HOUSTON, TX.- The Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston recently announced its exhibiion program for the rest of the year and 2009.
Perspectives 163: Every Sound You Can Imagine considers experimental musical scores as works of visual art. Organized around the manuscript collection of Robert Shimshak, this group exhibition samples the diverse array of notational strategies employed by composers and artists from the 1950s through the present day—from Henry Brant, John Cage, Earle Brown, and Karlheinz Stockhausen through Christian Marclay, Stephen Vitiello, and Marina Rosenfeld, among others. Every Sound You Can Imagine traces the development of musical notation, from the first wave of experimental notation in the 1950s through its resurgence in the late 1990s, when it sprang off the page and into video, photography, sculpture, and new media. The exhibition explores the cross fertilization between musicians and visual artists in the New York School, Fluxus, Conceptualism, Minimalism, and other contemporary art movements, and reveals the vital connections between experimental sound art and cutting-edge visual art today. The exhibition is guest curated by Christoph Cox in association with CAMH senior curator Toby Kamps and collector Robert Shimshak.
Collaborating with The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Cinema Remixed & Reloaded is the first exhibition to examine the critical contributions of black women film and video artists to the field of contemporary art. Featuring projections, installations, interactive CD-ROM projects, experimental film and video work, the exhibition spans across generations and geographic boundaries to present work by more than 40 artists. Works by established artists who began working with the medium in the 1970s such as Adrian Piper, Carroll Parrott Blue, Senga Nengudi, Julie Dash, and Howardena Pindell, are presented alongside works created by midcareer and emerging artists such as Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Bernie Searle, Kara Walker, Marìa Magdelena Campos-Pons, Elizabeth Axtman, Zoë Charlton, Jessica Ann Peavy, Tracey Rose, Lauren Kelley, Lauren Woods, and Xaviera Simmons. A significant catalogue co-published by the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, accompanies this exhibition and functions as an essential reader on the subject of black women artists and the moving image since 1970.
The exhibition has been made possible by grants from the Fulton County Arts Council under the guidance of the Fulton County Arts Council and Peter Norton Family Foundation; the Friends of The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and by the patrons, benefactors, and donors of Contemporary Arts Museum Houston��s Major Exhibition Fund. The accompanying catalogue has been made possible by a grant from The Brown Foundation Inc., of Houston.
In her first solo museum show, San Francisco-based artist Stephanie Syjuco uses bootlegging, counterfeiting, and re-appropriation tactics in her photographs, videos, and sculptures. By confronting the limitations, proliferations, and nuances of today��s global economy and digital technologies, Syjuco investigates, interrupts, and reinvigorates sites of transcultural communication, international capitalism, and Modern aesthetics. Perspectives 164: Stephanie Syjuco will feature the artist��s photographic series The Village (Small Encampments), in which Syjuco takes viewers on a journey through the Philippines and her apartment by inserting diorama-like cutouts she��s constructed from tourist photos posted on the Internet into her domestic space, as well as video and sculpture.
International in scope, The Puppet Show brings together contemporary artworks in a variety of media that explore the imagery of puppets. From actual puppets, to works that evoke topics associated with puppetry and others that introduce new variations to this historical and global form of theater, The Puppet Show features works that are, in various ways, movable and/or moving objects that perform as alter-egos for the artist or as human surrogates—often with wicked good humor. Featured artists include Guy Ben-Ner, Nayland Blake, Louise Bourgeois, Maurizio Cattelan, Anne Chu, Nathalie Djurberg, Terrence Gower, The Handspring Puppet Company, Pierre Huyghe, Christian Jankowski, Mike Kelley, William Kentridge, Cindy Loehr, Annette Messager, Paul McCarthy, Matt Mullican, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija, Laurie Simmons, Doug Skinner and Michael Smith, Kiki Smith, Survival Research Laboratory, Kara Walker, and Charlie White.
