"Farewell Ruins: Julia Haft-Candell and Julia Kunin" There are quite a few similarities in Inman Gallery's new two-person exhibition, "Farewell Ruins." Both artists work in ceramics to create otherworldly sculptures that take on unfamiliar forms that don't strive for perfection. They are also both named Julia. But that's where the similarities end. Through entirely different processes, Julia Haft-Candell and Julia Kunin arrive at pieces that are uniquely strange and captivating. This is the Julias' second group exhibition at Inman, and it's clear why they make such an appropriate pair. Drawn together by their similarities, they each help accentuate what makes the other's work so original and fresh. Kunin's nearly dozen sculptures are lined up in a nice row. Though labeled as vases, they aren't all that practical. For starters, each of them has a very small hole through which to add water or a bouquet; doing so is almost an afterthought. And you wouldn't want to distract from these striking standalone pieces with a few roses or tulips. The Zsolnay porcelain factory in Hungary glazed the Brooklyn-based artist's pieces using a secret technique it invented 150 years ago. Kunin used stones she found in a 15th-century Hungarian monastery. The resulting works have an iridescent luster that looks like gasoline or some other toxic substance. Their craggy, misshapen forms also add to this unnatural feel. It seems as if once perfectly functional vases have corroded and decayed into these current objects, which are nevertheless more interesting to look at in their mutant states. Where Kunin's works are small and contained, Haft-Candell's commandeer the gallery space just on size alone. The Los Angeles artist's floor-bound pieces are a combination of a variety of materials — porcelain fragments, fabric, structuring wire, rebar, thread, wood, cement, ink, gouache, epoxy resin, and more — as well as mediums, as Haft-Candell employs painting, drawing and sculpture. The resulting five assemblages look like bandaged branches or limbs; they invite personification. One of the pieces is even called Elbow, another Charlie. These look like wounded, vulnerable things that Haft-Candell has given a second life, like pastel Frankenstein's monsters that take on a life of their own. Or maybe they're on their last legs, continually broken and then bandaged. The show is titled "Farewell Ruins," after all. Through March 30. 3901 Main. 713-526-7800. — MD
"Greg Miller: Over Time" Greg Miller often gets grouped with the Shepard Faireys and Banksys of the art world, though what the post-pop artist does is quite the opposite of the famed street artists. Miller doesn't go out and tag walls (he considers himself "something of an environmentalist," he says by way of explanation in a recent interview with Los Angeles writer Peter Frank). Rather, he brings the outside in by re-creating walls layered and aged by advertising and graffiti through sculptural paintings that are composed of airbrushed images, drips of paint, pages from mid-20th century novels and ads. The artist, who splits time between L.A. and Austin, presents 12 new paintings that do just that in his first solo show in Texas, currently up at Peveto Gallery. These works represent a new direction for the artist, a favorite in L.A. circles for his cool, slick pop art paintings of swimming beauties and pop iconography. (He's even been commissioned by film directors to create parting gifts for casts, most recently for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained.) But his paintings aren't all Hollywood surface; there's a depth to them. It's in the layered, rugged surface of his canvas — these paintings look as if they were ripped from a brick wall that's been shaped by decades of advertisements, opportunistic street artists and natural elements. It's also in the sentimentality and nostalgia that the specific iconography Miller uses evokes — the popsicles, baseball players, diner signs and pin-up girls that are the main subjects of his collages. These cultural reference points are pulled directly from his father's era. Miller's even re-created images of pin-up girls that his father, a World War II vet, used to have and skillfully airbrushed them to give them the look of photography. These feel not so much like paintings but artifacts. There's much color and pop to these busy, coded works, though one of my favorites is the most subdued. Seven features aged, yellow pages; fragments of ads; a hand of playing cards; and a giant black "7" that's partially obscured by drips of white paint. Its debt to graphic artists like Rauschenberg and Schwitters is clear, though that brazen strip of white paint helps keep it fresh. The "7" also adds an alluring shroud of mystery to it all. Miller's kept some secrets for himself. Through March 9. 2627 Colquitt, 713-360-7098. — MD
