Solo Show Anya Tish in Houston Texas.
Anya Tish Gallery is delighted to present two inaugural solo exhibitions by Texas-based artists: Dave McClinton - From Innocent to Informed, and Marisol Valencia - Coalescence.
Austin artist, Dave McClinton, in his first Houston exhibition, From Innocent to Informed, reconstructs the identity of the African American through a digital assemblage of numerous, taken and found photographs. Coalescence features Marisol Valencia’s labor-intensive ceramic sculptures that incorporate the traditional medium of clay with discarded materials, creating cohesion and sophistication within a single object, surprising the viewer with beauty of the unexpected.
Dave McClinton
Dave McClinton’s large-scale digital collages are riddled with varying textures that represent different aspects of the fictional individual. McClinton revisions the subjects of his photographs, imagining what they may look like in an alternate reality. McClinton’s drive to create these compelling images is to continue the sparked conversation about the African American society in contemporary times, whilst simultaneously acknowledging the grim history of this community. These powerful works attract a deeper conversation among viewers and help "visually define the history of African American culture".
“Currently, there is a newly intensified wave of empathetic consciousness in all forms of artistic output...I want to illustrate the life-cycle of the inner life of a black person. From innocent to informed. From reckless defiant to determined. How the weight of American history can either crush you or harden. And, how either result often has to be hidden from view just to get through the day. The anger of the African American community is always portrayed as a threat. The anger of “traditional” communities is depicted as righteous. This paradigm feeds stress and despair back into black lives and thus strokes the fires we try to simultaneously hide and harness. ”
A Texas native, Dave McClinton’s thought-provoking works have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts, Brooklyn, New York; Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, Lubbock, Texas; McKinney Performing Arts Center, McKinney, Texas; Dougherty Arts Center, Austin, TX as well as other various institutions throughout Texas and Wisconsin.
Marisol Valencia
A decisive moment in the creative process of Mexico-born artist Marisol Valencia, is when she finds the “extra” in the ordinary when crafting her intriguing vessels. Valencia utilizes familiar, yet discarded materials, such as: rawhide, nails, concrete, rubber, or burnt matches, and by combining them with her elegant, deep charcoal gray clay, giving them their “second chance”.
“I dwell on the beauty of aging processes, deterioration, oxidation, humidity stains, burn marks, leftovers. I am always trying to find significance in the insignificant, to find beauty where it is not expected...there is something very seductive about creating a clean and sophisticated artwork from an overlooked material that has aged or deteriorated….As in life, it takes openness and generosity to find meaning and beauty in the everyday and the seemingly less important moments or difficult circumstances, in how we endure and transform the unexpected.”
Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Marisol Valencia has lived in the United States since 2004 and most recently completed the Block XXI program at the Glassell School of Art, where she was awarded a certificate of achievement for her studies in ceramics. While in Mexico, Valencia studied Conservation and Restoration of Art and History at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Her work was recently a part of the noteworthy exhibition, LatinX Art in Times of Conflict at the Holocaust Museum, Houston, Texas, and she is currently exhibiting at the Consulate General of Mexico, Houston, TX.