With just enough space to display a single work, the entryway in Inman Gallery has always served as an alluring preview of what's to come in the main gallery. And for its summer show, this piece is one roller coaster of a print.
Emily Joyce's "Fuchsia Rose in Mike Kelley's Garden or Schooner 1" is a dizzying spiral vortex, a fuchsia-pink-red bull's-eye. It's a flat, top-down view of the flower, an apparent ode to the late installation artist, that sucks you right in.
Joyce is one of six artists in Inman's current ArtHouston and PrintHouston show, which explores printmaking practices in contemporary art by some gallery regulars. There is an impressive range in the modest show, with unique prints -- monotypes and, like Joyce's, silk screens -- as well as more conventional etchings and lithographs, and even digital works.
Jason Salavon's is the latter. The artist is known for his portrait amalgamations, wherein he uses self-designed computer software to create the average composite of multiple, related photographs. Salavon could have a show to himself of these clever, ultramodern works, but the show chooses one specimen -- "Portrait (Hals)," a composite of self-portraits by Dutch master painter Frans Hals. Salavon's print has that identifiable, soft look of a Dutch Golden Age painting, but, with Hals's face blurry and undefined, there's a ghostly quality to the print that makes you pause. There's some modern magic going on here.
Darren Waterston also brings some experimentation with his tondos, or circular works. In "No. 6," he has a nondescript landscape monotype, but it's been invaded by a dripping splotch of bright blue paint around the lower left. It's a simple detail that elevates the work.
On the more traditional side, there's a nine-color lithograph by David Aylsworth, "Gee, But It's Good to Be Here." The Houston artist is coming off a well-regarded solo show in the main space of his mostly white, paint-heavy canvases. The print seems thin and fragile in comparison, but there's still a lot to take in of Aylsworth's bold, intersecting circles and triangles. (And you can always wander to the back of the gallery to see his canvas works.)
The show ends with Dario Robleto's "Will The Sun Remember At All," a grid of nine archival digital prints that take up an entire wall. Each print is the image of a light taken from a live album cover, but they're all so abstracted from the original source that they look like suns. They're each named after the artist and album in question, a random assortment of artists, including Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, T. Rex and Johnny Cash, with the unifying factor that they're all dead. These "stars" have all burnt out. It's an epic work.
"New Prints: Gallery Artists" at Inman Gallery, 3901 Main, runs now through August 18. For more information, call 713-526-7800 or visit www.inmangallery.com.
