My brother visited Austin last December, and my husband and I took him on a sightseeing tour of several great places around Austin, including a couple of places to see art.
One day, we made it over to the Davis Gallery to see the really awesome wood sculpture of Caprice Pierucci. Her work really blows me away. It’s both very labor-intensive and very organic in appearance. I love the undulations and how she makes wood appear so fluid! Take a look:
The next day we headed over to the Blanton to see the “Turner to Monet: Masterpieces from The Walters Art Museum” exhibit, which was slightly underwhelming. But then we headed up to the second floor to view the American and Contemporary galleries. A lot of wonderful humongous works and a few interesting and even awesome installations.
I was hoping to see a piece by Byron Kim titled “Synedoche,” that I had seen years ago. It’s a 20-panel piece that is composed essentially of portraits of 20 people randomly encountered on the UT campus—but each panel is a solid color— the color of their skin, representing the whole person (hence the title), with the group of painted panels representing the larger population. I’ve seen another larger portion of this project, which I thought I saw here in Austin, and which has even more impact. The initial work received a lot of acclaim in the 1993 Whitney Biennial. There is a 400-panel iteration of this at the National Gallery that I would really love to see in person.
Unfortunately, this was not on display during our brief visit to the Blanton, but here is a group of photos I shot from the Contemporary galleries there. For artists and explanations of the work, you really owe it to yourself to go to the Blanton and take a look yourself. Many of these pieces become even more interesting when you find out the motivation and intent behind their creation.
