The Museum District’s Gallery 1724 is actually a gallery-slash-salon which makes for some interesting choices of exhibition spaces. In the case of ”Unpremeditated Natures: Russ Havard and David McClain,” currently on exhibit at the gallery, that includes the bathroom walls. Houston artist David McClain has filled one room with art traditionally framed and displayed in a grid. He calls it his Lawyers series, and in it, the artist (a lawyer himself, though he’s currently not practicing) uses as source material meta magazine ads that advertise specialized law services geared towards other lawyers. He paints over the people and text in thick lines and patches, obscuring and revealing to create works that subvert the ad’s original meaning including such phrases as ”experience counts,” ”integrity” and ”innovative solutions.”
Alongside the Lawyers series is Works of Paper, an installation that layers the bathroom inside and out with paintings. McClain refers to his process here as ”painting as meditation.” Working in an undisciplined, unconscious process, the artist has created works that range from the abstract — splotches and rivers of moody color — to more representational — mostly faces and bodies composed in a naive style. There’s also the occasional photograph, which is the artist’s primary medium. Small graphite drawings by Lufkin artist Russ Havard line the walls of another room. Noon to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Through January 26. 1724 Bissonnet.
Tuesdays-Saturdays, 12-6 p.m. Starts: Dec. 18. Continues through Jan. 26, 2012
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2012.