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Jewel in the rough: the annual Contemporary Art Month reveals a city with a dynamic and increasingly progressive art scene - Report From San Antonio
Art in America, Feb, 2002 by Frances Colpitt
Showing work during CAM 2001 were Lordy Rodriguez of Houston, Brian Conley of New York and Christian Jankowski of Berlin. Rodriguez, who is known for his handmade road maps that decoratively combine a variety of maps, documented four trips. The collages were splayed out in front of monitors playing videos of unfurling highway surface. Conley created a sound-producing contraption with a huge balloon, wooden organ pipes and electronics, which simulated the mating call of a frog.
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Jankowski's video, Holy Art Work, was the most complex and layered in meaning. In a sermon delivered to his congregation, local evangelical pastor Peter Spencer, asked by the artist to participate in the project, preached against a "one-dimensional view of painting" and praised the value of contemporary art as "a bridge between religion, art and television." All the while, Jankowski lay collapsed at the preacher's feet, apparently overcome by the spirit. Projected on the gallery wall, the video of the event convincingly resembled programs hosted by televangelists.
In the Hudson (Show)Room, ArtPace's fourth gallery devoted to exhibitions organized in-house, "Outline" included a trio of drawing installations made in response to one another by Houston artists Emily Joyce and Matthew Sontheimer, and Hills Snyder of Helotes, Tex. Snyder made forceful, rectangular router cuts into the wall, reproducing the geometric configurations of five different flags. On the floor below each graphic incision lay a newspaper from the country (or state, in the case of Texas, which was represented by the San Antonio Express-News) designated by the flag. Joyce's colorful, meandering patterns of cut-vinyl shapes beautifully complemented Sontheimer's attenuated, illegible scrawl etched into the sheetrock across the gallery. The exhibition was organized by Kathryn Kanjo, who was appointed executive director of ArtPace in early 2000.
San Antonio Museums
With the administration of ArtPace in Kanjo's hands, Linda Pace has been able to devote more time to her activities as an artist. During CAM, she was featured in a one-work exhibition at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Red Project (1999-2001) is an 8-foot-square relief of found objects mounted on wooden panels. Hundreds of red items, including Mexican candles, boxing gloves, Teletubby dolls and Christmas ornaments, created a personalized poetry from mass-produced detritus.
Also at the museum was Carmen Lomas Garza's retrospective, organized by the San Jose Museum of Art. Lomas Garza, who was born in Kingsville, Tex., and lives in San Francisco, paints endearing scenes based on memories of her childhood. Primarily in gouache on paper, these narratives depict various domestic rituals, especially those involving curanderas (healers). Only apparently childlike, Lomas Garza's use of modeling and perspective is sophisticated and subtle, her luscious color bright and clear.
In 1998, the museum inaugurated the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, named in acknowledgement of Ann Rockefeller Roberts's donation of some 2,500 pieces of Latin American folk art from her late father's collection. Housed in an $11-million expansion to the museum, the center's galleries display an extensive array of pre-Columbian, Colonial and modern art, with a special emphasis on folk art. According to Marion Oettinger, senior curator and curator of Latin American art, the collection is "the most comprehensive expression of Latin American art in the country," spanning 3,000 years and representing all of Latin America and the Caribbean. The museum's plans include the conversion of the third floor of the Latin American wing into a study center for visiting scholars.
