VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

This fall, Blaffer Art Museum inaugurates the academic year with two major exhibitions featuring Gabriel Kuri and Amy Patton, each artist's first solo exhibition organized by a U.S. museum.

This fall, Blaffer Art Museum inaugurates the academic year with two major exhibitions featuring the internationally renowned Mexican artist Gabriel Kuri and the Berlin-based native Texan Amy Patton. Presented in conjunction with the celebration of the Mexican Bicentennial, Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab is a ten-year survey of sculptures and collages that chart our daily existence as a series of exchanges and transactions.

Amy Patton, in the upstairs galleries, features three films -- one of which was commissioned for her exhibition at Blaffer -- and a new series of photographs.

Both shows, each artist's first solo exhibition organized by a U.S. museum, are on view from Aug. 28 through Nov. 13, 2010, at Blaffer Art Museum, located in the Fine Arts Building on the University of Houston's central campus. The public is invited to a free opening reception on Friday, Aug. 27, from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. Complimentary drinks will be provided.

Absorbed by questions of production and exchange, and their imprint on the cultural economies of time and space, Gabriel Kuri distils his observations of the everyday into images of subtle power that have garnered him a reputation as a "poetic activist." Over the past decade, Kuri has concentrated on making sculptures and collages that zealously rummage through the realm of material consumption. Both his objects and images are often created from the residue of monetary exchanges and the consumed goods that the artist collects on a daily basis. Kuri is a material archivist who extracts visual and linguistic value from the tracking systems, retail supplies and trivial marketing mechanisms that constitute our daily lives. He is also a spatial archivist, drawing attention to and decoding the physical spaces his work engages. His installations are carefully conceived in relation to the circumstantial codification of the site and thus engage a complex set of socioeconomic conditions specific to a particular time and place.

Amy Patton's work explores how we make sense of objects, images and texts with the imperfect understandings, associative misfires and irrationality that are a natural part of the way we think. She was born and raised in Texas, and over the past five years, while based in Berlin, she has made a series of films set in her home state. Patton's most recent film, Oil (2010), was filmed in the Quintero black box theatre at the University of Houston School of Theatre & Dance with local Houston actors and students from the university. It is both a filmed theater piece and a documentary on the making of the film itself. Taking Upton Sinclair's Oil! as a point of departure, Patton plays with slippages between the novel's characters and plot and the experiences of the actors and artist in making the film. The film was commissioned by the University of Houston's Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts with support from Blaffer and the UH School of Theatre & Dance.

Patton's exhibition at Blaffer debuts Oil alongside a new series of photographs and earlier films with Texan origins. One such film, A Satisfied Mind (2005), is inspired by a character in the Jorge Luis Borges short story "Funes, the Memorious" and is comprised of short excerpts from films found tangled together in a garbage bag in Austin, Texas. From just a few snippets of three archival films involving early aviation disasters, amnesia and riding a Greyhound bus, Patton constructs a complex story about memory, trauma, coincidence and authority.

Organized by Blaffer director and chief curator Claudia Schmuckli, Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab, is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. The publication features an essay by Schmuckli, a text by artist and writer Abraham Cruzvillegas, and an interview with Kuri edited by Elena Filipovic, writer and associate curator at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels.

Gabriel Kuri lives and works in Mexico City and Brussels, Belgium. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is a graduate of the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Mexico City. Kuri's recent accolades include his selection to design the visual identity for the 2011 Armory Show and his inclusion in the 2010 Frieze Projects. Following its Blaffer debut, Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab will be on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, from Feb. 3 through July 4, 2011.

Organized by Blaffer associate curator Rachel Hooper, Amy Patton is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication entitled "bitter, black thoughts." The publication features essays by Hooper and German novelist and artist Ingo Niermann, as well as an interview with Patton by Christina Linden, curatorial fellow at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Amy Patton was born in Nacogdoches, Texas, and currently lives and works in Berlin. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in experimental film and media design from the Universität der Künste in Berlin and a dual Bachelor's degree in art history and studio art from the University of Texas at Austin.

Schedule of Events:

6 - 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 27
Opening Reception

12 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8
Brown Bag Gallery Tour in conjunction with Amy Patton

12 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 15
Brown Bag Gallery Tour in conjunction with Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab

6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 22
Contemporary Salon in conjunction with Amy Patton Presented in collaboration with the UH Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts

4 - 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30
Red Block Bash
Presented by the Blaffer Student Association in collaboration with the UH Mitchell Center

6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 20
Contemporary Salon in conjunction with Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab
Presented in collaboration with the UH Mitchell Center

6:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11
Performance by Dominic Walsh Dance Theater
Tickets: 713.652.3938

About Blaffer: Founded in 1973, Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston was named in honor of the late Sarah Campbell Blaffer, a noted Houston arts patron and collector. Since its inception, the museum has been a vital force in the presentation and promotion of contemporary visual arts in Houston. Blaffer is located in the Fine Arts Building on the University of Houston's central campus, entrance 16 south of Cullen Boulevard. It is free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Sundays, Mondays, university holidays and during exhibition installations (visit the website or call to confirm). The museum is ADA compliant. For general inquiries, please call 713.743.9521, or visit the museum online at www.blafferartmuseum.org.

Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab is organized by Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. The exhibition and publication are made possible, in part, by the Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Consulate General of Mexico in Houston, and Bank of America. In kind support is provided by Continental Airlines.

Amy Patton is organized by Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. The exhibition and publication are made possible, in part, by The Cecil Amelia Blaffer von Furstenberg Endowment for Exhibitions and Programs. Amy Patton is the spring 2010 artist-in-residence at the University of Houston's Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts. Additional residency support is provided by Blaffer and the University of Houston School of Theatre & Dance.

Blaffer exhibitions and programs are supported by the Blaffer Director's Discretionary Endowment Fund, the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, The George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, and the Texas Commission on the Arts. Educational outreach programs are made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services. Additional educational support is provided by Dorothy C. Sumner and the Travelers Foundation. Staff salaries are supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Pictured Above:  Gabriel Kuri, detail Sin t’tulo / Untitled (Jamais), 2006, Turn stubs on vintage magazine page, 10 1/4 x 10 inches. Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City. Photograph: Estudio Michel Zabé.