The Austin arts sizzle this July with an assortment of innovative opportunities to whet the artistic appetite. Get your VR on at Wonderspaces with two new film installations to fill you with awe, artistically of course. Explore cultural connections between Texas and Mexico with ICOSA Collective in the exhibit “Where the Borders Meet.” Discover other landscapes in the symbolic drawings of Dan Jian at Women & Their Work. The art scene is simmering this July, and there’s so much to soak up.
Wonderspaces
Shigeto: Hovering and Immersive — New Installations
Wonderspaces is clever at constantly bringing in new immersive and thought-provoking art installations; Not to mention they have a full bar, so you can sip and enjoy the oeuvres. The latest installations are two new VR films, Shigeto: Hovering by Conor Grebel and 79Ancestors, and Immersive by Jérémy Oury, Antoine Briot, and ARCAAN Collective. Hovering is a transcendent tale of life-giving water brought to a dying planet. The film includes objects found in nature and digitally scanned, making an alien world of earthly design. Immersive is an 8-minute sequence of continually "self-reconfiguring geometric forms" and "electroacoustic compositions" that invite visitors into a new arrangement of space-time.
Link & Pin Gallery
“Summer Exposure: Session 2” — Now through July 8
Link & Pin is offering five exhibitions over the course of the summer, each lasting two weeks and running through Saturday, August 26. Their current show features work by Christopher Van Loan, Suzanne Courtney, and Gerda Sessions, aka Murdock. "Van Loan employs an innovative technique that blends traditional artistry with unexpected elements," says the gallery website. "Using unconventional tools like putty and drywall finishing knives, he applies foundational colors and textures onto the canvas." Courtney "loves mixed media," as displayed in her hybrid pieces, while Murdock’s abstract works "capture real life moments through the interaction of line, color and movement on canvas."
Yard Dog
Scott Griffin & Rita Koos: "Two Birds, One Stone” — Now through July 29
Married Toronto artists, Scott Griffin and Rita Koos produce paintings that although very different in aesthetic and style, still seem to compliment and pair well with of each other. Koos paints with a "bright, almost lurid palette" to create bold, heavily made-up ladies, while Scott uses "quiet and more muted tones" for his paintings of condensed bodies: in the water, on land, in the trees and in a chorus line.
ICOSA Collective Gallery
Jonas Criscoe & Mai Gutierrez: "Where The Borders Meet” — July 7 through August 5
“Where the Borders Meet” is, not surprisingly, an exploration of the cultural connections between Texas and Mexico. "Through the use of natural materials, found objects and imagery," each artist expresses existence between the borders and what it means for a border to be fluid and have no form, just a “soft transition from one body to another.” Criscoe is an interdisciplinary artist and Gutierrez is an Austin based multi-disciplinary architect and artist.
Courtesy of Yard Dog
"Poker Face," by Rita Koos from "Two Birds, One Stone."
Wally Workman Gallery
Joyce Howell: "Solo Show” — July 8 through 29
Joyce Howell’s paintings are all informed by nature, and her canvases are a swirl of placid and chaotic color. She describes her work as an ongoing conversation, “each color and mark applied to the canvas informs the next; colors give the impression of physical weight and become instruments, much as in a musical composition.” It’s no coincidence that Howell says her work is inspired by abstract expressionists.
Dougherty Arts Center
Begin Collective: "I See You See Me" — July 8 through August 12
“I See You See Me” is a photo exhibit that questions what queerness is "'supposed' to look like." Including residents from Austin, the premise of the exhibit asserts that "people who exist outside of Western society’s hegemonic norms are valuable and have stories worth sharing." Begin Collective, by its own description, "is a photo-based program serving folks at the intersection of LGBTQ+, non-binary and disabled, chronically ill, or neurodivergent identity."
Women & Their Work
Dan Jian: "The Bow Whispers to the Arrow” — July 15 through September 7
What’s more intriguing than canvases created with dust? Dan Jian’s drawings, which she calls “meditations on the act of looking” are created by using charcoal dust and burned ashes mixed together and then fixed on translucent paper. "This process allows the medium to form gravitational washes, similar to the effect of ink," describes the website. "Then ... she uses scissors, an Exacto knife, and glue to create introverted landscapes filled with imaginary narratives and symbols ... like mundane modern images pulled from the Texas landscape seamlessly [merging] with non-western and ancient pictorial motifs."
