Artist Charis Ammon @ Inman Gallery, Houston - "Meanwhile" Exhibition

Charis Ammon: Meanwhile 

Inman Gallery, Houston 

May 3 - July 6, 2024 

CHARIS AMMON

Fresh Flowers, 2024

Oil on canvas on board 

6 x 8 inches (15.2 x 20.3 cm)

© Charis Ammon, courtesy of Inman Gallery

Inman Gallery presents Meanwhile, a solo exhibition of new work by Charis Ammon. This is the artist third solo show with the gallery.

Charis Ammon paints quotidian images to document her encounters with urban landscapes and everyday environments. She captures the city both as a site of flux: construction zones, urban development, and concrete, and as a setting of connection. The resulting compositions ask us to consider places and moments we often overlook or disregard, to (re)orient our attention towards the present moment.

Meanwhile presents a new suite of paintings exploring quiet intimacies: buckets of flowers in bodega entryways, dewy raindrops on plastic sheaths for bouquets, HEB greeting cards waiting to be purchased, and closeups of socks, implying a private moment at home. The exhibition marks a transition from the artist’s previous grittier cityscapes and construction sites towards softer subject matter. The imagery is still "in the city” – grocery stores, bodegas, flower shop storefronts – but the gaze has shifted to capturing public places that speak to private expressions.

However, the circumstances that prompt these private expressions remain outside the scope of the paintings, fortifying the works’ emotional depth. Charis Ammon’s subject matter – cards and flowers waiting to be purchased – piques our curiosity as to what is happening, or did happen, or could happen to necessitate these gifts. Is this gesture joyous or mournful? With the absence of people to indicate the celebratory or commemoratory nature of an event, we as the viewer are left wondering. Read in this light, the works take on a melancholic tone, reflecting both the unease of an unknown outcome and the warmth of the thoughtful gesture itself.

CHARIS AMMON

Meanwhile, 2024

Oil on canvas, eight panels 

Each 70 x 26 inches (15.2 x 20.3 cm)

© Charis Ammon, courtesy of Inman Gallery

The titular work, a monumental, multi-panel painting depicting a flower shop refrigerator, responds to this very notion of thick stillness amid anticipation. Painted to-scale, the surface reveals frosted glass and foggy windows partitioning receding space. While life-shaking events divide our sense of time into ‘befores’ and ‘afters,’ Ammon calls attention to how we navigate the ‘meanwhile.’ Other titles, like“Sharing a Bag of Chips” (sock painting) or “You, Me, and Everybody Else” (valentine card display kiosk), point to the material markers of quality time in these moments. The card paintings have a more humorous tone, siphoning through several templates that don’t “fit” until something rings true. The sock paintings capture a more tender moment at home, just talking or snacking with a friend or a love, reminding us that being present is a gift too.

By painting gifts and rituals that form around the in-between moments of life events Ammon expresses the physical ways we communicate care. In their depiction of gesture, the works capture the joys, humor, and tenderness of sharing a life with others. Charis Ammon’s canvases occupy the same space as the bouquets and cards they depict—when words are unavailable or feel inadequate, a painting gestures towards the feelings we carry.

CHARIS AMMON (born 1992, Dallas, TX) holds a BFA in Painting from Texas State University and an MFA in Painting from The University of Houston. Charis Ammon's solo exhibitions include Where Do You Go When You Are On Your Way?, Alexander DiJulio Gallery, New York, NY (2023), Palm Trees and City Debris, Texas State University Gallery, San Marcos, TX (2022), Inheritance at The Old Jail Art Center, Albany, TX (2020), and Maintenance at Art League Houston (2019), as well as two solo exhibitions at Inman Gallery (2021, 2018). Her work was recently included in Night Work, Alexander DiJulio Gallery, New York, NY (2024), In Being Double: The Pace Staff Show, Pace Gallery, New York, NY (2023), Book Arts of Houston, The Printing Museum, Houston TX (2023), Urban Impressions: Experiencing the Global Contemporary Metropolis, Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX (2022) and The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston (2022). She lives and works in Brooklyn, NYC

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

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Erika Blumenfeld: Tracing Luminaries @ Inman Gallery, Houston

Erika Blumenfeld: Tracing Luminaries

Inman Gallery, Houston

March 9 – April 29, 2023

Erika Blumenfeld

Plate no. I6914 (Small Magellanic Cloud), 2022

From the portfolio Tracing Luminaries

A portfolio of six intaglio prints with cyanotype, chine collé, and

24k gold leaf on Hahnemuhle Copperplate

Portfolio size: 17 ¼ x 15 in

Erika Blumenfeld inspects one of the engraved acrylic plates

Photograph by Jake Eshelman

Inman Gallery presenst Erika Blumenfeld: Tracing Luminaries, a solo presentation of her Tracing Luminaries potrfolio of six cyanotypes, accompanied by a singe print from a stand-alone edition. 

Tracing Luminaries is a new print edition by Houston-based artist Erika Blumenfeld created in close collaboration with Island Press in St. Louis, MO. The project centers on the Women Computers who, beginning in the late 1800s, worked at the Harvard College Observatory with the institution's growing Astronomical Photographic Glass Plate Collection. These women brought their keen attention and passion for discovery to the task of examining and cataloguing hundreds of thousands of stars and deep space objects, revolutionizing astronomy and astrophysics in the process. In their careful examination of the glass plates, the women hand-inked their research directly onto the glassy surface of countless photographic plates, literally drawing connections across the night sky in lyrical gestures .

In an effort to digitize this collection of 500,000 glass plates to benefit time-duration astronomy research efforts, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics initiated what is known as the DASCH project, which, in the process of creating clean scans of the collection, permanently removed the women's marks from the plates. While a group of the Women Computer's marked plates were set aside for posterity, and those markings were documented photographically before being wiped off, the majority of the women's original marks no longer exist. Upon learning of this history, Blumenfeld was moved to artistically intervene. Combing photography, printmaking, and experimental conservation, Blumenfeld worked with Island Press to return the women's marks to the stars through the language of materials. Using theelement of pure gold-which is forged by the stars-and direct sun-exposed cyanotype "lightrecordings," the Tracing Luminaries prints reveal the women's drawn notations as a poetic starfieldamidst a deep blue expanse.

Erika Blumenfeld writes:

“The rich historic data of the stars captured on the photographic emulsion and the collection’s continued import in contemporary astronomical research are inseparable from the historical inked ephemera illustrating human exploration and knowledge seeking, our longing to learn the stars, and the people who carried that vision to us.”

She continues:

“The entanglement of these star-made materials alongside interwoven ideas of latency and presence, of human and cosmic timescales, and of elemental reciprocity has coalesced as a kind of alchemy throughout the making of this work. In this way, their marks—these interstellar drawings—once again become embodied fluid topographies, embedded by the gravity force of the press as it orbited the intaglio plate and paper, finally revealing the women’s marks as elevated. Then, the elemental form of pure gold coalesces with the embossed ink layer forming a material bond that renders the text as star matter—and raised, as it would be, above the print’s own horizon line; their marks become, once again, star-bound.”

ERIKA BLUMENFELD holds a BFA in Photography from Parsons School for Design and an MSc in Conservation Studies from University College London. Both a Guggenheim and Smithsonian Fellow, Blumenfeld’s studios include laboratories, observatories, and extreme environments, and she has collaborated with scientists and research institutions, including NASA, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, McDonald Observatory, and the South African National Antarctic Program. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Lannan Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts; The Polaroid Collection; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; University College London and the University of Texas. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, Art in America, Nature, ARTnews, New Scientist, and The New York Times, among others. In 2022, the artist was elected as Full Member of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society for her artistic practice’s contributions to science.

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

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Jackie Gendel @ Inman Gallery, Houston - Sidelong Glances

Jackie Gendel: Sidelong Glances 

Inman Gallery, Houston 

March 9 – April 29, 2023

JACKIE GENDEL  

Study for tbt, 2019 

Ink, gouache, flashe, watercolor, faux gold leaf on paper

9 3/4 x 8 1/8 in (24.8 x 20.6 cm)

JACKIE GENDEL 

tbt, 2023

Watercolor and gouache on handmade paper

10 3/8 x 11 3/8 in (26.4 x 28.9 cm)

14 3/8 x 15 3/8 x 1 1/4 in (36.5 x 39.1 x 3.2 cm) framed

Inman Gallery presents Sidelong Glances, a solo exhibition of works on paper made by JACKIE GENDEL across the span of the last decade, from 2014 to 2023.

Jackie Gendel paints colorful, narrative compositions that blur the distinction between figuration and abstraction in their rendering of people and cinematic spaces. Figures – women in particular – take center stage in Jackie Gendel’s work, unfolding within dynamic scenes with moving bodies in changing spaces. Embracing a fluid approach to her work, Jackie Gendel has commented how she develops “scenes, characters and situations through deliberate figuration, intuitive mark making, color and chance procedures,” often painting over works, or creating the same image in different colors and sizes to subvert the singular image. This procedural evolution mirrors the evolving identities of the characters she paints, allowing a narrative to continue without a predetermined or fixed destination. In doing so, Jackie Gendel’s practice quite literally creates a moving image, which skillfully parallels the theatrical, even cinematic, nature of the paintings themselves.

Included in the show are a series of works on paper across nearly a decade of making, from 2014-2023. Within this selection we see Jackie Gendel working in a range of styles and scales, with color and shape varying widely. Yet this also gives us a unique opportunity to see the cyclical nature of her work, the ways she moves in and out of motifs, circling back to compositional strategies with renewed vigor and sustained curiosity. Such display pushes back on reductive understandings of stylistic evolution as linear progress, instead showing a nuanced, playful, expansive understanding of experimentation and generative creation with an eye for sequence and seriality.

Jackie Gendel’s compositions, like her painterly process, are highly attuned to the slippery relationship between space, time, and motion. Embracing experimentation and loss of control, her works show the ways marks can subtly and dramatically shift unfolding narratives and morph into expressive characters. “In this way,” Jackie Gendel writes, “painting and drawing introduce me to my subject.”

Not only do we have a sense of Jackie Gendel introducing herself – and by extension, the viewer – to her subjects, but so too do we feel the figures introducing themselves to one another. Rarely alone, these figures exist alongside others, their relationships captured in varying gestures and glimpses, alluding to dynamics we are not wholly privy to. Sidelong glances between the women are scattered throughout the exhibition, both within paintings and across tableaux. The women rarely look back at us, choosing instead to concern themselves with their own narratives, their own worlds, and each other. In this way, the paintings have a life of their own; the sidelong glance quietly subverts the gaze and honors the figures’ own agency.

JACKIE GENDEL (b. 1973, Houston, TX) received a BA from Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, MO) and an MFA from Yale University (New Haven, CT). She has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, and her work has been featured in publications such as Artforum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Modern Painter, and Art Papers. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Jackie Gendel an Academy Award in 2007. She is currently an Associate Professor of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. Jackie Gendel lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

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Richard Brown Lethem @ Inman Gallery, Houston - Roots, Stones and Baggage

Richard Brown Lethem 

Roots, Stones and Baggage 

Inman Gallery, Houston 

January 14 – February 25, 2023

RICHARD BROWN LETHEM 

Russets, One Stone, 2022

Acrylic and charcoal on canvas

24 x 24 x 1 3/8 in (61 x 61 x 3.5 cm)

© Richard Brown Lethem, courtesy of Inman Gallery

RICHARD BROWN LETHEM (b. 1932) has been living and thinking in paint on canvas since the 1950’s, with results that have been categorized, more or less aptly, as abstraction, expressionism, figuration, social realism, surrealism, and allegory. Now in his ‘90’s, Richard Brown Lethem’s imagery has become unified and direct, often consisting of a central form derived from nature, yet distilled, by the visionary pressure of his attention, into symbols seemingly directly drawn from his psychic landscape, and beamed into that of the viewer. If this is an example of “late style,” it is one defiantly uninterested in a modest contemplation of mortality; instead, the painter’s wisdom exalts an embrace of color and sensuality, and traces the joyous mystery of our consistent presence as neighboring bodies in a shared field of space.

All but one painting in this exhibition were created in Richard Brown Lethem’s new studio in Claremont, CA. where he moved at the beginning of the pandemic to be closer to family. It was in Claremont where Lethem met artist Emily Joyce (b. 1976), who's solo exhibition Under the Garden is on view concurrently in the main gallery. Upon seeing Richard Brown Lethem’s first show in Claremont, Emily Joyce knew she had found a kindred spirit. They quickly became “art family,” with a mutual affinity for getting deep into seemingly simple things, everyday objects, basic shapes, flat color–painting at its most elemental.

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

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Emily Joyce @ Inman Gallery, Houston - Under The Garden

Emily Joyce: Under The Garden 

Inman Gallery, Houston 

January 14 – February 25, 2023 

EMILY JOYCE

Blue Nile, 2022

Flashe vinyl paint, acrylic, and metal leaf on canvas over panel

16 x 16 in (40.6 x 40.6 cm)

© Emily Joyce, courtesy of Inman Gallery

Former Core Artist in Residence EMILY JOYCE (b. 1976) returns to Houston for her seventh solo exhibition with the Inman Gallery. 

In Emily Joyce’s recent symmetrical paintings, she explores hidden systems of nature, the built world, and the cosmos. The paintings are composed of modular and interlocking hexagons, triangles, and concentric circles with special surprise guest appearances by the occasional lily or a bit of gilded text. 

While in her twenties and fresh out of art school, Emily Joyce worked as a decorative painter, embellishing the walls of mansions and vacation homes. Now, a few decades later, that early training has seeped into her new paintings. 

In this recent body of work, there are combinations of faux-bois, gold leafing, spatter painting, stenciling, rag-rolling, marbelizing etc.–sometimes all in one composition. By assigning each technique to its own specific shape on the canvas, Emily Joyce creates an unfolding pattern and off-beat rhythm. The decorative finishes function as sophisticated painting solutions, rather than tromp-l’oeil trickery. 

Emily Joyce’s presentation includes a site-specific painting onto which other works are hung, a self-referential work that cleverly–and playfully–exemplifies these conceptual underpinnings.

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

www.inmangallery.com

Jamal Cyrus @ Inman Gallery, Houston - Long to Go

Jamal Cyrus: Long to Go 

Inman Gallery, Houston

November 12, 2022 - January 7, 2023

Jamal Cyrus 

Sstrum, 2022

Helmet conch shell, wood, carpet, speaker stand, 

tambourine jingles, corn grits, India ink

75 x 18 x 15 in (190.5 x 45.7 x 38.1 cm)

© Jamal Cyrus, courtesy of Inman Gallery

Inman Gallery presents Long to Go, a solo exhibition of new work by Jamal Cyrus. Utilizing both exhibition spaces of the gallery, the exhibition features new, cross-disciplinary work by Cyrus, including denim and papyrus-based two-dimensional works, as well as sculpture and installation showcasing Cyrus’ rich material practice. Included in the exhibition are collaborative drawings by Jamal Cyrus and Dawolu Jabari Anderson, a fellow former member of Otabenga Jones & Associates. This is Jamal Cyrus' fourth solo show at Inman Gallery.

As Cyrus says, Long to Go explores the “two-mindedness” of Black America, which possesses a dual African and American past. The show’s title signifies a longing to return to or connect with ancestral Africa, as well as signaling a long road that still lies ahead toward freedom, equality and justice for Black Americans in the U.S. Cyrus’ practice has always centered around the notion of reviewing and re-viewing Afro-diasporic history through a nuanced lens. He aims to look again and bring to light the cultural narratives and figures who have been overlooked, ignored, or censored by the establishment.

In the spring of 2018, Jamal Cyrus was awarded a travel grant sponsored by BMW (the BMW Art Journey), which presents awarded artists with the opportunity to create a journey designed to transform their approach to art-making. During his travels in the summer of 2018, Cyrus sought to learn about the influence that migration and displacement have had on the expressive practices within the African Diaspora. This 45-day trip took him to four continents, seven countries, twelve cities and left him with a set of experiences and a repository of information that has proved to be pivotal in Cyrus’ career. Cyrus’ artistic practice has afforded him a form of self-education, as well as an education for the viewer, as he continues to explore the themes of Black Atlantic migration and the function of music in Black culture.

The works in Cyrus’ 2019 Inman Gallery exhibition Currents and Currencies offered the first evidence of the research and insights afforded him by his Art Prize journey. This show also debuted Cyrus’ use of denim as a signature material in his artistic practice. In the artist’s words, he is attempting with denim “to use the materials and format of the quilt to document aspects of Black political history.” Three years later, we see the continued development and mining of these rich travel experiences in the works on view in the current show.

Long to Go is accompanied by a thoughtful essay written by Houstonia magazine writer Amarie Gipson. Below is an excerpt from her writing for the exhibition brochure:

“Chants, moans, and cries for deliverance” are what Civil Rights leader Wyatt T. Walker considers to be the bedrock of Black music traditions. From the fields and churches of the plantation South to the bars and clubs of the nation's urban hotspots and beyond, a longing for freedom is at the heart of our culture.

In Long to Go, Cyrus continues his investigation of Black spirituality and resistance, asking questions about history without the expressed need for solutions or answers. The exhibition’s title is a double entendre that points to the tension between the presence of freedom in Black life and the continued pursuit of it. It’s a phrase that can either taunt or motivate you. At all once, it conjures a deep sense of longing alongside a reminder of the distance from liberation. Black American culture is created at the crux of this tension. The struggle for equity and equality has lived alongside our Afrofuturist desire to dwell beyond the constructs of global oppression. It is the liminal space where political resistance, spirituality and aesthetics converge.”

JAMAL CYRUS (b. 1973, Houston, TX) received his BFA from the University of Houston in 2004 and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. He has won several prestigious awards, most recently the Driskell Prize, awarded by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (2020). Cyrus was also a member of the artist collective Otabenga Jones and Associates, active from 2002 to 2017. He lives and works in Houston, TX. In September, Jamal Cyrus: The End of My Beginning opened at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. This marks the third installment of Cyrus’ museum survey, which originated at The Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston in 2021 and continued on to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2022. The exhibition was organized for MMA by Ryan N. Dennis, Chief Curator and Artistic Director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange (CAPE).

INMAN GALLERY

3901 Main Street, Houston, TX 77002

www.inmangallery.com