VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents a MFAH Artist Talk (contemporary@mfah): Sculptor Joel Shapiro, Thursday, Nov 17, 2011, 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM This program is generously cosponsored by Rice University Art Gallery and contemporary@mfah.

Joel Shapiro (born 1941) is internationally renowned for his dynamic work composed of simple rectangular shapes. “Shapiro’s sculptures are figurative . . . the sculptures ‘figure’ the artist’s internalized experience, both sensory and emotional,” writes Professor Richard Shiff from the University of Texas.

Shapiro’s bronze sculptures, including Untitled in the MFAH’s Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden, suggest reductive figures of elegant gesture and energy. The forms convey movement: they bend, twist, pivot, stretch, or turn inward upon themselves. The artist has observed: “My sculpture is more about touching down on the ground than building up from the ground.”

In his latest body of work, Shapiro suspends painted wood elements in space from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Although these installations utilize architecture, “they are about the projection of thought into space without the constraint of architecture,” Shapiro explains. In this special Houston presentation, the artist talks about his upcoming exhibition at Rice University Art Gallery (opens Thursday, February 2, 2012) and his ongoing project to liberate forms from gravity in such a way that the viewer becomes part of the narrative.

Admission is free and open to the public. A reception follows the program.

Pictured:  Joel Shapiro, Untitled, 1990, bronze. Gift of Max and Isabell Smith Herzstein in memory of Benjamin K. Smith. © Joel Shapiro.