Huma Bhabha: Other Forms of Life / Jessica Stockholder: Relational Aesthetics / Robert Davidson: U and Eye

The Contemporary Austin presents exhibitions by Huma Bhabha and Jessica Stockholder at its two locations. On view through January 13, 2019, Huma Bhabha: Other Forms of Life is a survey of recent work by the Pakistan-born American artist, including sculpture, photography and collage, drawing, and printmaking. Jessica Stockholder: Relational Aesthetics—which also encompasses an exhibition by Haida artist Robert Davidson—includes new and recent sculptures, along with a site-specific architectural installation, and is on view through March 3, 2019.

Both exhibitions are organized by Julia V. Hendrickson, Associate Curator at The Contemporary Austin. Hendrickson notes, “I am thrilled to bring two artists to Austin who offer uniquely different perspectives and modes of working. While their work is visually quite different, both Huma and Jessica share a similarly hybrid practice that embraces formal interests in color, shape, and texture, while blurring the lines between painting and sculpture—all with a great sense of humor and understanding of contemporary culture.“

Huma Bhabha (American, born 1962 in Karachi, Pakistan) creates works that seem at once reflective of the present day and connected to some unknowable ancient past. Other Forms of Life presents a focused, seven-year survey, including nearly thirty works that employ the artist’s own brand of figuration and enigmatic iconography. Entering The Contemporary’s second-floor gallery space, museum visitors are met by mysterious, hybrid artworks—figurative mixed-media sculptures and works on paper that merge drawing, photography, and collage in compositions drawn from science fiction, pop culture, disparate ancient and contemporary histories, and more. Life-size, abstracted figurative sculptures in cork, Styrofoam, wood, wire, clay, and paint stand sentinel throughout the gallery space. These are surrounded by two-dimensional works including a set of ten haunting photogravures; large-scale drawings that combine collage with masked and obscured photographs; and rubbings created on the floor of the artist’s studio.

Other Forms of Life is Bhabha’s first solo exhibition in Texas and includes an outdoor sculpture at the museum’s fourteen-acre Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria. Like the works on view at the Jones Center, the nearly eight-foot tall bronze sculpture God of Some Things, 2011, is simultaneously representational and abstract, surreal and familiar, humorous and frightening. Standing on a stepped platform in the woods along the shore of Lake Austin, the mysterious, monumental figure gives the sense that the viewer has stumbled on a remnant of a previously unknown—yet somehow familiar—civilization.

Jessica Stockholder (American-Canadian, born 1959 in Seattle, Washington, and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia) presents colorful, abstract works that seem to bring painting into three-dimensional space. The artist’s first solo exhibition in Texas in more than a decade, Relational Aesthetics includes nearly a dozen sculptures that combine abstraction, found objects, and bright color. Among these are new and recent works from Stockholder’s “Assist” series: brightly colored, abstract assemblages that require the support of another, interchangeable object in order to stand. Not part of the sculptures themselves, these utilitarian objects become non-functional as they serve to support Stockholder’s work.

At the center of the large first-floor gallery space at the Jones Center, the vibrant, site-specific sculpture The situation @ the party, 2018, intervenes within the museum’s existing architecture. Made of brightly colored plastic, wood, fiberglass, yellow carpet, a rolling ladder, and more, the work doubles as a viewing platform and pedestal, through which museum visitors may view a focused exhibition of the prints of First Nations artist Robert Davidson (Haida, born 1946 in Hydaburg, Prince of Wales-Outer Ketchikan division, Alaska). U and Eye is curated by Stockholder and underscores her own creative relationship with other artists and art forms, including First Nations artists, whose work was embedded in her day-to-day life growing up in Vancouver. “[Davidson’s] work and the tradition it springs from has been enormously influential for me,” Stockholder notes. “Robert Davidson recognized the importance and wonder of the Haida carving tradition and has made it his life’s work to keep that tradition alive and newly accessible to his community.”

A large-scale, commissioned sculptural installation by Stockholder, Save on select landscape & outdoor lighting: Song to mind uncouples, will also be on view outdoors at the museum’s Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria beginning in December 2018.

Known for artist-centric projects and collaborations, The Contemporary Austin invites exploration in both its urban and natural settings—downtown at the Jones Center on Congress Avenue, at its lakeside sculpture park, and around Austin through the Museum Without Walls program.

Events

Artists in Conversation: Jessica Stockholder & Robert Davidson: September 15, 1–2pm 
Other Forms of Life Film Series, curated by Huma Bhabha: October 3–27 
Austin Film Society Cinema, 6406 N. IH-35 Suite 3100, Austin 
Teacher Workshop: Figure & Form: October 17, 5–7pm 
Yoga With Art / Yoga With Adriene: October 25, 6:30–7:30pm 
Artist Talk: Jack Risley: November 29, 7–8pm