junemattinglyreynoldsgalleryarthouseatjonescenter

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Jane Mattingly - Art Contributor for modaustin.net writes a regular blog
regularmain.com focusing on Texas Artists.

Three Openings in Austin to Celebrate the
Week-end of October 23
The opening of Tony Feher and Teresa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler at the
Reynolds Gallery . Hubbard/Birchler, an Important Texas Team

The 54-minute film, “Grand Paris Texas at the Paramount Theater” explores the history, people
and catalysts that imprint the small Texas town of Paris was presented in association with
Arthouse, the Austin Film Association and Lora Reynolds’ gallery at her gallery on September 9.
The creation of Austin based artists Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler, the screening
was held in Austin’s historic Paramount Theater; a conversation with the artists with Ned Rifkin,
Director of the Blanton Museum in Austin followed. With German, English and Spanish subtitles,
single channel projection and stereo, this commission by the Modern Museum Fort Worth is in
their permanent collection.

“Eiffel Tower,” Paris Texas, 2009, archival C-Print, 24 x 30 inches

“Grand Paris Texas” interweaves the physical and social space of dead cinema, a forgotten
song and the inhabitants of a small town. The Grand, a long abandoned movie theater in
downtown Paris, serves as the main protagonist in a narrative that explores Paris as a meta-
location constructed through celluloid and soundtrack. The film plus related photographs
and limited edition prints are based on a partially erased 1984 feature movie found in a
video store titled with the town’s name. Two of the narrative threads emphasized the bird-
infested interior of the Grand theater and interviews with members of the community.

Teresa Hubbard was born 1965 in Dublin, Ireland. She received an MFA in 1988 from the
Yale University School of Art Sculpture Program after receiving her BFA from University of
Texas at Austin, Since 2000 she’s been a professor in the Department of Art & Art History
at her Austin alma mater. Even more impressive - since 2004 both she and Birchler serve
as Graduate Faculty members at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard
College, New York.

“Untitled,” 2010, glitter and spray adhesive on
unfolded box, 9 x 9-1/4 inches

Blue Hole, 2010, glitter and spray adhesive on
unfolded box, 8-3/4 x 9-1/2 inches

Alexander Birchler was born in 1962 in Baden, Switzerland. Both he and Teresa received
(his graduate, hers undergraduate) from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in
Halifax. Birchler also attended the University of Art and Design, Helsinki and the Schule
für Gestaltung in Basel. Hubbard/Birchler live and work in Austin and look forward to
an upcoming solo exhibit Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York.

Their extensive exhibition history includes the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago,
the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, the Venice Biennial, the Tate Museum,
Liverpool, and the Kunsthaus Zurich, amongst many others. Their work is in numerous
private and public collections around the world including the Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden in Washington, the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland, the Staedelijk
Museum in Frankfurt, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Museum
Sammlung Goetz in Munich

Feher, a graduate of the University of Texas in Austin in 1978 left Corpus Christi in 1981 for New York
where his gallery representation is D’Amelio Terras. Anthony Meier in San Francisco, Pace Gallery
in New York and ACME in LA show his art. His roots are definitely Texas in spite of his living and
working in New York now.

“Tape,” 2009, four framed digital archive prints, each 24 x 30 inches (+2 AP)

Tony Feher in the Project Room of Lora Reynolds

Though not a minimalist artist, Feher uses as little as possible in a finished work. “An established
master” of contemporary disposable goods such as glass bottles with the labels removed,
plastic grocery bags and cheap plastic flowers, Feher relies “on intuition and improvisation
to observe and appreciate the beauty in everyday objects that surround them – the
incidental, the ordinary, the commonplace, and what many regard as mundane.”
One time he attached an aluminized non-stretch polyester rescue blanket to the wall
with a binder clip and thumbtack.

Singer of Many, 2008, 31 glass bottles with screw caps, water, food color, and
painted wood shelf - 8-1/4 x 108-1/2 x 3-1/2 inches

He’s been featured in 140 gallery and museum exhibitions worldwide. In Texas alone, in 2007, for the
Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi he created an installation especially for the museum and
in 2005 he was the featured artist at the Chinati Foundation’s Open House in Marfa. Museums who
own his art include the Guggenheim, the Walker Art Center, the San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art, the Whitney, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

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The Arthouse at the Jones Center Reopens

Reopening festivities of this 21st century contemporary landmark at 700 Congress Avenue
(on the corner of 7th Street), the oldest and largest non-profit, non-collecting museum in
Texas, caused downtown hotel rooms to disappear months ahead of time!

The location is perfect – in sight of the State Capitol, a short stroll to the Austin Museum of
Art (formerly Laguna Gloria Museum with an emphasis on contemporary artists especially
from Texas), the historic deluxe Driskell Hotel, and 6th Street’s live entertainment, dining
establishments and tattoo parlors.

Arthouse’s “roots” reach back 98 years, founded in 1911 as the Texas Fine Arts Association
(TFAA),Besides renovating the building, Arthouse tripled the useable space to close to 21,000
square feet. Designed by the New York firm Lewis Tsurmaki Lewis (LTL), currently in an exhibit
on New York’s “waterfront” at the Museum of Modern Art.

Highlights of the architecture include: an exterior perforated with 177 custom laminated units 4”
wide by 16” high clustered and positioned to allow light in, and illuminated by LED lights at
night that “animate” passerby’s faces; a glass-lined entry lobby allowing views from the
sidewalk far into the building; a “playful, grand” center staircase in which the first three steps
are concrete while the others of wood suspend up to 35 degrees down from the roof; and,
the roomy 5,000 square foot roof deck made of wood and laminated glass light boxes, for
movie screenings, panoramic views, parties and gatherings. The column-free second floor
gallery above the ground level galleries has a mobile 57’ by 13’ high wall. There’s also a
90-seat community room and mezzanine lounge.

This project is the fait accompli for their accomplished, visionary, non-stop enthused Executive
Director Sue Graze. Sue is the force behind the “stunning” new facilities and their temporary
year-round exhibitions of artists from the emerging to mid-career level from all over the globe
and their programs especially for teenagers. Arthouse’ mission is to “deepen public
understanding of contemporary art.” For instance, the 2010-2011 season featured
16 exhibitions, 15 special projects and four commissioned, site-specific works.

Under Sue’s directorship Arthouse’s biennial juried $30,000 Texas Prize came into existence
to honor and nurture the careers of promising Texas-based artists with a substantial body
of work over the previous two years. The winner is announced at a gala at the museum
and receives a full-color catalog published just for this occasion.

Sue was drawn to Dallas and the Dallas Museum of Art by a Rockefeller Scholarship in
the 1980s; she was appointed the curator of contemporary art and that’s how we got
to know each other.