Art in 2022
Here are exhibits that I loved
There were many excellent exhibits in 2022 in Houston and Galveston. I wrote about a bunch of them but not all of them. I didn’t write some of them for a variety of reasons, and the most common was that I couldn’t get photographs. When I write about art, I want to show what I’m talking about. It may not seem it, but I sweat the visuals. Editing photographs is often the most labor-intensive part of writing about an art exhibit for me. But there are other reason I don’t write about a show I liked. My experience of an exhibit may be, “Wow! I’m impressed or delighted or whatever”, but still find when it comes to writing about it, I just don’t anything to say. If I can’t express an interesting opinion, I’d rather be silent. (This statement presupposes my opinions are interesting. I should say, I want to express an opinion that is interesting to me.) Nonetheless, here are some of the exhibits I saw and liked in 2022, in no particular order.
Black [Between The Lines] by Ronald Jones at Hooks-Epstein Gallery. I wrote a review of this pleasing exhibit.
An American Project by Dawoud Bey at the Museum of Fine Arts. A huge exhibit of Bey’s photographs. Seeing so many of his photographs at once reminds me of what a magnificent body of work he has created over his career.
What I Saw by Joseph E. Yoakum at Menil Drawing Center. Yoakum is lumped into the category of “outsider artist” because he was self-taught. Yoakum spent a good portion of his youth and young adulthood wandering the US in various capacities, which is reflected in the landscapes shown here. Like so many “outsider artists”, he was accidentally “discovered” by some Chicago artists in the early 60s, which is why we know about his amazing work now.
Gathering What’s Tangible by the artists of Open MFA (including Jen Bootwala, Alexandra Isabel Lechin, Erica Reed Lee, Lorena Mitchell, Helen Sharpless, Dana Caldera, Amanda Powers, Hugo Perez, and Cynthia Giron) at Flatland Gallery. This was one I wrote about when it was displayed.
Hell and the Paradisal by Robyn O’Neil at Inman Gallery. A combination of some newer work and one enormous, staggering older work.
Entry Points. Site Specific Work from Six Contemporary Houston Artists (Jonathan Paul Jackson, Ronald L. Jones, Gabriel Martinez, Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud, Patrick Renner, and Emily Sloan). The Orange Show has stepped up as a venue for art exhibits this year thanks to curator Pete Gershon.
African Spirits by Samuel Fosso at the Menil Museum. Fosso is a Cameroonian photographer who, in this exhibit, displays self-portraits of himself as very well-known Afircan and African-American persons, like Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Muhammad Ali and Malcom X. Often the photos are quotations of famous older photos. Fosso places himself in history, reminding us that he is the result of history happening. This exhibit is up until January 15, 2023.
Wayfinding by Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin at the Blaffer Gallery. This exhibit at the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston was the first museum exhibit for Vaughan and Margolin. All the works shown are part of their ongoing examination of mostly forgotten episodes and locations of gay history in the United States. The works have a ghostly appearance that is partly achieved by using wind as part of the drawing process.
Along These Lines with Eric Schnell, Kathleen McShane, Charles Mary Kubricht, Randy Twaddle, and Michael Henderson at Galveston Art Center. The Galveston Arts Center has had a fantastic year in 2022. This is one of several exhibits I loved there.
A Trip Thru the Jungle by Dual and Russ Rubin at Reeves Art + Design. The spectacle of this exhibit’s opening, with a plane crash and live snakes, made seeing the art a challenge. I had to come back the next week to see the art without the crowds and reptiles; it was well worth the additional trip. Reeves Art + Design, like the Galveston Art Center, has been killing this year.
Cold Road by Helen Altman at Moody Gallery. Altman’s detailed drawing of trees (alive and dead, as in Pile shown above) were beautiful, and the pieces on old chalkboards made one imagine Altman carefully drawing them with chalk (although they were apparently done with acrylic paint). I was charmed by that homespun optical trickery.
Then Somewhere They Must Be Believing In Me by Jon Read at Ruth Street Projects. I’ve been following Jon Read’s jolly artwork for years. It was nice to see this intense, fluorescent art show at Ruth Street Project, one of the latest in a string of galleries to be hosted in an artist’s home in Houston. Ruth Street Project is a Terry Suprean joint.
Soul of Black Folks by Amoako Boafo at the Contemporary Arts Museum. Boafo is a painter from Ghana, and his exhibit of portraits appeal to me because of the swirling, unexpected brushwork.
The Table of Love by JooYoung Choi at Nancy Littlejohn Fine Art. I have loved JooYoung Choi’s art for a long time, and loved this show. But weirdly enough, Nancy Littlejohn Fine Art closed right in the middle of Choi’s show. I have never gotten a convincing explanation of what happened.
Urban Impressions: Experiencing the Global Contemporary Metropolis with Rana Begum, Kahlil Irving, Julie Mehretu, Sohei Nishino, Emeka Ogboh, Robin Rhode, Seher Shah, Liu Wei, and Michael Wolf, as well as Houston-based artists, such as Charis Ammon, Tiffany Chung, Mary Flanagan, and Rick Lowe at Moody Art Center. I saw this exhibit, liked lots of the art shown, almost wrote about it but decided not to because I couldn’t connect all the artworks in my mind to the central theme of “cities”. One thing I liked about it was the inclusion of Houston artists with an otherwise international group of artists
Undeniable by Nick Barbee at Galveston Arts Center. Another banger from the Galveston Arts Center. Barbee has been living in Galveston for about ten years and this show was a retrospective of his work on that island.
Five Artists Five Rooms with David Hardaker, Christopher Cascio, Emanuel Araujo, Max Kremer, and Terry Suprean at Reeves Art + Design. David Hardaker put together this exhibit of four of his peers and one much younger artist. Reeves Art & Design crushed it in 2022!
My Exhibition by Meret Oppenheim at Menil Museum. Everyone knows Object, the fur-lined teacup. saucer and spoon. It is one of the classic surrealist objects. This show made me realize just how deep her career as an artist went.
Elizabeth Warren’s Ear by Iva Kinnaird at F. F was one of the nicest discoveries of the year for me and this exhibit is one of the reasons why.
Critical Mass by Joachim West at Galveston Art Center. Talking about the continuing greatness of the Galveston Art Center only makes me want to see what’s coming up this year. West continued his practice of detailed, disturbing drawings while expanding into ceramics for this lovely small exhibit.
Gatherings by Sunni Forcier, John Mark Sager, and Ward Sanders at Hooks-Epstein. When Geri Hooks died in 2021, it was reasonable to wonder if the gallery would continue at all, and beyond that if its exhibits would be any good. My judgment is that Hook-Epstein and its director Yvonne Garcia have succeeded. This small exhibit featured artists making stuff out of civilization’s random detritus.
Philip Guston Now by Philip Guston at the Museum of Fine Arts. This show was delayed over a year. But when it came, it was worth the wait. It was my favorite exhibit of the year. I thought I knew about Guston, but seeing work from the very earliest to works from the last year of his life in this exhibit, I got a much better understanding of Guston. You see how in his earliest paintings, he developed motifs and colors that he would never abandon. Considering how much of his reputation is built on his rejection his past, this was a revelation. I was asked to provide the audio accompaniment for one of the paintings, Cellar. Alison de Lima Greene, one of Philip Guston Now’s curators, wanted me to talk about the comic strip elements that appear in this painting. This lead me down a rabbit hole of research to figure out what newspapers and therefore what comic strips Guston must have been reading as a child in Los Angeles. I think I have uncovered some interesting shit that will probably become a post sometime this year. If you haven’t seen this exhibit, for Christ’s sake—hurry. It’s on display until January 16. I have seen it many times over the last few months, and plan to see it one more time before it closes.
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So thrilled you included Yoakum’s Menil show amongst your year’s favorites. The genius of Yoakum circumvents the term “outsider” as does most art of that genre, especially when reduced to its Art Brüt root meaning. As biased as I am, being close to several of the Chicago Imagists and hearing personal stories about Yoakum, notwithstanding. His work will always stand on its own merit in any venue in any city. Kudos again on the inclusion.