03/23/13 – 05/11/13

Michael Bise: Life and Death

Frank Rodick: Selections from the exhibition Labyrinth of Desire

Shannon Novak: Tonnetz

An opening reception with Michael Bise and Frank Rodick will be held Saturday, March 23 from 6-8p.

An Art Talk with Michael Bise will take place Wednesday, April 10 at 6pm. The MAC Art Talks are always Free and Open to the Public.

An Art Talk with Frank Rodick  and Katherine Ware will take place Sunday, March 24 at 1p. Guests will enjoy complimentary brunch bites and mimosas.

Exhibition Sponsors:
Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston
Trammell S. Crow
Camilla Cowan

Related Art Talks:
Frank Rodick with Katherine Ware
Art This Week video of the Rodick / Ware Art Talk
Michael Bise

Large Gallery
Michael Bise
Life and Death

Life and Death, an exhibition of drawings by Michael Bise, features a selection of works, some of which are new and previously unexhibited drawings, created within the last five years of the artist’s career. Bise is known for creating large scale graphite drawings that pull from personal experiences. The drawings in Life and Death deal with a range of subject matter from larger cultural realities to personal memories and hurdles. Also included in the exhibition will be Chapters one through three of Bise’s series Life on the List, an autobiographical comic about life on the heart transplant list. Life on the List was created in 2011 for the Glasstire Drawing Project.

Michael Bise currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting at the University of North Texas in 2001 and his Masters of Fine Art in drawing and painting at the University of Houston in 2005. In 2012, Bise received the Hunting Art Prize and was nominated for the Texas Contemporary Award. Recently, Bise exhibited Epilogues at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts at Texas Christian University, curated by Christina Rees. Bise has had numerous solo exhibitions at Moody Gallery, Houston since 2005. Bise has work in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Piggozi Collection in New York, New York. Michael Bise is represented by Moody Gallery, Houston, Texas.

Exhibition Sponsor:
Camilla Cowan

 Square Gallery
Frank Rodick
Selections from the Exhibition Labyrinth of Desire

The MAC is proud to exhibit selections from Labyrinth of Desire, an exhibition of photographs at the Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston in 2010 by Canadian artist Frank Rodick, curated by Katherine Ware. Labyrinth of Desire consists of a series of photographs created from 1991 to the present. Known for creating powerful, evocative, and sometimes controversial pictures, Rodick alters images into sequenced compositions that explore the complex realm of the human psyche. The juxtaposition of images mimics the imprecise and non-linear workings of our private thoughts, memories and desires. The photographs selected from the Labyrinth of Desire for exhibition at The MAC examine five bodies of work: Liquid City (1991-1999), sub rosa (1995-1997), Arena (2002-2005), Faithless Grottoes (2006-2008), and Revisitations (2009-current). Rodick says of his work, “what I’m looking for are images that feel more intimately real than our cursory experience of everyday life, images that give a voice to the worlds that live inside us and which somehow demand witness.”

Frank Rodick’s work has been exhibited widely throughout North America, Latin America, and Europe. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Kinsey Institute. Internationally, his work is in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa, the Musée de la Photographie à Charleroi in Belgium, the Museet for Fotokunst in Denmark, and the Museo Nacional de Bella Artes de Buenos Aires in Argentina. Frank Rodick is represented by Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas.

Katherine Ware is Curator of Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art and has served as Curator of Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Assistant Curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She is the author of numerous works on photographic art and its history.

Exhibition Sponsor:
Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston

WATCH THE ART THIS WEEK INTERVIEWS
BETWEEN FRANK RODICK AND KATHERINE WARE HERE

Lobby
Shannon Novak
Tonnetz

Sound is a part of all of us and all that exists. Shannon Novak’s exhibition, Tonnetz, is based primarily on research in the field of harmonic science that suggests there is an unseen biological lattice that underlies visible cellular structures, a lattice that generates and responds to sound. Tonnetz seeks to reveal the invisible sound network in space by visually manifesting this lattice through a series of points located in The MAC lobby and galleries. These points, or “nodes”, can be viewed through an application available on various mobile devices*. By taking an interdisciplinary approach that blends fine art with music and harmonic science, Tonnetz will seek to contribute new ideas to sound and color research, particularly in the area analyzing synesthetic color to sound experiences. An introduction for the exhibition will be available and written by Martin Rieser, author of The Mobile Audience: Media Art and Mobile Technologies (Architecture Technology Culture).

Shannon Novak is an artist based in Auckland, New Zealand. He works in painting, sculpture, and installation, with a focus on using geometric forms to explore his deep and abiding interest in the interrelationships between sound, color, form, time, space, and social context. In 2012, Novak exhibited Acoustic Synergy at Ro2 Art. He completed a residency at CentralTrak, The University of Texas at Dallas Artists Residency, in 2011, has been engaged in public commissions in Auckland, New Plymouth, and Denver, and co-founded West gallery at The University of Auckland in 2012.

Introductions by Danielle Georgiou and Professor Martin Rieser.