one night, three openings, a lot of the same faces

On Saturday night I attended 3 art openings in Austin with my boss/friend Tiffany and co-worker Kelly. The first stop we made was at the Creative Research Lab, which is a space run through the University of Texas and located inside Flatbed Press (another gallery). The exhibit, called A Strange Land, incorporates maps, landscapes, and the effect of man on natural environments. My favorite piece in the show is an installation by artist Beili Liu which consists of over a hundred red disks. These disks create a celestial landscape which are quiet and poetically hanging from the ceiling. The other installation I liked was Lynn Richardson's Business as Usual II. The larger than life soft sculptures of oil towers turned the CRL space into a scene out in east Texas, where oil is pumped with floral rigs and shoots out of limp, leaning black towers.

Next up was Birdhouse's group show, Built Like Nests, where my co-worker John Saldana, Jonny, exhibited his family based photography. Unframed and reflecting the light from the ceiling, John's color photographs speak of a contemporary life among his traditional Hispanic culture. Unfortunately, I was too excited to see Jonny's work that I didn't take much time to look at anything else. So I'll need to go back. I did see some manipulated Polaroid pictures that I would like to examine more. The crowd was just too overwhelming and I have a hard time viewing work at that space during openings because it is small.

At Birdhouse we heard of another opening which we had not planned on going to, but decided to keep the momentum and go for it. So we headed over to MASS Gallery in the same complex as Blue Genie and the Blue Theater on Springdale to check out the new work by Austin's Carlos Rosales-Silva, titled No National Monument. This was where the party was at. All the art kids from CRL and Birdhouse, including myself, ended up there as the night grew older and the free drinks kept coming. The work is a satirical take on Carlos's multi-Latino heritages. My favorite came in the form of helium filled gold balloons spelling out Vatos Locos 4Evr. Other 2 dimensional works were framed pieces of paper with simple a anecdote like Fuck Spain.
Finally, there was a DJ at this openings and it kept the crowd going and me happy. I'm glad I got to spend my Satuday night hitting up 3 of Austin's contemporary and inovative art spaces. I highly recomend spending an evening like this one, you will definately be talking about it on Monday.