Fluent~Collaborative: testsite

testsite

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 20:15:06 -0500

Please look forward to our upcoming testsite exhibition.

testsite 20.1

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 10:18:07 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present How a House Works..., a collaboration with artist Andy Coolquitt and writer and editor Alix Browne. The project opens on Sunday, February 23rd with a public reception from 3 to 6PM. The opening reception will take the form of a performance paying tribute to the house; a birthday party for the house, or to be more specific, for the remodel of the house. In 1981-82, Laurence Miller hired Renfro and Steinbomer architects to design the remodel/additions to the house. Let’s celebrate its 38th birthday! Come dressed as your favorite po-mo architect! Bring a period-inspired potluck dish! King Ranch Chicken, anyone? Toasts will commence! Toasts to Laurence! Toasts to Judy! Toasts to the architects! Toasts to 1982! To the history of Post-Modernism! A most special gift will be offered with docent-led tours of small groups donning foot-booties to view…

testsite 19.3

Wed, 26 Dec 2018 10:23:56 -0600

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present st.itch, a collaboration with artist Afrah Shafiq and contemporary art collector Cynthia Toles. The project opens on Sunday, November 10th with a public reception from 4 to 6 PM—a conversation between the artist and collaborator at 4:30 PM. Following the opening, Shafiq will deliver a lecture on Tuesday November 12th, at UT’s Department of Fine Arts (room 2.204) at 7PM. More information to follow.Afrah Shafiq based out of Goa, India, and Cynthia Toles of Houston, Texas, did not know each other before their testsite collaboration, but subsequently have learned that they have a lot in common. Each approach what they do—art making and art collecting, respectively—in a similar way. “Archive as Playground” is Shafiq’s self-described artistic process. The artist approaches libraries and collections without a thesis or…

testsite 19.1

Fri, 31 Aug 2018 13:34:54 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present BELLS SUSPENDED FROM CLOUDS, a collaboration with artist R. Eric McMaster and contemporary art collector Michael Chesser. The project opens on Sunday, January 27th with a public reception from 4 to 6 PM—a conversation between the artist and collaborator at 4:30 PM and a performance by the string quartet invoke to follow.Bells Suspended from Clouds approaches sound as sculpture material, and as a visual initiator.The exhibition features aural and visual elements inspired by the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, who in the late 1800s and early 1900s created works at the intersection of music, light, and experience.At the core of the installation, a number of steel strings are installed throughout the rooms of testsite, thereby transforming the space into an instrument.…

testsite 18.4

Fri, 3 Aug 2018 14:31:58 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present Next Moves, a collaboration with artist Sarah Canright and independent arts writer and curator Sue Graze. The project opens on Sunday, November 4 with a public reception from 4 to 6 PM, and a conversation between the artists at 4:30 PM.Sarah Canright and Sue Graze have much in common. Gender. Art world experiences. And now with substantial careers behind them their differences are equally striking. Sarah makes objects. She uses her craft to transform modest materials into painted surfaces imbued with taut visual energy and psychological intensity. Sue organizes, interprets, and makes meaning of what artists like Sarah create. And, after over 40 years as a curator and arts administrator, she is still in the throes of her first serious love - painting. The inexplicable metamorphosis of nothing into something, of turning a physically…

testsite 18.3

Wed, 2 May 2018 08:48:52 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present SELF STORAGE, a collaboration with writer Rebecca Bengal and visual artist Dave Bryant. The project opens on Sunday, September 16 with a public reception from 4 to 6 PM, and a conversation between the artists at 4:30 PM. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. —Jimmy Carter, “Crisis of Confidence” speech, 1979 A conversation about the process of accumulation, the things we choose to keep, and the ways in which they form and inform our sense of self. Bengal will present short fiction, inspired, in part, by two devastating house fires…

testsite 18.2

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 19:18:54 -0600

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present Final Meals, a community-based performance by Lucky Pierre. The project opens Sunday, June 3 with a public reception and video installation from 4 to 6 PM, and a conversation between the artists at 4:30 PM.As published by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice since 1982, the last meals requested by Texas death row inmates are prepared and consumed—a customary ritual that is concurrently filmed. Over the course of a week, Lucky Pierre will cook recreations of these final meals at testsite. A volunteer is then videotaped eating the meal. The recorded video is a single 22-mintue overhead black and white shot. The food is the focus of the video, what is prepared, what is consumed. The daily experience of food consumption, through Final Meals, becomes a final gesture…

testsite 18.1

Mon, 9 Oct 2017 14:26:02 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present Dig Three Tunnels, an installation of new paintings and constructions by Joey Fauerso. The exhibition opens Sunday, January 21 with a public reception from 4 to 6 PM, and a conversation between the artist and cultural critic and writer Neil Fauerso at 4:30 PM. To escape is to step through one of the windows of your life. If you are lucky, they remain open. If hounded, they may be barred. Sometimes you may escape from the outside world back through the window. Sometimes the window looks out over a cliff or an open road with helicopters behind you. As the poet Arseny Tarkovsky pens in The Mirror: “I live as if I were a thread pulled by the swift needle of life. And the holes in…

testsite 17.1

Thu, 26 May 2016 15:55:43 -0500

“Texas Flood Disaster: Harvey Has Unloaded 9 Trillion Gallons of Rain. If that water were collected into a cube next to Houston’s downtown, it would cover an area of about four square miles and be two miles tall…The 9 trillion gallons of water dispensed so far is enough to fill the entire Great Salt Lake in Salt Lake City — twice! It would take nine days straight for the Mississippi River to drain into Houston and equal the amount of water already there.” —Matthew Cappucci, noon, 9/27/2017, The Washington PostFluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present Tender Glass, an art installation by Amy Hauft. Hauft produces architectural-scale installations in which landscape seems to occur in indoor settings. Each artwork is an intersection of the viewer’s haptic and cognitive experiences. Initially, one’s physical experience takes…

testsite 16.2

Tue, 9 Feb 2016 18:22:06 -0600

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present Miasma, an installation of drawings, sculpture, and video work by Yoshua Okón curated by Edgar Hernández. The exhibition opens on Sunday, October 16 with a public reception from 4 to 6 pm, and a talk between the artist and curator at 4:30 pm. Artist Yoshua Okón and curator Edgar Alejandro Hernandez began this testsite project by researching covert operations of cultural infiltration by the United States government in Mexico as evidenced in the Benson Latin American Collection of the University of Texas at Austin library.Their initial research focused on the papers of Cuban-born attorney and art critic Jose Gomez Sicre, who became director of visual arts at the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington D.C. after art historian Alfred Barr brought him to the United States…

testsite 16.1

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:41:59 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present testsite 16.1: Nathan “SLOKE” Nordstrom: FATCAPPED, an installation of work by Austin-native graffiti artist Nathan Nordstrom curated by Chale Nafus. This project will bring SLOKE’s graffiti art sensibility and expertise into the intimate gallery space with a selection of works on panel as well as documentary photographs of related work from the streets of Austin and other cities in the US and abroad. The project opens on Sunday, February 21 with a public reception from 4 to 6 pm, and a conversation between the artist and the curator at 4:30 pm. ARTIST STATEMENT:In Graffiti Art, the term "piece" (short for masterpiece) is a large, colorful, complex painting of an artist's name. The art form is based on letters (one's name) with the "tag" (one's signature) being the foundation. The goal of a graffiti artist is to develop and master styles. Ever…

testsite 15.3

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 17:22:45 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present testsite 15.3: Lenka Clayton & Veronica Roberts: TYPEWRITER DRAWINGS, an installation of works on paper by British-born, Pittsburgh-based artist Lenka Clayton. Curated by Veronica Roberts, this is Clayton’s first exhibition in Texas. The project opens on Sunday, October 11 with a public reception from 4 to 6pm, and a conversation between the artist and the curator at 4:30pm. This intimate installation features approximately twenty-six drawings as well as one work on cloth. Since 2012 Lenka Clayton has been using a typewriter as a tool for drawing, and at the same time as an obstruction to drawing. Her ongoing series, Typewriter Drawings, misuses a machine designed to effortlessly accomplish one kind of task to achieve another for which it is quite unsuited. The drawings act as a diary of sorts, depicting objects or moments that happened over the course of a day,…

testsite 15.2

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 10:04:00 -0600

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present incubator, a collaboration between visual artist Janine Antoni and choreographer Stephen Petronio that prompts the conversation between sculpture and dance. Curated by Louis Grachos and Andrea Mellard, the presentation at testsite will feature site-specific installations, video work, sculpture, and photography. The exhibition is co-organized by testsite and The Contemporary Austin and opens at testsite on Sunday, May 3rd with a public reception from 4 to 6 pm and an artists-curators talk at 4:30 pm.incubator includes the artists’ first visual collaboration, Honey Baby (2013), a video of a folding, tumbling body within a honey-filled environment. Since 2013, their projects have integrated sculpture, dance, and their own images to create odd character couplings. Through an aesthetically aligned approach, Antoni and Petronio…

Just Because 15.1

Mon, 13 Oct 2014 20:08:13 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present Just Because 15.1: Steven Tomlinson: NOTEBOOKS. The exhibition opens on Sunday, January 18, with a public reception from 4-6 p.m. and a moderated discussion with Tomlinson at 4:30 p.m. The project will be on view through March 22nd and will be accompanied by a workshop on February 10th led by Steven Tomlinson. This text-based installation features schematic drawings and notes from Tomlinson’s work as a management consultant and communications strategist, the first public presentation of these compelling artifacts from his work in academics, theatre and business. Whether collaborating with clients or organizing his thoughts for the classroom or the stage, Tomlinson creates intellectually and visually engaging maps of ideas, objectives and process. The testsite presentation explores the meditative, personal and professional…

Just Because 14.4

Fri, 4 Jul 2014 11:46:36 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present Just Because 14.4 ~ Ibido by Owen Ames by author David Moorman. The exhibition opens on Sunday, October 26, with a public reception from 4-6 p.m. and a moderated discussion and reading by Moorman at 4:30 p.m. The project will be on view through November 30 and will be accompanied by a poetry workshop on November 24th let by poet and author Michael McGriff. In this text-based project by David Moorman, a selection of stanzas from his manuscript (entitled Ibido by Owen Ames) will be featured on the ground floor of testsite. Structured as single words listed in discrete numbered stanzas on the page, the walls of testsite function as the lectern upon which the viewer and reader may peruse this stellar body of work. This will be the first visual presentation and publication of the Ibido text, which has been in process for over twenty years. Author/Artist…

14.3

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 23:07:20 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present LOVE George Herms, an installation of collages and sculpture by Beat-generation master George Herms. Curated by Sarah C. Bancroft, this is Herms’ first exhibition in Texas since 2002. The exhibition opens on Sunday, September 7 with a public reception from 4-6 pm, and an artist-curator talk at 4:30 pm. In conjunction with the presentation at testsite, Herms will conduct a screening and lecture at UT Austin on Thursday, September 4th at 5pm (Art Building auditorium, room 1.102).The presentation at testsite will feature a small selection of the artist’s celebrated found-object sculptures and assemblages, and several collages from the past decade. Many of the collages are comprised of timeworn ephemera—envelopes, letterhead, receipts, mailers, announcements—collected from the past five decades. With the patina of age, these materials document…

testsite 14.2

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 22:13:40 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative & testsite are pleased to present Birth of Comedy, an installation of video work by Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi. Curated by Yasufumi Nakamori, this will be Mr. Koizumi's first exhibition in the state of Texas and third solo exhibition in the United States. In conjunction with the installation at testsite, Mr. Koizumi will perform his work Autopsychobabble #5 at the Blanton Museum of Art auditorium on April 25th as part of the 10th Annual Fusebox Festival. The Fusebox Festival performance is co-organized by testsite and the Blanton Museum of Art.The presentation at testsite will feature video works from the past decade, including Human Opera XXX (2007), Portrait of a Young Samurai (2009), and Inder Kommen Sie/It's a Comedy (2012). The artist and curator will engage in a moderated discussion during the opening event at testsite…

testsite 14.1

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 22:10:07 -0500

testsite is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Texas of Brooklyn-based artist Justin Cooper, curated by Rachel Adams. Cooper is known for transforming mundane, everyday objects into art installations, utilizing PVC piping, wheelbarrows, plastic hula leis, and the ever-present, green garden hose in his artistic practice. At testsite, Cooper will install an immersive sculpture made from garden hoses that will snake through the domestic setting of the ground floor. The hoses, articulating the formal lines of a drawing in space as much as a three-dimensional sculpture, will create a multitude of niches and smaller locales within the gallery. Cooper explains, “There is a wobbling between the objects being what they are—hoses, in this case—and simply a means to create lines in space as opposed to referencing something else.” Accompanying this work will be a selection of Cooper's colorful…

testsite 13.4

Sat, 17 Aug 2013 07:32:45 -0500

For testsite’s tenth-anniversary show, Return Trip, co-founder Regine Basha brings home the artist who inspired the idea for testsite: Brooklyn-based Nina Katchadourian. The two will present the artist's earliest and rarely-exhibited video work, 30 Years 21 Minutes 17 Tapes (1991/1993). This lush collection is comprised of super-8 and 8mm home movies from the Katchadourian family collection combined with film footage shot in response to the archival family material. Many of the artist’s current interests are present as seedlings in this early work: concerns with family relations and storytelling, taxonomies, an attentiveness to nature, an attraction to the absurd and to sonic/visual interplay, and a desire to mingle the everyday with the sublime. In a live discussion on September 15 at testsite, the artist and the curator will explore the dilemmas, attractions, and challenges of working with family footage.

Just Because 13.3

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:55:08 -0500

Helldorado Days is a video installation that examines the theater of atomic testing in 1950s Las Vegas through the lens of the artist’s family history. Post WWII Las Vegas flourished: high rise hotel casinos rose from the desert, miles of suburban tract housing was developed to hold the growing middle class, and tourist markets were booming as the U.S. government found a way to cast atomic testing as spectacle. It became a ritual for the artist’s grandfather, an amateur photographer, to pack the family in the car, pre-dawn and drive out to the rim of the mountains opposite Nellis Airforce Base to watch the mushroom clouds billow.The exhibition takes its name from the annual festival held in Las Vegas. Through most of the mid 20th century, Helldorado Days were a celebration of the spirit of the quickly civilizing “Wild West.” Old family slides of atomic tests and the Helldorado Days parade are paired with artist rendered fly-over footage of imagined test zone…

testsite 13.2

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 12:16:21 -0600

A person’s bed is the most intimate space to capture. It’s the spot that shares both dreams and nightmares. It’s the final resting place for our weary minds to assess the events of the day before drifting into slumber, and it is where one first registers the light of day upon awakening. The intimate and domestic setting of testsite will act as the site for artist Armando Miguélez's history via the stories of the beds he has slept in throughout his many years of travel.For Armando Miguélez these beds document the artist’s scattered life. They are the proof of his physical presence depicted by his absence in the frame. They tell the stories that happen between the seconds of love, loss, commitment and life. They are the personal compilation of his histories, and the snapshots of the seemingly trivial moments that occur between resting ones head at night, and opening ones eyes at the first light of day._________________________________________Armando…

testsite 13.1

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:24:17 -0500

testsite is pleased to announce that Grand Marais will be giving a reprise performance on Sunday, May 5th, Reception 4 - 6 PM, with music at 4:30 sharp._________________________________________Northern Climbs: Grand Marais at testsiteby Hills SnyderTwo sweet people that arrive late want to know what they missed, so Grand Marais, as casually as picking up a water glass off a table, play a song they didn’t play, John Dufilho’s Josephine Street, a tender song about San Antonio’s legendary music venue Taco Land. It is from a 2008 album by Dufilho’s band, I Love Math. It is significant that the not-part-of-the-show song carries the same intimate delight as does the actual thirty-six minute set. The after song is performed mid-conversation, with the singers…

testsite 12.2

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:47:51 -0600

Stephen Vitiello will create a multi-channel sound piece and a series of small visual works in response to curator and gallery owner, Lora Reynolds’ proposal to create sounds that evoke a “sense of place” and ideas of “home.” Vitiello will capture recordings on-site during a short visit, leading up to the project’s opening. These recordings will be mixed in the house and spatialized in such a way that visitors may move through, listening to sounds both abstract and concrete. Gaston Bachelard writes in his book, The Poetics of Space that we crave domestic spaces that allow us to dream. Each space in a home has a vocabulary that includes sounds, smells as well as memories that resound in the woodwork. The artist and curator will follow that reasoning to explore sounds suggested by the home as well as sounds that home may not yet have imagined.Stephen Vitiello is an electronic musician and media artist. Vitiello’s sound installations have…

testsite 12.1

Tue, 5 Jul 2011 13:04:39 -0500

Writer and curator, Noah Simblist, invites performance artist, Tamy Ben-Tor, to testsite. Exhibiting will be a video-performance, Time and Space, which features a monolog delivered by a fictional artist that describes her work, her process and her career. In conjunction with the exhibition, Ben-Tor will also be performing AVNER at the testsite space. From the artist regarding Time and Space:“I made this video as an urgent comment on contemporary art practice, specifically the so-called non-for profit art that fills cultural institutions and is funded by grants. Artists have become grey clerks who have no particular passion or obsession, nor interest of any kind for that matter. Rather, they engage in impotent so-called “research” which sounds better in grant applications than in the work itself.There is an overflow of people who have studied and memorized this academic jargon and make a career for themselves based on…

Just Because 11.3

Fri, 13 May 2011 10:46:16 -0500

As an artist, Teruko Nimura is interested in the commonalities among human experiences and the ways that we use symbols and rituals to create collective memory. Spaces Between is an investigation of community, identity and spiritual practices through the lens of Asian and Asian-American culture. Popular icons like the laughing Buddha and Hello Kitty, or familiar traditions such as paper cranes and prayer flags become foundations that she uses to build upon with her own personal meaning. Large volumes of repetitive forms made by hand express time, labor, and consideration, emphasizing the sincerity of the objects, the beauty of shared efforts, and the importance of the individual as part of a greater whole.Teruko Nimura received her B.F.A. in sculpture from San Francisco Art Institute, and her M.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin. She works with the City of Austin's Dougherty Arts Center as an arts education administrator for youth…

testsite 11.2

Thu, 5 May 2011 13:58:33 -0500

Like life itself, testsite's latest project, Doug Fitch's From A Life to An Other, opens with the glow of a dramatic birth and ends with an eerie specter of death. Invited by guest curator Dana Friis-Hansen to create an installation that sheds light on his creative process, the New York-based Fitch, whose works range from puppetry and furniture design to opera and community food events, will assemble objects, tableaux and storyboards from previous works that trace the twists and turns of life's journey. Fitch's peripatetic imagination produces scenarios of wild wit, stirring melodrama, haunting allegories and everyday joy that tap into the epic drive to understand our world through stories.Doug Fitch received his A.B. from Harvard College with a concentration in Visual Studies. Fitch's work spans multiple genres, including architecture, theatre and opera (stage and costume design, direction, writing), furniture design, multi-media events and visual art.…

Just Because 11.1

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:18:48 -0600

Cached Curses infects testsite with a psychic bubbling of worry, trash, cash and (so last century) hexes. Originally inspired by an ad on craiglist offering a free, haunted wolverine with the caveat that the new owner accept it "no questions asked", I started thinking, maybe there was some thing I could get rid of—some bitter toy stewing with bad vibes in the attic. Maybe this thing was the problem, and maybe I could pass on that thing to someone stronger.So, buyer beware. I've scoured the closets, hard drives, pre-teen poetry, firefox history, and my best guess is 1993. The entire year of 1993.Coincidentally or not, 2010 was a recycled, identical calendar to 1993, and the opening of Cached Curses at testsite in January 2011 (also 1994) will mark the end of a year-long exorcism. This project was made possible with generous support from the Netherlands…

testsite 10.5

Tue, 7 Sep 2010 13:53:36 -0500

For their collaboration artist Rob Verf and art-writer/poet Roberto Tejada seek to enliven the exhibition space and its logic of display with a set of visual metaphors and language that set into motion differences and associative links between forms of claim-making that engage inner speech and public address. Verf and Tejada present a video installation in which language plays a determinate role."Our collaboration constitutes a series of metaphors overturning the pyramids of high and low. In languages popular, elite, disciplinary, and insubordinate, we aim to activate a tutorial akin to that of the exhibition space as a site that galvanizes individuals into cultural citizens. We see ‘dialogue’ not only as the format of this project, but as content as well—in the material fact of monosyllabic claims on expanded polystyrene foam." Rob Verf was born in Amersfoort (Netherlands) in 1964. He has participated in many exhibitions, art projects…

Just Because 10.4

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 06:58:26 -0500

In January 2010, artist Mary Walling Blackburn spent four weeks in Austin teaching a course entitled "Accidental Pornographies: The Visual Effects of the American Women's Health Movement Since 1970." Walling Blackburn, the founder of The Anhoek School, an educational experiment for women, co-wrote and taught the course with art historian and critic Katie Anania. Lessons ranged in topic from from "Vagina as Ghost" to "Vagina as Cannibal," included such diverse readings as Jean Luc Nancy's "The Stranger" and Ina May Lee's Spiritual Midwifery, and assigned projects ranging from the traditional response essay to a diagram of the bite ("Vagina as Cannibal"). Accidental Pornographies: Lesson Plans 1-9 presents nine drawings by the artist that take this course as their jumping off point. Originally composed as lesson plans for a substitute-taught workshop at the Blanton Museum of Art, these drawings re-present the course material on oversized ledger paper, as if ripped from…

Just Because 10.3

Mon, 17 May 2010 13:09:56 -0500

Your Hair Is Mine continues Michael Krumenacker’s investigation of the ways in which visual culture—design, architecture and art—creates and reinforces structures of power and class. At testsite, Krumenacker replaces and augments the existing furniture with functional and non-functional sculptures built from scavenged and readily available materials. Krumenacker’s long-time interest in architectural maquettes and landscape painting is apparent in this work; through these references, the artist explores the relationships between real and imagined spaces—relationships that depend upon the viewer’s participation in the process of seeing and projecting into a hypothetical world.Michael Krumenacker received his B.A. in painting from Vermont's Castleton State College in 1994 and an M.F.A. in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2000.

Just Because 10.2

Mon, 1 Feb 2010 14:53:07 -0600

After Icebergs with a Painter references the romantic impulse realized by the painter Frederic Edwin Church in his Arctic paintings. Through a series of photographs, artist Ben Ruggiero examines the intentionality and the pursuit of the exotic in Hudson River School paintings and considers how those impulses inform representation and materiality in contemporary photographic practice and aesthetics. Ben Ruggiero currently teaches Photography at Texas State University. He received his MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

testsite 10.1

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:02:37 -0600

Sanders and Smith come together once again, this time to investigate the myths behind the Greek Fraternity system and the mysteries surrounding these sacred fraternal organizations. Using sound, text and of course Greek letters, the collaborators will transform testsite into a new chapter of the national order of the Pan Hellenic Society. Fuji, Sammies and all the Sigma Chi brothers will surely take note of the new house near to the UT campus.Special thanks to Davis Gallery and the Medallion Quartet, members of A Cappella Texas and Intro and Advanced Performance Art at the University of Texas.Photography: Santiago Forero Sound Mix and Recording: Bill Haddad, Blue House DesignResearch: Ben Goddard

Just Because 10.1

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:46:26 -0600

Karl Marx says that the problem with beauty is that it doesn’t talk back; that is its strength in fact. Its silence reminds us about grace. –Elizabeth ChilesTaking compositions found within the landscape as a starting place, Elizabeth Chiles builds syntax out of the formal and affective relationships between darkness and natural light. Her photographs endow light with temporal and spatial presence—a visible presence that nonetheless gestures toward the imperceptible and ineffable. This handling of light transforms the everyday into something to be revered. In this way, the works in Book of Praise become an ode to a presence akin to that of an altar or inspired text, or what may be the aura of the sacred.Elizabeth Chiles studied with Henry Wessel, Linda Connor and Bill Berkson in graduate school at San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been shown at numerous places in the San Francisco area and in Texas including Stanford University,…

Artist Talk

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:46:40 -0600

If [the stranger] remains foreign, [her] coming will not cease; nor will it cease being in some respect an intrusion. –Jean Luc Nancy, L’IntrusIs the artist a stranger who trespasses among us? With an eye to Jean Luc Nancy’s concept of “the stranger,” Mary Walling Blackburn will consider notions of place, ownership and borderlands through the lens of her own artistic practice.Mary Walling Blackburn is an artist and the founder of the experimental school for women, The Anhoek School. Her most recent projects include Carrying Love is Not Like Carrying Money, a project made for e-flux's Time/Bank at Frieze Art Fair/London and SMS Iran, a collaboration with Naeem Mohaiemen featured at Art Dubai Project Space online. LA>

Anhoek School

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:09:39 -0500

homebirth footage* health manuals* sex education films* gynecological self-exam diagrams* contemporary female surgery advertisements* contemporary vaginas.Course description: Throughout the 1970s, the women’s health volume Our Bodies, Ourselves was a staple in counter-culture households throughout the United States. It included a photo of a woman with a mirror between her legs and a text urging the naked woman to know herself and love what she saw. Last spring, Apexart gallery advertised a lecture on "The Designer Vagina," in which a surgeon discussed the rise and proportion of vaginal cosmetic surgery. These striking shifts in perception from the 1970s to the 2000s indicate the fundamental instability of readings of the vagina. The consequences of imagining the vagina as an object (whether of contemplation, admiration, or improvement) have ranged in scope, and invite a more unruly reading and/or experience of the vagina as subject. (Perhaps…

Conversation

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:13:58 -0500

Fluent~Collaborative, in conjunction with Arthouse, hosts an informal exhibition of artist books by Celia Alvarez Muñoz and a conversation between the artist and Roberto Tejada, the author of a recently released book on Muñoz. The book, Celia Alvarez Muñoz (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), will be available for purchase at the event.Celia Alvarez Muñoz has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. She has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and her work was included in the 1991 Whitney Biennial. Her conceptually-based practice draws on family and communal memories to explore her own experiences growing up Catholic and Mexican American on the Texas-Mexico border.Roberto Tejada is associate professor of art history at the University of Texas, Austin. Most recently, he published National Camera: Photography and Mexico's Image Environment (University of Minnesota Press,…

Satellite Summit

Mon, 18 May 2009 07:38:44 -0500

testsite and ...might be good will host a live Satellite Summit via webcast for A National Summit on Arts Journalism: New Models in Cultural Coverage on October 2, 2009 from 10:30 am to 3 pm CST.The Summit will present five competitively-chosen projects that offer sustainable new models for supporting arts journalism. In addition, the Summit will present five other ideas both from inside and outside arts journalism that touch on issues in finding new models.After the webcast presentations, …might be good Editor Claire Ruud will lead a conversation about these issues as they relate to midsized art communities like Austin’s. Also, feel free to bring your laptop, iPhone or Blackberry so that you can participate in the nation-wide conversation via Twitter.Space is limited. Please RSVP to Claire Ruud at cruud@fluentcollab.orgA…

testsite 09.3

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:03:58 -0500

For testsite 09.3, Sheila Pepe and Elizabeth Dunbar seek to engage a diverse audience in conversation and action regarding the relationship between DIY culture, craft and contemporary art. At a political, economic and cultural moment in which practicality and action are critical, “the heart of Pepe’s project concerns sustainability—sustainable art making, to be exact.”In the rooms of testsite, Pepe will install massive networks of crocheted yarn– skeins of yarn available for constructive re-use by testsite’s visitors. Throughout the exhibition’s duration, visitors are “encouraged to become interpreters, collaborators, to sit down and literally unravel Pepe’s crochet stitches, and then use the same yarn to knit items for personal or domestic use, i.e. scarves, hats, socks, mittens, slippers, purses, cosies, potholders, etc. This collaborative effort removes art from a solitary, hermetic experience to one that is social, communal, and interactive—a renewal of…

testsite 09.2

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:10:28 -0600

Please note: We will be closed for the Mother's Day holiday, Sunday, May 10. Additionally, testsite's gallery hours have changed. We are now currently open Sundays 2-5 pm and by appointment.A conversation between two “cultural contributors” is at the heart of every testsite project. Justin Boyd and Nick Tosches began their conversation with a common interest in American culture; both Boyd, over the last few years, and Tosches, over the past few decades, have created bodies of work exploring the American spirit—ugly, bold, yet ever hopeful. But what happens to a conversation about our national identity when everything around us seems to shift overnight?For many of us, America suddenly feels young again. Especially for those who came of age during the Bush era. A sense of fruitful possibility breaks through the murky darkness of the headlines that continue to loom around us. Yet as historical events swirl around…

testsite 09.1

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:32:03 -0500

testsite 08.5

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:00:00 -0600

"We want to be in control of our lives. Whether we are jungle fighters, craftsmen, company men, gamesmen, we want to be in control. And when the government erodes that control, we are not comfortable."- Barbara Jordan"When you come back with no arms or legs, then you can say war is fun"- The Dicks ("I Hope You Get Drafted") For testsite 08.5, Temporary Services will investigate two aspects of the state's cultural and political history that embody its radical independence: the development of Punk music in Austin during the early 1980s, and the speeches of Barbara Jordan, the great, late United States representative from Texas. This will be Temporary Services' first exhibition in the Lone Star State. As part of their ongoing series of publications entitled Temporary Conversations, Temporary Services will publish two new booklets drawn from interviews, memories, and artifacts contributed by Punkers. One will celebrate the band The Dicks and a separate…

testsite 08.4

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:00:00 -0500

Matthew Ronay’s art occupies a space where illustration, tableau, sculpture, and installation all intersect in harmonious indifference to one another. Beginning in 2004, his arrangements of discreet, colorful, mutated objects evoked wild manifestations of surrealist imagination and hallucinogenically induced visions, with distended narratives designed to provoke or even outrage viewers through their irreconcilable compositions and outrageous imagery, such as drooping anuses skewered on a pole. Indeed, like Dada and Surrealist artists earlier in the 20th century and American Funk musicians of the 1970s, whose work employed metanarrative, metaphor, provocation, and fantasy as devices for addressing human behavior in times of social upheaval, Ronay’s work has been a manifesto of the spirit, screaming back at us with pieces that suggest that fear, pain, and violence have replaced pleasure in a society increasingly indifferent to war and terrorism.His more recent work…

testsite 08.3

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:00:00 -0500

The testsite collaboration between artist Cliff Hengst and writer/curator Lawrence Rinder draws inspiration from the presence in Austin—at the Harry Ransom Center—of two remarkable historic artifacts: the very first photograph (c. 1826), a simple image of rooftops seen through the window of the photographer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s home in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France, and the archive of the English author Denton Welch (1915-1948). Welch himself frequently used the image and metaphor of the window to express the threshold of the imagination and the entry point into the unknown. Echoing the Niépce photograph while addressing the domestic status of the testsite location, Hengst has painted on the living room wall an image of the view from the upstairs bedroom window of the house’s occupant, Laurence Miller. (Hengst has installed in Miller’s private area a single work that remains concealed from the visiting…

testsite 08.2

Sun, 6 Apr 2008 22:00:00 -0500

This exhibition takes its name from a 1956 collage by the British artist Richard Hamilton. Staged as cross between a domestic interior and showroom, the picture constructs a space crammed with Modernist furniture and an over-abundance of appliances. (Hanging over the TV, a comic book picture framed next to an ancestral portrait stakes this work’s historic claim as an icon of Pop art). The title came up, at first humorously in conversation with Beverly Semmes about how we might approach the opportunity testsite presents: for a curator (me) to invite an artist (her) to collaborate on a project with some site specificity inasmuch as it is largely located in a living room. Our subsequent decision to make eponymous Hamilton’s Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? immediately provided a useful set of correspondences upon which to build, and now enter, this installation. Starting with collage.Semmes…

testsite 08.1

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:00:00 -0600

Ether is a collaborative work by Frances Colpitt and Terri Thornton based on the idea of invisibility or near invisibility in art. In this collaboration, Thornton and Colpitt complicated the standard relationship between artist as creator and critic as interpreter through a process of exchange and response. Inspired by Thornton’s delicate drawings and pin-pricked words on the wall, Colpitt wrote an essay exploring related works in modern art history—those that approach invisibility but are still able to be seen and those that are fully invisible, such as Robert Barry’s Psychic Series. Colpitt’s essay in turn served as fodder for a new body of work by Thornton. In nine works on paper and a pin-pricked piece created in situ at testsite, Colpitt’s essay is visually reiterated but never fully legible.