“Ayanah Moor: Word!” It seems like anything can be deemed
a work of art once it’s been placed on a gallery wall, and Ayanah Moor’s
work on view at Lawndale is a classic example of this phenomenon. For the “A
to Z Like Me” series, Moor silk-screened definitions of African-American slang
on black paper and provided her own sample sentences for the use of these terms.
No doubt her work makes a serious comment upon how African-Americans have transformed
and recontextualized American English, but the exhibition makes us wonder why
it wouldn’t have worked just as well in book form. Perhaps the Pittsburgh-based
artist felt her message would be better received in a hushed gallery than on
a messy coffee table. Interestingly enough, she also silk-screened an image
of her own face behind words that, she says, apply to her, which allows us to
assume that she’s (in alphabetical order) a dyke who’s always
fronting like she’s hot shit, perhaps because she wears her
hair natural, just like a real sister should. Uh-huh, yo.
Through March 27 at Lawndale Art Center, 4912 Main, 713-528-5858.
“Home/land: Artists, Immigration, and Identity” If you’re
the type who bemoans the current trend in contemporary art where novelty is
given preference over skill, then you should give contemporary craft a second
look. The “Home/land” exhibition at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
showcases several artists with some serious chops, including Vesna Todorovic
Miksic and Dinh Q. Lê, two artists whose work reflects their experiences
as immigrants in this country. Born in Serbia, Miksic has crafted several garments
from road trip-friendly materials, including $1 bills, Yugoslav currency, financial
documents and water bottles. The über-practicality of her clothing line
is a flagrant metaphor for the difficulties of the long immigrant journey. Exploring
similar themes are Lê’s photo-tapestries, consisting of two pictures
of his homeland woven together by means of traditional Vietnamese grass-mat
techniques. In Persistence of Memory #16, he has woven a historical image
of the Vietnam War with a movie still about the same subject, thus blurring
the line between image and reality. The sheer conceptual and technical complexity
involved in the creation of these works proves that contemporary craft is about
far more than macramé doilies and macaroni place mats. Through March 28.
4848 Main, 713-529-4848.
“Matthew Ritchie: Proposition Player” Matthew Ritchie has
built his body of work around his own constructed cosmology. In 1995, he made
a list of everything that interests him — solitude, color, DNA, sex — and
created a grid of characters. The results: a system for making art about “everything.”
But if Ritchie really wants to make art about everything, he needs a container
to hold it. His installation at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston has too
much stuff going on: drawings on the floor and gallery walls, paintings, a tablelike
sculpture, an interactive gaming table, projections and 3-D transparencies,
a room of delicate drawings and a diagram of Ritchie’s map of characters
transformed into a card deck. Most of the works are satisfying in and of themselves,
but overall, the exhibition seems torn between conventionally presenting paintings
and drawings and fully embracing the potential of installation. Through March
14. 5216 Montrose, 713-284-8250.
“Perspectives 140: Anne Wilson” Chicago artist Anne Wilson
breathes a life force into inanimate objects in her video installation, Errant
Behaviors, one of three fascinating works on view at the CAM. In the work,
a heap of lace attempts to walk, like Buster Keaton playing a drunk. A pin carries
a tangle of cloth. Two more pins bend and caress each other. To create the piece,
Wilson and her collaborators used stop-action animation to make the sewing materials
move, anthropomorphizing them into 23 film sketches reminiscent of old silent
slapstick shorts. Another work, A Chronicle of Days, features 100 locks
of hair embroidered onto 100 pieces of white damask and arrayed in a grid. And
Topologies, (1-4.04) consists of a long table with pieces of black lace
arrayed in organic, topological patterns. The pieces here reveal the cheerful
play of an interesting mind. Wilson is an artist and a theorist, addressing
process, performance, hierarchies and feminist issues. But none of the theoretical,
intellectual wordplay prevents these pieces from being comprehensible and enjoyable
on a straightforward aesthetic level. Through April 4 at Contemporary Arts Museum,
5216 Montrose, 713-284-8250.
“TRESPASSING: Houses x Artists” For this exhibition, nine
artists working in conjunction with architects and exhibition organizers Alan
Koch and Linda Taalman of TK Architecture present drawings and models for houses.
Chris Burden’s “Small Skyscraper” grew out of a loophole in the Los Angeles
County building code that allows structures under 400 square feet and less than
35 feet high to be built without a permit. It features four claustrophobic floors
that are 100 square feet each. Other projects explore prefab designs: Julian
Opie’s plan uses U-shaped pre-cast concrete units, while T. Kelly Mason’s
work puts kitchens and baths into pre-engineered Butler Buildings. Artist Renee
Petropoulos offers one of the most provocative ideas of the show, using the
vernacular of the gas station mini-mart as a model for residential architecture.
If you think about it, her design makes sense. Where else do you get food and
coffee and go pee when you’re out of your own domestic sphere? But as is
the case with Barbara Bloom’s convoluted ³Mood Ring Home” — which
is basically a lot of different takes on a not-very-interesting concept involving
IKEA furniture, a board game and a computer game — much of the show needs editing.
Many works are visually sterile architectural translations rather than real
collaborations between the artists and architects. Through March 14. Blaffer
Gallery, 120 Fine Arts Building, University of Houston, 713-743-9530.
This article appears in Mar 11-17, 2004.