Emvergeoning

Main Gallery Exhibition Information:

ICE COLD
CRUZ ORTIZ
June 27 – August 5, 2009

About the Exhibition
This is another intergalactic ballad de Spaztek: he just landed⎯its another hot Texas night⎯at a dancehall between Poteet and Bandera⎯Spaztek has been walking for 300 miles and his boots are down to flappy chanklas⎯the sounds of cumbias calientes and the soft sexy whispers of mala lovers fill his brain⎯something tells him este noche is gonna get picoso to the max.

Live performance by Cruz Ortiz @ 8:15PM, June 27, 2009
Spaztek Stuka Krash: Spaztek has been traveling for 8 earth days⎯all of his navigation instruments are not working⎯his rickety Stuka Spaceship has just crested over the Olympus Mons mountain range⎯everything is going wrong⎯the radio might be his only hope.

About the Artist
Cruz Ortiz lives and works artist in San Antonio, Texas. Ortiz’s work has been exhibited at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Artpace (San Antonio), Ev+a (Limerick, Ireland), The Louvre (Paris) and ARCO (Madrid). He will have a solo exhibition of his work at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston in May 2010.

“Project Room” Exhibition Information:

I AM NOT SO DIFFERENT
CURATED BY RACHEL COOK
DUNCAN GANLEY, ANNA KRACHEY, JESSICA MALLIOS, ADAM SCHREIBER, ERIN SHIRREFF, & AUGUSTA WOOD
June 27 – August 5, 2009

I Am Not So Different illustrates the affinities and dissimilarities that may be found in a chosen group of photographs. The selected images, while being abstract, are not so far from being grounded in our experience of reality. Each artist works within the “frame” of photography to produce images that evoke an uncanny, even eerie quality. The works’ subjects include mundane or banal objects found at the Harry Ransom Center, objects the artists have collected, ordinary handmade yet elusive clay objects, text from memory inserted into the landscape, and the collusion of real and fictional spaces. Gathered into a collective viewing, the photographs present their differences as a place for shared common ground. It is through these differences that an overlap and intersection is revealed.

Duncan Ganley’s practice examines the extent to which our experience of the real is informed by the language of fiction. Ganley is based in London where he is conducting research at the Kingston Museum’s Eadweard Muybridge Collection. Ganley is represented by Inman Gallery, Houston and working on a solo exhibition for Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University, London.

Anna Krachey questions materialism and the real pleasures (tangible and intangible) that come from the act of photographing materials, hence creating a new material. Krachey currently has a solo exhibition entitled Trophies at Box 13 Artspace in Houston. She lives and works in Austin and is represented by Marty Walker Gallery in Dallas.

Jessica Mallios incorporates a studio practice that manipulates artifice and de-masks objects in space, as well as confuses the context by creating dislocated perspectives. Mallios lives and works in Austin and teaches at the University of Texas and Texas State University. She has been recently exhibited at the Creative Research Laboratory and Okay Mountain in Austin.

Adam Schreiber’s photographs reposition institutional objects within an isolating framework and highlight aspects of a mundane, heightened reality in the process of absorption. Schreiber lives and works in Austin and teaches at St. Edwards University and the University of Texas. He has been exhibited at The Harry Ransom Center in Austin and Lawndale Art Center in Houston.

Erin Shirreff explores how we create meaning day to day, how we anthropomorphize familiar things or project narratives onto our surroundings and ourselves. Shirreff will be presenting a solo exhibition of photographs at the 2009 Frieze Art Fair in London this fall. She lives and works in New York City and is represented by Lisa Cooley.

Augusta Wood is interested in ways of mapping the relationship between spatial and linguistic experience, memory and photographic space. Wood’s work was recently presented in 1999:The Ten Year Anniversary Show at China Art Objects and Cottage Home in Los Angeles. Augusta Wood lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by Cherry and Martin.

Artists’Talk with the curator on Wednesday, July 29, 7:30 pm at Art Palace

Film Screening: Duncan Ganley’s midnight, mid-Atlantic…(2008-09) on Sunday, August 2, 2pm at testsite, 502 W. 33rd., Austin, Texas 78705

midnight, mid-Atlantic… is the first in a trilogy of films. It depicts a researcher’s quest for clues to a mystery surrounding a fictitious film director’s unreleased epic, entitled Keflavik. Taking a “Ken Burns,” travelogue-style documentary form, the film’s visual trajectory shifts into the realm of magical realism, mystery and science fiction-mirroring the researcher’s journey through Iceland’s landscape.

ABOUT ART PALACE

Art Palace is an exhibition space dedicated to presenting the work of emerging and established contemporary artists in a professional yet casual environment. The gallery’s vision includes collaborating with guest curators and writers to investigate and engage in new art. Since opening its doors in the summer of 2005, it has garnered regional and national attention from artforum.com, artnet.com, Art News, Art in America and The New York Times.