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Linear Imaginations

Curated by Patrik Haggren Whistles, visions, fields and figures along the lines of Gego

January 20 - February 14, 2015

Linear Imaginations: Whistles, Visions, Fields, and Figures, Along the Lines of Gego, Installation view, 2015.
Linear Imaginations: Whistles, Visions, Fields, and Figures, Along the Lines of Gego, Installation view, 2015.
Linear Imaginations: Whistles, Visions, Fields, and Figures, Along the Lines of Gego, Installation view, 2015.
Anna Elise Johnson, Wall Bridge, 2015. Acrylic, resin, archival digital prints, spray paint, India Ink, 14 in. x 21 in. x 4 in.
Anna Elise Johnson, Tilted Arc, 2015. Acrylic, resin, archival digital prints, spray paint, India Ink, 14 in. x 21 in. x 4 in.
Anna Elise Johnson, Remembering How to Build a Barricade, 2015. Acrylic, resin, archival digital prints, spray paint, India Ink, 14 in. x 21 in. x 4 in.
Anna Elise Johnson, Remembering How to Build a Barricade, 2015 (detail). Acrylic, resin, archival digital prints, spray paint, India Ink, 14 in. x 21 in. x 4 in.
Anna Elise Johnson, Specificity of Materials, 2014. Graphite, spray paint, and gesso on paper, 9 in. x 12 in.
Anna Elise Johnson, Scale as Evidence, 2014. Graphite, spray paint, and gesso on paper, 9 in. x 12 in.
Anna Elise Johnson, Wall Void, 2014. Graphite, spray paint, and gesso on paper, 9 in. x 12 in.
Anna Elise Johnson, Scale as Evidence, 2014. Graphite, spray paint, and gesso on paper, 12 in. x 9 in.
Mikhail Lylov, V. Khlebnikov for the birds, 2014.
Gabriel Martinez, Untitled, 2014. Silver point drawing, 7 in. x 10 in.
Gabriel Martinez, Untitled, 2014. Silver point drawing, 8.5 in. x 11 in.
Gabriel Martinez, Untitled, 2014. Silver point drawing, 8.5 in. x 11 in.
Gabriel Martinez, Untitled, 2014. Brick dust on Belgian Linen, 31.25 in. x 35 in.
Gabriel Martinez, Untitled, 2014. Brick dust on Belgian linen, 45.5 in. x 79 in.
Lauren Moya Ford, Malachite, 2014.
Lauren Moya Ford, Septaria, 2014.
Lauren Moya Ford, Florero, 2014. Ink and gouache on paper, 9 in. x 12 in.

Press Release

Opening Reception: 6-8 pm, Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Gallery Talk with the Curator: 12:30-1:30 pm, Thursday, January 22, 2015

Sicardi Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition curated by Patrik Haggren.  A former Core Resident at The Glassell School of Art in Houston, Haggren brings together works by four local artists in an exploration of Gego's application of the line. With new work by Anna Elise Johnson, Mikhail Lylov, Gabriel Martinez, and Lauren Moya Ford, the exhibition offers an investigation into the unpredictability of abstraction, and looks to nature and chaos as locations for the line's movements, projections, and recompositions.

The exhibition opens with a reception from 6-8 pm on Tuesday, January 20, 2015. A gallery talk with the curator is scheduled for 12:30-1:30 pm on Thursday, January 22, 2015.

 

In four graphite drawings, Anna Elise Johnson references police evidentiary drawings of rocks thrown at patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border. In them, Johnson points to the arbitrary nature of measurement, and to the materiality of protest and police response. Her acrylic collages layer images of broken barricades. Johnson was a Core Resident at The Glassell School of Art in Houston from 2012-2014.

 

While Gego's line moves along a continuum from the contours of figures to abstract fields of movement, Mikhail Lylov's installation Khlebnikov for the Birdsrenders imperceptible any difference between mouth and beak in the artist's whistling address to a robin. In a second film, the camera goes along a rock's texture with such close curiosity that one loses sense of outside coordinates and the shape of the rock turns into a continuous plane.

 

In his series of silver point drawings, Gabriel Martinez alludes to the entwined histories of economic abstraction and ideal geometry. As the silver oxidizes over time, the drawings take on different tonal variations, producing chromatic effects that allow for chaos and unpredictability. Martinez was a Core Resident at The Glassell School of Art in Houston from 2010-2012.

 

Lauren Moya Ford's ink drawings reference the rock collection of Roger Caillois, featured in his book The Writings of Stones. Caillois pays specific attention to the septaria rock because its linear developments happen independently of one another, asymmetrically in three dimensions. In a watercolor, Ford also plays on domesticated "still life" and the chromatic, floating qualities of the line, separated from the vase or plant.

 

About the Curator:

Patrik Haggren is a researcher and curator interested in material configurations that sense and feel, specifically their capacity to act within different practices and ways of knowing. He has most recently curated From Here to Afternoon (Laura Lee Blanton Gallery, 2013), an exhibition on the accumulation and projection of movements within dance, photography, economy, labor struggle and sculpture. Haggren currently lives in Berlin, and is at work on projects in several places, including Houston and Stockholm, where he attends CuratorLab, an experimental seminar for curatorial projects.

 

Paratext:

Paratext is an small scale independent book press founded by Gabriel Martinez, Regina Agu, Ronnie Yates and David Fil in January 2015. Books will be printed and bound in house at Alabama Song, a social art space in Houston's Third Ward. The press's first book, Lauren Moya Ford's Tinieblas, will be printed in association with the exhibition Linear Imaginations at Sicardi Gallery. The book will be printed in an edition of 30 copies and will feature silk screen covers printed in the studio at Alabama Song.

 

For more information, please write to info@sicardi.com or call 713-529-1313.