VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

DJ Pooks and Josh Zulu host the next edition of Steel Lounge Underground Friday July 31st at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (5216 Montrose, 77006) from 8pm-11pm.

Steel Lounge Underground is a monthly event showcasing Houston based musical artists performing live in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Steel Lounge Underground showcases Houston’s diversity and talent by bringing together musical artists representing a variety of genres and attracts an audience representing all walks of life.

During the event, the audience is free to explore the exhibitions currently on display within the Contemporary Arts Museum. This is a free event!

This month’s musical line-up features Sasha Braverman vs. Henry Chow, Spain Colored Orange & Gracie Chavez!

Musical Lineup:
Sasha Braverman vs. Henry Chow – http://www.myspace.com/sasha901,  http://www.myspace.com/henrychowdj,  Spain Colored Orange – http://www.myspace.com/spaincolouredorange,  Gracie Chavez – http://www.myspace.com/graciechavez. 

Originally from the New York area, Sasha Braverman has been involved in underground dance music since 1993. In 2000, Sasha relocated to Houston where he began to explore new sounds and directions as a DJ. Focusing on the deeper sounds of techno, house, and electro, Sasha has stayed at the forefront of the minimal explosion while maintaining an affinity for his early Detroit and European techno influences. Joining forces with Henry Chow, he has focused on minimal house and techno.

From the East to the West, Henry Chow brings a fresh new sound to the international techno community. Though he keeps his cool from the outside, Chinese-American Chow lets it rip—in the clubs and on vinyl. Henry's sound is basically a rougher, synthesized one, compressed with hypnotic multi-rhythms and extremely hard percussive / tribal influences. Add minimal repetitive melodies on top of it, and there you go.

Gracie Chavez describes herself as “a fast-and-furious-music-loving-mobile-professional-Technics-branded-SUV-drivin’-mommy.” From shedding light on fellow female DJs as a co-founder of the “Les Femmes” project to the recent ten thousand download triumph of her “Yo, Mami” mix, Chavez is quite the overachiever. Chavez’s music choice depends on her mood. From house, electro, retro, '80s remixes, old/new school, Baltimore Club, to baile funke, and Houston rap, you’ll have to make it to Steel Lounge Underground to see what she’ll mix.

To classify Spain Colored Orange as an indie rock band might be a gross generalization. They may inhabit that space comfortably, but Spain is better described as a seamless juxtaposition of Electric Light Orchestra, Air, Wings, Captain Beefheart, and the Buena Vista Social Club. The Houston Press named “Hopelessly Incapable Of Standing In The Way” Album of the Year in 2006, and their forthcoming “Sneaky Like A Villain” LP was produced by Bill Racine (Rogue Wave/Mates of State). “Writing and performing are the two things we do best together as a band. There's nothing like a good show!” says Gilbert Alfaro (vocals and keys).

 Exhibits on view in the museum:

In The Brown Foundation Gallery: No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston On view: May 9 – October 4, 2009. Free from the land-use and zoning ordinances that shape other large American cities by separating residential, commercial, and industrial areas, Houston allows a mixed-use approach where disparate architectures and functions blend. In this often chaotic, jarring urban topography, many Houston artists have been able to carve out spaces and opportunities for themselves, their work, and their communities. No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston is the first museum exhibition to consider the current and past efforts of regional artists working in the urban environment.

The exhibition will feature work by approximately 18 individuals and collaborative teams. Participants contributing new projects include The Art Guys (Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing), who will present a performance that involves marrying a tree; Mary Ellen Carroll, who is reconfiguring an abandoned tract house in the southwestern Sharpstown neighborhood; and Rick Lowe, who celebrates residents of the Third Ward in billboards. Also included is work by current and former Houston artists Bill Davenport, Ben Tecumseh DeSoto, Sharon Engelstein, The Flower Man (Cleveland Turner), The Fundred Dollar Bill Project (Mel Chin et al.), Andrea Grover, collaborators Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, George Hixson, Lauren Kelley, KnittaPlease (Magda Sayeg et al.), Eric Leshinsky, Lee Littlefield, Benjy Mason and Zach Moser of Workshop Houston, Jim Pirtle, and Nestor Topchy.

No Zoning will include examples and documentation of important city interventions and visionary structures from the 1980s to the present. The exhibition will incorporate a combination performance, lecture, and video screening space that will present special programs during the museum’s extended Thursday evening hours. In addition, a series of special artistic programs and educational tours will be located throughout the city.

In the Zilkha Gallery: Perspectives 166: Torsten Slama On view: May 15 – August 2, 2009 The first solo museum exhibition of the work of innovative, Berlin-based artist Torsten Slama, Perspectives 166 will feature a selection of approximately 35 large drawings, paintings, and works in airbrush on paper. Slama’s architectural and landscape scenes and his figurative images are filled with meticulous detail and mysterious narratives. The works often depict post-apocalyptic worlds filled with abandoned avant-garde architecture, esoteric technology, and humans engaged in symbolically charged psychodramas.

Employing an unsettling and captivating style of Magic Realism, Slama’s works share the vertiginous perspectives of traditional Chinese landscape painting and the scathing satire of German Neue Sachlichkeit, or “New Objectivity,” painters and drawers like George Grosz and Otto Dix. Slama’s concerns, however, collapse past and future to reflect the perennial forces shaping individuals and civilizations.