VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

On October 18 through 21, leading contemporary art galleries from across the United States will return to Houston, TX for the second annual Texas Contemporary Art Fair at the George R. Brown Convention Center.

Embodying the pulse and vitality of contemporary art in the heart of the south, the Fair will feature sixty-five galleries exhibiting original works from the most innovative and progressive international and local artists today. This year's Evening Preview will benefit the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) and is expected to raise over $20,000 to support the Museum's free admission policy and newly extended hours.

The roster of exhibitors includes many leading Texan galleries such as Inman Gallery (Houston), Texas Gallery (Houston), Sicardi Gallery (Houston), Moody Gallery (Houston) Lora Reynolds Gallery (Austin), Marty Walker Gallery (Dallas), Conduit Gallery (Dallas), and David Shelton Gallery (San Antonio). In addition, the Fair will showcase renowned galleries from across the country including Angles Gallery (Los Angeles), ACME (Los Angeles), Daniel Weinberg Gallery (Los Angeles), Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts Gallery (Miami), Envoy Enterprises (New York), Feature Inc. (New York), James Harris Gallery (Seattle), Fredric Snitzer Gallery (Miami), Jonathan Ferrara (New Orleans), Gallery Joe (Philadelphia), Greg Kucera Gallery (Seattle), Jeff Bailey Gallery (New York), Lennon Weinberg (New York), Mark Moore Gallery (Culver City), P.P.O.W (New York) and Peter Mendenhall Gallery (Los Angeles).

Building on the strong positive response from visitors at last year's show, TX Contemporary will host public programs at the Convention Center including large-scale sculpture installations and a lecture series. Continuing the tradition of giving back to the community, Fair organizers will once again feature MRKTworks, a small-scale online/live auction that will offer works donated by participating dealers. Sponsored by Texas Contemporary and its exhibitors, the auction will launch two weeks prior to the Fair's opening - proceeds from the auction will benefit several of Houston's non-profit arts organizations.

"We at CAMH are so looking forward to the many wonders the Texas Contemporary will bring to this city," says CAMH's Director Bill Arning. "As someone dedicated to the risky, experimental nature of contemporary art, I remember well the thrills of last year's extravaganza--from Glasstire's art bar complete with a pink pony to the Blaffer's installation of Andy Coolquitt's signature deconstructed sculptures, a preview of their 2013 exhibition with him. I bought a wonderful piece by Houston artist Kent Dorn for myself that I absolutely cherish, and I fear that my best attempts at personal fiscal austerity will fail when faced with so many gems."

"Texas Contemporary is delighted to be partnering with CAMH and other leading arts and cultural organizations throughout the city," adds Texas Contemporary Director Max Fishko."We're looking forward to engaging the local audiences with the quality work shows as well as our top-notch programming including daily print and sculpture demonstrations and a lecture series in conjunction with the School of Visual Arts."

UPDATE OCTOBER 5:
Underscoring the Fair’s commitment to the visitor experience, this year’s line-up of programs will again feature an extensive series of discussions, special events and tours, large-scale installations and the inaugural MRKTworks auction. These on and off-site special events provide visitors with the opportunity to engage with art in an immersive and impactful way and to delver deeper into the innovation and experimentation of the contemporary market.

Events:
Texas Contemporary Art Fair celebrates the burgeoning growth of Houston’s cultural landscaped with an extensive range of tours and events in some of the City’s newest venues.

The week will begin with a pre-show reception hosted by the Asia Society Houston, Julie Kinzelman and Texas Contemporary at the newly unveiled Asia Society designed by architect Yoshio Taniguchi. Throughout the Fair, visitors will be invited to attend a special ribbon cutting ceremony of The Andy Monument with artist Rob Pruitt at CAMH, and Claudia Schmuckli, chief curator and director of the Blaffer Art Museum will host a private lunch as part of a behind-the-scenes tour of the newly-renovated museum.

As well, for the second year, the Opening Night Preview on October 18 will benefit the Contemporary Art Museum Houston (CAMH) and is anticipated to raise over $20,000 to support the museums free admission policy and extended hours.

Discussions & Guided Tours:
Texas Contemporary will host a series of discussions throughout the duration of the Fair. Speakers include artists Rob Pruitt and Eric Beltz as well as CAMH Director Bill Arning and a panel of photo and video artists will be organized and moderated by FotoFest International.

Texas Contemporary visitors are invited to tour of several of the city’s leading museums, private collections, the new Midtown Arts District, and the conservation studio, Whitten & Proctor Fine Art Conservation and

Houston Collector Lester Marks, Museum of Fine Arts Curator Dena Woodhall, and Galveston Arts Center Curator and photography collector Clint Willour, will be among those giving guided tours of the fair. Curatorial Assistant Susan Sutton of the Menil Collection will also conduct a tour the critically-acclaimed exhibition, Silence, which looks at a century of art considering silence.

For more information, visit: http://www.txcontemporary.com/texas/installations-and-events.

Installations:
The artists whose works will be presented at this year’s Texas Contemporary Fair include Eric Beltz, Colby Bird, Dan Douke, Gina Phillips, OKAY MOUNTAIN, Travis Somerville and many others.

Eric Beltz, Revival Wall presented by Morgan Lehman
Beltz’s site-specific 9’ x 12’ wall drawing for Texas Contemporary is derived from the sampler patterns of his Elementary Forces series. Beltz uses the cross-stitch grid-map to create eye-popping illusions in his signature grayscale palette. This installation marks the first time the artist will bring these drawings out of the frame and into this monumental scale.

Gina Phillips, A Sentimental Tree Reminisces presented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery
The installation will be constructed of textiles – the largest of which will be a custom-made tree that will envelope a structural column. Interspersed among the spaces of the branches and the spaces between the ground and the branches will be various sized “thought bubbles”, representing nostalgic scenes from the tree’s past history. The installation will include cutout forms of animals, clouds and teeth; these three components are meant to represent the tree’s past, present and future.

OKAY MOUNTAIN, Roadside Attractions presented by Mark Moore Gallery
The artist collective, OKAY MOUNTAIN, was commissioned to create Roadside Attractions, 2011 for the Cress Gallery of Art at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga as part of the Diane Marek Visiting Artist Series. The sculpture draws upon the mythology and quirkiness of different categories of roadside attractions with the purpose of delighting and confounding the expectations of the browser and would-be tourist. The brochures themselves mimic the discordant imagery and incongruous information often found in a typical visiting center brochure rack. This is a place where do-it-yourself and professional design are typically forced to cohabitate. All one hundred brochures are uniquely designed by the members of the collective. The printed works –-like the brochures upon which they are drawn--are free to take by the viewing public, giving Roadside Attractions of a performative life outside the institutional setting where it originated.

Travis Somerville, Well Division presented by Catharine Clark Gallery
Inspired by the famous photograph showing a refrigerated drinking fountain designated for WHITES sharing the same pluming with a porcelain fountain for COLOREDS, Somerville has created his own set of water fountains loosely based on the 2000 census and anticipation of changes for the 2010 census. Above each fountain is a label and inside each basin is a stereotypical image associated with that group.

Kim Beck, The Sky Is the Limit presented by Mixed Greens
This installation of light boxes of backlit prints captures a series of messages taken from advertising—Space Available, All Sales Final, Everything Must Go--as they were drawn in the sky over Pittsburgh. The phrases, both exciting and portentous, indicate fantastic sales and business closings. The available space advertised is, of course, the most potent symbol of longing in the landscape: the sky. When loosed from paper signs and billboards, the texts evoke open-ended poetic phrases that, as evanescent marks in the sky, gradually fade back into air.

Colby Bird, Cord presented by Lora Reynolds Gallery
Colby Bird’s sculptures are minimal and precarious exercises in balance. The works are comprised of commercially abundant materials, such as chair parts, fruit, and lumber. While his work may appear to be elegant and effortless, he goes to painstaking lengths to create this illusion. Bird’s work carves out a space between high art and youthful insouciance.

Herbert Mehler, WV 745 & WV 716 presented by Lausberg Contemporary
The inspiration for Mehler’s artwork comes from organic and natural matter, such as fruits and seeds. The sculptures serve as a play between light fluid shapes and the seemingly insurmountable weight of the material. Simultaneously, the rhythmic fan-like structure strongly suggests architectural and man-made forms- the rhythm of the corten-steel forms evoke the serene undulating forms of the changing tides or mountain landscapes. It is this ambivalence between the natural and the man-made that makes Mehler’s works so captivating. These sculptures are from Mehler’s KAVEX series (2003- 2009).

Agnes Denes, Pyramids of Conscience presented by Ballroom Marfa
These powerful monuments metaphorically and theoretically encapsulate our world's most precious resource, water. Pyramid I is filled with tap water from Marfa, Pyramid II is filled with polluted water from the Rio Grande River. Pyramid III is filled with recycled motor oil, which symbolically references water as a commodity. Pyramid IV is constructed of mirrors, which reflect ourselves.

Dan Douke, Kingdom Come, presented by Peter Mendenhall Gallery
At first glance, Kingdom Come appears to be two large shipping crates on top of one another. In actuality, the five-sided work is composed of sixteen separate stretched canvases and is completely hand-crafted. The labels are hand-lettered, the wood texture, scrapes and smudges are all hand-painted, highlighting the artists concern with a central topic in Douke’s work: “Is this real?”

Texas Contemporary Award Program
This year marks the launch of the Texas Contemporary Award, a $10,000 cash prize that will be awarded to one of the exhibitor-nominated artists. Guest curator Franklin Sirmans, LACMAS’s Chief Curator of Contemporary Art and CAMH’s Director Bill Arning will review exhibited works submitted for the award and announce their selection at 4PM on Saturday, October 20 in the Fair’s VIP Lounge. In addition to the cash prize, the recipient will also be invited to participate in a public discussion with Arning at the CAMH.

Artadia Awards 2012 Houston
Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue supports visual artists with unrestricted awards and connections to a network of opportunities, while providing local communities with national exposure. Since its founding in 1997 by Christopher E. Vroom, Artadia has awarded over $3 million to over 250 artists in its program cities Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco. This year- Artadia's sixth awards cycle in Houston- the organization will present exceptional artists selected through their rigorous two-tiered jury process following the open call to all visual artists living and working in Houston.

MRKTworks Auction Program
In 2012, Texas Contemporary will also introduce an innovative new program called MRKTworks, a small-scale online/live auction to benefit Houston based arts non-profits. It will benefit many of the City’s leading non profits and feature experience packages and artworks and donated by participating dealers including: Art League Houston (Jessica Halonen), Aurora Picture Show (Michael Kennaugh), ArtBridge Houston (Carl Suddath), Blaffer Art Museum (Experience package), DiverseWorks Art Space (Brian Sharp) and Lawndale Art Center (Markus Linnenbrink). All proceeds (100 percent) from each piece will be donated to their corresponding charity. The auction opens October 4 and will close Sunday, October 21 at 3:30PM.

2012 Event Sponsors include: Cadillac, Cadagon Tate, Mars Culture, Kinzelman Art Consulting, The Weingarten Art Group.

Launched by seasoned fair veterans, Max Fishko and Jeffrey Wainhause, the artMRKT fairs--which includes artMRKT fairs in San Francisco and the Hamptons, Texas Contemporary and the upcoming Miami Project in December--are well received by exhibitors and visitors alike.