Art List

Looks like the best thing happening this weekend is Esther Pearl Watson's show titled Space is the Place. This is the finest local primitive art I've seen in a while. This is at Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, right about here. The reception is from 7-10 PM tonight, Friday the 12th. The image to the right is called 1985 Garland, Texas.

The other thing deserving mention is the group show opening at CentralTrak: Transitive Pairing: Body Object featuring Sharon Odum, James Gilbert, Gary Cunningham, Gabriel Dawe, Russell Buchanan and Sunny Sliger, and another show called Undercover of Kristen Cochran's work. The opening is tomorrow night, Saturday the 13th, from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM. That's at 800 Exposition Avenue, Dallas, TX 75226. It's pretty impressive that curator Charissa Terranova can keep coming up with titles like Transitive Pairing: Body Object -- it sure sounds like it's packed with meaning.

And finally, Art List readers and new contributors Mr. and Mrs. Rushmore were nice enough to send in a review of the recent 500x opening. I actually started to edit this for typos and contextual errors, but I think the raw text adds to the charm (what are "hugh heifers"?). Plus I want to get back to enjoying the 2010 Snowpocalypse while "working from home".

Here it is...

Sheep, Sharks, and Nightlights----
Words, words, words---
Feb. 6-28

I like G Q, maybe esquire… i find gq a little more up on things than esquire, or maybe its that name… esquire… trying too hard to fit into something. maybe hugh heifers pocket… GQ is a way better of a name. Tim Best was the Esquire of this show, seemingly as good as GQ, but lagging on common sense, due ironically to having too much common sense. His photographs were printed and shot smartly. Tim Best is a smart artist, a vital thread in the fabric of a scene and makes spaces like the 500x thrive. punks like to go on about how these type are too manicured that they need some pain in the their life. Tim Best does ok.

notes(worthy?) on other artwork in the gallery:
trinkets tacked on the wall
magazine pictures from the 70's of mustached men with big members
'These here things make me glad' by:Matthew Clark and Kathy Webster: my girl and i walked into this room and she said 'this looks like something my cat made'

Flying Lotus has music like a stream that bubbles and flows in the valley of mars, you are looking at this one part and thats all you see, not the beginning of it, not the end. There is constant activity and evolution of life before you. Todd Camplin's work feels like this. This is a good thing. 15 50x38 inch ink on paper and 6 digital painted prints filling the entire upstairs floor of the 500x gallery. There are quiet, harmonious oranges, reds, blues and purples. It's a static picture realizing itself. at first view you wonder: is this improvised or specific design? He creates them by taking pieces from poems and greeting cards, putting them into the computer, printing out, re arranging, stenciling. deconstructing them. He told me he comes from a background in philosophy and read to much Derrida. i like that he said this. it reminds me of reading books by thinkers like him or ayn rand, where you become so engrossed in the philosophy that when
you exit their world you have to slowly re integrate yourself back into your own. The concept of Todd's wordscapes is to take phrases out of their framework until they no longer have the connotations once given to them. He said this and accomplishes this. He has a strong grasp on the emotional and abstract intention of his work, every question i asked was answered clearly, its rare that an artist will be able to speak so articulately on the subject of themselves. Todd says the words he takes from poems are used because of the great significance they have to so many people and then from greeting cards because, altho they go from trivial sentiment they become pertinent to the individuals that receive them from loved ones and lovers. lifted out of their context he rebuilds them, the love and meaning being realized in a new form.
This made me say i thought worship in church would have to change, that it had been processed to the point of being an origin less ritual. worship inevitably renewed in me because the soul is in it. This came to me after seeing Flying Lotus live some months ago. the bass frequencies moved thru the people in the room, i closed my eyes and felt the sounds, the music evoked the image of a thin unclothed woman with the deep black tone of african skin crawling towards me, she and I alone in the room, she reaches out and touches me with the tips of her fingers moving slowly over my clothes. After this. sitting in a church listening to a sermon that lacked reverence i felt as if Flying Lotus and physical bass frequencies represented the reconstruction of worship from the desert where it has dried up.
Words, words, words evokes this same idea, being a work that reincarnates into galactic designs echoing over whole sheets of drawing paper. Todd Camplin succeeds in energizing the love back into the word.

- Mr and Mrs Rushmore