It was a way of making that is very rare these days.
I wanted the show to travel to the GAR Gallery, but in the end we ended up putting a very different show together. Recruiting William Warden as a Co-curator, we climbed into the storage unit where Robin’s remaining unclaimed works are kept and we selected the works currently on view here. As we were sifting through the paintings, we immersed ourselves in the writings of poets that Robin felt connected with and inspired by, particularly John Ashbery. In 1979, Utterback made a lovely poster for a poetry reading by Ashbery, on the campus of Rice University. In 1987, Ashbery wrote a very positive review for Art in America of Robin’s show in New York at Tibor de Nagy.
It was in Ashbery’s tenth book of poetry, A Wave, that I came upon the poem Introduction.We felt that it captured the spirit of how an Utterback painting is built, and this became the title for the show.
Eric Schnell
8/13/23
Soon after, I ran into Alison de Lima Greene and she gave me a catalog of a show of Robin’s work at Foltz Fine Art. Thumbing through the catalog, I was struck by how quirky and weird, but also elegant the paintings seemed to me now. There was something that felt very honest about the range of the work; there was a poetic searching in the way one work shifted into another. It was a way of making that is very rare these days.
I wanted the show to travel to the GAR Gallery, but in the end we ended up putting a very different show together. Recruiting William Warden as a Co-curator, we climbed into the storage unit where Robin’s remaining unclaimed works are kept and we selected the works currently on view here. As we were sifting through the paintings, we immersed ourselves in the writings of poets that Robin felt connected with and inspired by, particularly John Ashbery. In 1979, Utterback made a lovely poster for a poetry reading by Ashbery, on the campus of Rice University. In 1987, Ashbery wrote a very positive review for Art in America of Robin’s show in New York at Tibor de Nagy.
It was in Ashbery’s tenth book of poetry, A Wave, that I came upon the poem Introduction.We felt that it captured the spirit of how an Utterback painting is built, and this became the title for the show.
Eric Schnell
8/13/23
INTRODUCTION
To be a writer and write things
You must have experiences you can write about.
Just living won’t do. I have a theory
About masterpieces, how to make them
At very little expense, and they’re every
Bit as good as the others. You can
Use the same materials of the dream, at last.
It’s a kind of game with no losers and only one
Winner-you. First, pain gets
Flashed back through the story and the story
Comes out backwards and woof-side up. This is
No one’s story! At least they think that
For a time and the story is architecture
Now, and then history of a diversified kind.
A vacant episode during which the bricks got
Repointed and browner. And it ends up
Nobody’s, there is nothing for any of us
Except that fretful vacillating around the central
Question that brings us closer,
For better and worse, for all this time.
John Ashbery
from A Wave, 1984.
ROBIN UTTERBACK
(1949 - 2007)
Born in the small town of Holton, Kansas, Robin Utterback graduated with a B.A. from Rice University in 1971 and returned as the first student in Rice's Bachelor of Fine Arts program, receiving his B.F.A. in 1974.
Utterback quickly became an essential thread in the fabric of the burgeoning Houston art scene. A year after graduating, Utterback had his first solo exhibition at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in Houston (later Watson/de Nagy & Co.) and would later go on to exhibit in the New York location of the gallery. In 1978, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston made their first acquisition of Utterback’s work, which marked the beginning of a fruitful relationship between the institution and Utterback. The museum collection holds paintings, numerous works on paper and a suite of etchings by Utterback, and would work with him on various projects.
Utterback’s work was included in the seminal 1985 exhibition and publication Fresh Paint, an exhibition of artists deeply connected to Houston that went on to travel to MoMa PS1 and the Oklahoma Art Center, in Oklahoma City.
Often in dialogue with other artists, poets, writers and art historians, Utterback continued to explore the depths of artistic possibilities in various media. From the early 1990s through the early 2000s, Utterback collaborated with fellow artists to create energetic prints, paintings and textiles. During a 2004 tenure in Strasbourg, Utterback began a new series of works incorporating images of masks in his collages and paintings.
Following Utterback’s death in 2007, Galveston Arts Center curator Clint Willour celebrated Utterback’s life and work with the acclaimed exhibition, Remembering Robin Utterback. The exhibition catalogue featured essays and fond writings by Alison de Lima Greene, William C. Agee, Emily L. Todd, Alexandra L. Irvine and more. The artist’s trust actively works with curators, gallerists and collectors to continue the exhibition and collection of Utterback’s work, demonstrating his life and career as an essential part of Texas art history.
Utterback’s work has been exhibited in galleries nationally and in Europe in both solo and group exhibitions. His work is in collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Menil Collection, Houston, McNay Art Museum, as well as numerous other public and private collections in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago and elsewhere. Utterback’s work has been covered in prominent publications such as Art in America, ARTnews, Texas Monthly, Artweek, Houston Chronicle and Houston Press.
(1949 - 2007)
Born in the small town of Holton, Kansas, Robin Utterback graduated with a B.A. from Rice University in 1971 and returned as the first student in Rice's Bachelor of Fine Arts program, receiving his B.F.A. in 1974.
Utterback quickly became an essential thread in the fabric of the burgeoning Houston art scene. A year after graduating, Utterback had his first solo exhibition at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in Houston (later Watson/de Nagy & Co.) and would later go on to exhibit in the New York location of the gallery. In 1978, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston made their first acquisition of Utterback’s work, which marked the beginning of a fruitful relationship between the institution and Utterback. The museum collection holds paintings, numerous works on paper and a suite of etchings by Utterback, and would work with him on various projects.
Utterback’s work was included in the seminal 1985 exhibition and publication Fresh Paint, an exhibition of artists deeply connected to Houston that went on to travel to MoMa PS1 and the Oklahoma Art Center, in Oklahoma City.
Often in dialogue with other artists, poets, writers and art historians, Utterback continued to explore the depths of artistic possibilities in various media. From the early 1990s through the early 2000s, Utterback collaborated with fellow artists to create energetic prints, paintings and textiles. During a 2004 tenure in Strasbourg, Utterback began a new series of works incorporating images of masks in his collages and paintings.
Following Utterback’s death in 2007, Galveston Arts Center curator Clint Willour celebrated Utterback’s life and work with the acclaimed exhibition, Remembering Robin Utterback. The exhibition catalogue featured essays and fond writings by Alison de Lima Greene, William C. Agee, Emily L. Todd, Alexandra L. Irvine and more. The artist’s trust actively works with curators, gallerists and collectors to continue the exhibition and collection of Utterback’s work, demonstrating his life and career as an essential part of Texas art history.
Utterback’s work has been exhibited in galleries nationally and in Europe in both solo and group exhibitions. His work is in collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Menil Collection, Houston, McNay Art Museum, as well as numerous other public and private collections in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago and elsewhere. Utterback’s work has been covered in prominent publications such as Art in America, ARTnews, Texas Monthly, Artweek, Houston Chronicle and Houston Press.