The best and freshest of what to see in Austin galleries this month.
Brad Tucker, “Goofy Foot,” 2022, mixed media. Courtesy Northern-Southern GalleryBrad Tucker, Transmountain: Outer Middle
Through Oct. 23, Northern-Southern, E. Fifth St. between Brazos & San Jacinto streets, northern-southern.com
New art by Brad Tucker is cheerfully complex, savvy, optimistic, funny, reflective, and beautiful. It no longer matters what they are; they resemble painting-sculptures.
Loops: Alie Jackson & Cluster Duck: Alex Coronel
Through October 24, ContraCommons,12912 Hill Country Blvd. Ste. F-140, Bee Cave, contracommon.org
ContraCommons offers a pair of solo showings. Alie Jackson explores collage and stop motion animation. Alex Coronel’s mixed media paintings reflect a chaotic but playful take on our tumultuous times.
Jen Rose “Blue Bryozoa Nymph (Immature Sea Mat)”, 2022. Courtesy Camiba GalleryJen Rose: The Unnameable Monster of the American Psyche
Through Nov. 5. Camiba Gallery, 6448 E Hwy 290, Suite A102, camibagallery.com
Made of nylon cord and hand-made porcelain, and also ratan, foam and cactus fiber, Jen Rose’s sculptural monsters can be manipulated into different forms, alien and familiar at the same time.
Jon Langford. Courtesy YarddogOur Long National Nightmare Has Just Begun
October 6 – 30. Opening: 6:30 to 9 p.m. Oct. 6 Yarddog Art Gallery, Canopy, 916 Springdale Road
Welsh-born, Chicago-based Jon Langford returns to Austin with new paintings and prints for his 26th annual show at Yarddog. Once the drummer for the punk band The Mekons, Langford combines a punk sensibility with exquisite draftsmanship.
Sara Corley Martinez, “Child Restraint,” 2022, digital print. Courtesy the artistSara Corley Martinez: Drawings Restraints
Oct. 14 – Nov. 4, Spellerberg Projects, 103 S Main St, Lockhart, spellerbergprojects.com
San Antonio artist Sara Corley cleverly appropriates other artists’ work through the point of view of parenthood — in this case Matthew Barney’s “Drawing Restraints” and its idea of art making as parallel to athletic practice. However Martinez, questions the “obstacles” that are children, being a mother, or women aging.
Adrian Armstrong, Untitled, 2022. Soft-ground and aquatint multi-plate color etching with hand-cut, monoprinted chine collé elements. Part of a varied edition of 22. Courtesy Flatbed PressBlack Owned: Prints by Adrian Armstrong
Oct. 22 – Dec. 3. Opening 6-8 p.m. Oct. 22. Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking, 3701 Drossett Dr. flatbedpress.com
Adrian Armstrong’s artistic practice has exploded in the last couple of years. So it’s fitting he is celebrated with two solo exhibitions in Austin this fall. Armstrong is deeply interested in how Black experiences intersect with the history of photography, portraiture, and collage. Using friends, family members, and acquaintances as subjects, His single and multi-figural works probe the influence of place and popular culture on the formation of self-image, community, connection, tenderness, and love — both platonic and romantic. More specifically, he is interested in the complex ways race informs how we assign value to and interact in the spaces we occupy.
‘There are Black people in Nebraska?’ New paintings by Adrian Armstrong
Oct. 21, 2022-January 8, 2023. Big Medium, 916 Springdale Road, bigmedium.org
This exhibition features new work in Armstrong’s signature style of rendering his figures in ballpoint pen and also includes an interactive installation that recreates Goodies, the local corner store near his great-grandmother’s home in a small, vibrant northside neighborhood in Omaha.
Jenelle Esparza, Detail of “Water Rising From The Dirt,” 2022. Courtesy Women & Their Work
Jenelle Esparza: It Could Only Be Lived
Oct. 22- Dec 15, Women & Their Work, 1311. E. Cesar Chavez St., womenandtheirwork.org
For generations of Jenelle Esparza’s her family have picked cotton in Texas, connecting her to other Latino families who share the same history and also to the larger, complex history of cotton in America. Inspired by family heirlooms and farming tools from her grandmother’s garage, Esparza pairs cotton fiber with old cast iron tools and hardware creating representations of cultivation and survival, of place, memory, and family.
Daniel Ramos. From the series “The Land of Industrial Men.” “When my parents could take time off from work for Christmas and during the summers, we would travel to Mexico together by bus. The trip was thirty-two hours long, so over the years, we became really familiar with the American landscape. My mother and father used to tell me stories about their lives in Mexico to pass the time. My father’s stories were always depressing. He talked mostly of hunger, poverty, and how many times he sold his own food in exchange for money. My mother, on the other hand, told me tales of climbing tamarind trees with her friends, hanging out, laughing, and playing in the treetops. Before we knew it, we were in Mexico.”Tell Me Who You’re With & I’ll Let You Know Who You Are / Dime Con Quién Andas y Te Diré Quién Eres
Wittliff Collection, Texas State University, San Marcos, thewittliffcollections.txst.edu
Photographic artist Daniel Ramos trains his lens on the people in his life — family, friends, coworkers — to magnify their presence in the world.
