Capsule Reviews

“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.

“The Passionate Adventure of the Real: Collage, Assemblage and the
Object in 20th Century Art” Seriously mundane objects (discarded toys,
wrecked cars, worn shoes, packing crates, burlap, seashells, wallpaper, animal
skins, dolls, dirt, twigs, rusty nails, bottle caps, porcelain birds, pictures
of rap stars) sometimes become sublime in the hands of the artists featured
in “The Passionate Adventure of the Real.” And sometimes they remain
mundane. Machine parts are turned into flowers; a plaster Venus de Milo is adorned with thorns and a feathered serpent; smashed auto body parts are
twisted into precarious balance. Wallpaper and upholstery fabric tell the stories
of an Argentinean prostitute. Memorials to children lost in the holocaust and
immigrants suffocated in a boxcar stand next to one another. Epoxy flies are
embedded in a large abstract painting. And motors, pulleys, belts and tubing
are combined into elaborate machines which seem to do nothing at all. As an
assembly of assemblages, the show is more like a pile of jigsaw pieces than
a completed puzzle. Featured are works by artists in Italy, Paraguay, Hungary,
Argentina, New York and even Houston. Through March 7. Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston, 1001 Bissonnet, 713-639-7300.

“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 “Mood 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.