Artpace Hudson (Show)Room Outline June 28–August 26, 2001 Coinciding with San Antonio’s Contemporary Art Month, ArtPace presents Outline, an exhibition in the Hudson (Show)Room featuring three Texas artists, Emily Joyce, Hills Snyder, and Matthew Sontheimer. Linking the artists’ work is reliance upon contour and silhouette to form images. This emphasis on the edge results in refined images in which detail is removed, so that the reference is at once recognizable and abstract. Indeed, the artists, whose authorial mark-making seems far from their concerns, find their sources in existing material: a signature (Sontheimer), craft stencils (Joyce), or newspapers and flags (Snyder). In this manner the artists both hint at a narrative and deny a conclusive interpretation. The enigmatic results can be read formally, with sly references to pop art and minimalism, but also accept narrative interpretation. For the exhibition each artist will present a major wall-bound work accompanied by a selection of smaller works. Emily Joyce forms her colorful compositions from adhesive vinyl cut in the shapes of craft-store stencils. By presenting only a fragment of the figure or by layering multiple pieces, Joyce stalls viewers’ recognition of the images. With her particular stencils, Joyce creates a system that allows her to subtly reveal a quality of innocence and wonder. In Empire, Hills Snyder cuts four rectangular forms into the wall. The geometric outlines are in fact based upon the flags of the Netherlands, France, Texas, Germany and The United Arab Emirates. Stripped of their color and lone star, the flags appear as minimalist abstractions. Recognition occurs only after time or perhaps after noticing the San Antonio Express News and newspapers from the other countries lying on the floor marked with dust from the wall cutting. Snyder’s work quietly evokes historical associations. Matthew Sontheimer etches a cryptic script directly into the wall, only to cover his marks with a coat of house paint. He diligently inscribes his messages in a specialized alphabet he created using sections of his father’s signature. The text meanders in an erratic ribbon across the wall, resembling not language as much as a graph-reading gone wrong. Sontheimer reworks one language to create another which is literally self-contained. His private considerations and questions are readable to the viewer only as hints of tension and ease. Emily Joyce was born in 1976 in Arlington Heights, Illinois. After receiving her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and studies at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, Joyce was invited to participate in the Core Artists-in-Residence Program at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (1999-2001). Last year through the Core program, she was awarded the Eliza Randall Prize. Her work has been recently featured at the Inman Gallery, Houston, TX; Donna Beam Gallery, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV; Galveston Art Center, TX; and the Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX. She made her New York debut last year with a solo exhibition at sara meltzer gallery. Joyce currently resides in Houston, TX. Hills Snyder was born in 1950 in Lubbock, TX. A tenured Texas artist, Snyder has exhibited widely throughout the state with recent solo shows at Angstrom Gallery, Dallas; Finesilver Gallery, San Antonio; and James Gallery, Houston. His work has also been featured in New York and Europe, including his 1998 exhibition, Gloville, at the Casino Luxembourg, Forum d’Art Contemporain. He was the recipient of an Art Matters fellowship in 1996 and 1990, and a Mid-America/NEA fellowship for sculpture in 1995. In 2001, Snyder was awarded the first ArtPace Travel Grant. His work is found in numerous public collections including the Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX and The Microsoft Collection, Redmond, WA. Snyder currently lives and works in Helotes, TX. Born in 1969 in New Orleans, LA, Matthew Sontheimer currently lives and works in Houston, TX. He received his BFA from Stephen F. Austin University, Nacogdoches, TX and was awarded an MFA from Montana State University, Bozeman, MT. His work has been shown throughout Texas and the United States including exhibitions at Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA; Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas, TX; Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, TX; Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX; and the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LA, among others. This year his work was featured in the Subject Plural: Crowds in Contemporary Art at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, and two of his drawings were acquired for the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Hills Snyder reading given at the reception: It think it was the Irish Republican Army that came up with the motto “England’s difficulties are Ireland’s opportunities,” but I can well imagine the Republic of Texas crowd fixating on it just as others have throughout the 20th century. And while I don’t go for slogans, I’d stand on a soapbox… No, make that a Rice-A-Roni box – I prefer R. Crumb to Warhol, just as I prefer the more modest elevation. At any rate, I’d stand on something, even a pencil if I had to, and allow that what may be a difficulty for the social scientist could very well be an opportunity for the artist. It’s not that I choose the relative minimalism of a flag drained of color over an art of social engagement, its just that I don’t care to ingratiate myself to the art world power structure by purring just the right stuff. I just don’t subscribe to the ideal of artist as civil servant. Nevertheless, I’m not really a modernist either; at least not a two fisted one. I grew up on the multi-track audio pastiche and collage of pop music along side my Stella and Newman, so I’m pretty much doomed to always make my bed in both camps. But I’m only interested in one proposition in so far as I can oppose it with another. Subverting the advice given by the Whole Earth catalog, “stay hungry” I’ll settle for staying slippery. Besides, what you make of the work is your responsibility, not mine. Empire invites you to consider a lateral juxtaposition of languages, boundaries, histories, failures and futures, but there is no narrative offered. Sometimes the real news just won’t fit, even if you adjust its proportions to the prevailing format. By the way, I regard language as a mere branch of incantation. Anyway, you may know your stuff well enough to connect Texas to France or the United Arab Emirates, but my alignments are vertically derived – I find the more telling narrative to be a formal one. |