After going virtual last year, PrintAustin returns live this year, shining a spotlight on Austin’s vibrant community of fine art printmaking with a string of exhibitions and events. We’ve included a handful of PrintAustin shows for our list of what’s new and fresh this month.
The Contemporary Print
Big Medium, 916 Springdale Road. Opening: 7 to 10 p.m. Jan. 14. Continues through Feb. 15.
The centerpiece exhibition of PrintAustin, this year’s survey of traditional printmaking techniques and innovative approaches in contemporary printmaking is curated by John Hitchcock, professor and associate dean of the arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Slugfest at Link&Pin
Link & Pin Gallery, 2235 E 6th Street #102. Opens Jan. 6 and continues through Jan. 29. Artists’ reception: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 15
Founded by 25 years ago by Tom Druecker and Margaret Simpson, Slugfest is a collaborative printshop and an Austin original. This exhibition celebrates the Slugfest printmakers Shailee Thakkar, Theresa Bond, Alan Tull, Jill Thrasher, Carol Hayman, Druecker, and Simpson. A PrintAustin exhibition.
Jihye Lim, “at the bed,” 1104, 11/15, 2011mezzotint, chincolle, 9.8 x 11.8 inches unframed. Courtesy Wally Workman Gallery
Jihye Lim and Laura Post
Wally Workman Gallery, 1202 W. Sixth St. Opening: Jan. 8 Continues through Jan. 29.
Korean artist Jihye Lim and Texas artist Laura Post both employ a surreal use of the figure. A PrintAustin exhibition.
Brent PhatoVeracity
Something Cool Studios, 1717 E Cesar Chavez St. Opening: 7 to 10 p.m. Jan. 15. Continues through Feb. 13
Austin’s Flash Collective brings together work from three artists bringing their own lens to interrogate authenticity: Cameron Gray, Shanisia Person and Brent Pheto. A PrintAustin exhibition.
Ariel René Jackson channels meteorological aesthetics as an allegory for oral narratives in a multi-channeled video installation entitled “A Welcoming Place” at Women & Their Work.A Welcoming Place: Ariel René Jackson
Women & Their Work, 1311 E. Cesar Chavez St. Opening: 7 to 9 p.m. Jan. 15. Continues through March 3
What would it be like if you could forecast the welcoming status of a place, ‘take the temperature’ of a space before you enter it? In a film-based exhibition Ariel René Jackson weaves interviews, research, image, video, animation, and sculpture to deliver a poetic visualization of shared knowledge about East Austin.
From Bethany Johnson’s “Safekeeping” seeing of sculpture composed of densely laminated layers discarded materialsBethany Johnson: Findings
Grayduck Gallery, 2213 E. Cesar Chavez St. Opening: 7 to 10 p.m. Jan. 22. Continues through March 6
Johnson’s elegant, minimal drawings and collage works investigate the natural world and human attempts to understand, translate, and capture geological and weather phenomena.
Detail of Sadie Barnette’s “FBI Drawings: Informants,” 2021, part of series that reclaims the 500-page FBI surveillance file amassed on her father during his time with the Black Panther Party.Not Only Will I Stare
Christian-Green Gallery, Art Galleries at Black Studies, UT campus. Opens Jan. 27 and continues through May 21.
“Not Only Will I Stare” brings together artists — including Sadie Barnette and Sable Elyse Smith — whose works grapple with the surveillance of Black life, from policing and the carceral state to the FBI and oppressive gazes. The show is organized by Simone Browne, associate professor in African and African Diaspora at the University of Texas, and the author of “Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.”
Bill Morrison, Clip from Dawson City: Frozen Time, 2016. 2K video, black and white, color, sound. 120 min. Courtesy of the artist.Bill Morrison: Cycles & Loops
UT Visual Art Center, UT campus. Opens Jan. 28. Continues through March 12.
Celebrated experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison rescues lesser known and forgotten histories while investigating the fragile existence of celluloid materials. For his first solo exhibition in Texas, Morrison deconstructs his films to create essential abstractions for the Visual Art Center’s gallery space, presenting repetitive loops presented that do not have a beginning or end, and instead, allow the viewer to engage with wavering and untethered relics from history.
