VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Art League Houston presents The Emotional Life of a Spy, an installation by Houston-based artist Sasha Dela, featuring a unique selection of found and handmade sculpture and video, inspired by the acclaimed 1935 Alfred Hitchcock spy thriller, The 39 Steps. The opening reception is 6 - 9 PM Friday, May 25, 2012 with artist comments at 6:30 PM. The exhibition is on view until July 6, 2012 in the Main Art League Gallery.

The Emotional Life of a Spy transforms the Art League Main Gallery into a mysterious and thrilling behind-the-scenes type landscape, filled with a domestic and theatrical ambiance that echoes the film noir style embedded within The 39 Steps.

The exhibition includes a series of projected video’s amid a selection of curiously placed domestic items that reference the engaging ‘in-between moments’ of the vintage spy thriller; capitalizing on the characters emotional filled glances at one another, their moments of being lost in the landscape, and the dark shadow filled interiors of the movie. The show expounds upon Dela’s continued interest in and connection to landscape, the moving image, and the arrangement of objects. These works explore the sense of connection and loss, that permeate everyday experience.

Sasha Dela - Dela completed a residency at the Museum of Fine Arts’ Core Program in 2007. She received her Master of Fine Art in San Francisco at California College of the Arts in 2005, and her Bachelor of Fine Art at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2000, and was awarded the DeCosse Fellowship, to study at the Accademia Di Belle Arte, Florence, Italy in 2000. Dela is Houston Regional Editor for the Temporary Art Review, St Louis. Sasha Dela is the co-founder and co-director of SKYDIVE, an art space hosting a range of art practices that push the limits of their material forms.

In 2009 Dela’s large-scale public project, Variegated Continuum, was on display on location at the Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin. Dela’s recent solo projects include Natural Commodity, at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary (2008) and Let Love Flow at Women and Their Work in Austin (2009). Other recent exhibitions include the Insurance is not Always Insured at Henry Street Settlement (2009) in New York, the Houston Area Exhibition at the Blaffer Museum (2008), and the Arthouse traveling exhibition, New American Talent (2006-2008).

She has also exhibited at the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery as a recipient of the San Francisco Foundation Cadogan Award. Sasha Dela is on the board of Lawndale Art Center, and the Artist Incubation Residency Committee at Project Row Houses. Dela is a two-time recipient of the Warhol Foundation’s Idea Fund for her work with Skydive Art Space and Buffet DVD. In 2011 her project Your Calm Able Spirit was displayed on the billboard project RoasignUSA.

Also on view at Art League Houston: SNAP:THIRTY ARTISTS CELEBRATE THIRTY YEARS and Tu Eres O No Tu Eres Mi Baby (Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby): Paintings by Ricky Armendariz.