Lines Composed During A Tour Featuring Sara Vanderbeek, Andy Coolquitt, Kristi Kongi, and Erin Curtis Curated by Leslie Moody Castro and Sean Gaulager March 9th - 30th, 2019
Open Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 12-6pm
Culled from a few of our favorite recent exhibitions, this selection of work focuses on materials, movement, pattern, color, and light. Each of these artists employ very different techniques, often utilizing textiles, iconography, flora, found objects, “sloppy” geometry and fabrication; but all elicit reverential humor for the commonplace and the banal objects of everyday life. Their use of color and pattern unify their collective voices while offering entry points into their individual practices. While each of the four artists pull references from a variety of sources, histories, and contexts the formal qualities of the works offer moments of connectivity and reciprocity, engaging in playful dialog with one another and the exhibition space itself.
Sara Vanderbeek is a Texas-based multi-disciplinary visual artist who creates concept-driven series focused on reframing the window and vernacular of portraiture. Her brightly colored work contextualizes autobiographical experiences, appropriates visual imagery and responds to culture and politics. Her artwork has been included in several solo and group shows nationally, including the McNay Art Museum, Art Palace, The Contemporary Austin, grayDUCK Gallery, Freight Gallery, Deitch Projects, Co-Lab Projects and was included in the 2013 Texas Biennial at Blue Star Contemporary. In addition to her studio practice, she works as an independent art consultant and Director of DORF, an alternative gallery space in Austin. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2003.
Andy Coolquitt was born in Texas in 1964 and currently lives in Austin. He recently opened a solo exhibition titled “Andy Coolquitt: i need a hole in my head” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, in California. Coolquitt is perhaps most widely known for a house, a performance/studio/domestic space that began as his master's thesis project at the University of Texas at Austin in 1994, and continues to the present day. He has been an artist-in-residence at Artpace, San Antonio, TX; Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; and 21er Haus, Vienna, Austria. Recent exhibitions include the Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs, NY; The Contemporary Austin, Texas; The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Colorado; Rodeo Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey; and The Goethe Institute - Ludlow 38, New York. His work is included in the collections of the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria; the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington; and the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York.
Kristi Kongi (Tallinn, Estonia; 1985) is a visual artist whose paintings and site specific installations focus on the nuances of light and its effect on color. Her works use color to build and preserve narratives, memories and histories while offering a different perspective and point of view. Kristi studied painting at Tartu Art College (BA, 2004-2008) and graduated from Estonian Academy of Arts painting department (MA, 2008-2011). She’s been awarded with Young Artist Prize (2011), Sadolin Art Prize (2013) and was nominated for Köler Prize in 2016. Kongi was awarded with Konrad Mägi Prize in 2017. She is Associate Professor at the Estonian Academy of Arts painting department.
Erin Curtis is an artist living and working in Austin, Texas. Her recent work reflects an interest in geometric abstraction and its historical roots in weaving, architecture, nature and ritual. Curtis’s work combines utopic ideals of beauty and structure, with process and chance. Primarily working as a painter, she also creates, large-scale, site-specific installations and public art projects. She has received grants from the Dallas Museum of Art, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the City of Austin and the District of Columbia. Recently, Curtis had solo shows at Conduit Gallery, Dallas, TX (2017), CalPoly San Luis Obispo University, California (2016), Big Medium Gallery in Austin, Texas (2015) and at Flashpoint Gallery (2015) in Washington, DC. She has created commissioned works for the Chicago Transit Authority, City of Washington DC, Facebook, Art in Embassies and The City of Austin. Curtis attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2010 and was awarded fully funded residencies at Anderson Ranch (2012) and Vermont Studio Center (2014). In 2008-2009, Curtis was a Fulbright Scholar in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Curtis graduated from Williams College with a BA in Liberal Arts in 1999 and received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007.
