MAIN GALLERY

The Time Travel Research Institute Presents: 

An installation of light sculpture and collage by PATRICK TURK

Artist talk at 6:30 p.m.

PROJECT GALLERY

Chicome-Xochtli's Children

A group exhibition curated by Beth Secor

HUMBERTO SAENZ | ROBERTO CASTILLO | DANIEL ANGUILU | ARIELLE MASSON  

Artists talk at 7:00 p.m.

The Time Travel Research Institute Presents: 

An installation of light sculpture and collage by Patrick Turk

Reception for the Artists Friday, March 11, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

Exhibition on view March 11 - April 22, 2011   

Houston, TX - Art League Houston is excited to announce The Time Travel Research Institute Presents: an installation of light sculpture and collage by Houston based and self-taught artist Patrick Turk.  The opening reception is Friday, March 11, 2011 from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. with an artist talk at 6:30 p.m.

Prepare to enter the surreal and extraordinary research laboratory of artist and quasi- scientist Patrick Turk, whose recent studies in quantum mechanics and atomic sciences have generated an interactive light installation that playfully explores the phenomenon of time travel through a series of sculptural works that combine three-dimensional collage with electronic mechanisms, LED technology and futuristic design. 

The exhibition includes a series of six wall dependant sculptures that are installed around a mysterious hexagonal structure in the center of the gallery and include circular viewing portals of different sizes and magnification strengths, which distort the time-space manifold, creating microcosmic wormhole matrices that allow the viewer to literally travel through time.

Each light sculpture contains a complex three dimensional collage that relates to a significant time in history, ranging from the evolution of the dinosaurs to the adventures of the Wild Wild West and alternative realities of the near and far future. The collages incorporate multiple layers of pop culture imagery which have been meticulously hand carved from various picture books such as children's comics, science-fiction novels, encyclopedias, history books and scientific diagrams and generate a multidimensional surface across which, time has literally been smeared.

The Time Travel Research Institute Presents explores the paradoxical relationship between the static nature of science and the enigmatic qualities of art, creating an interactive environment that is both academically believable as well as aesthetically engaging.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Patrick Turk is a self-trained Houston-based artist from Galveston, Texas.  His works have been exhibited throughout Houston in galleries such as Art Storm, Lawndale Art Center and Rudolph/Projects/Art Scan as well as galleries in Galveston, Texas and Los Angeles, California.  His works have been published several times in Mung Being Magazine and include high profile commissions for the 2009 Houston Art Car Parade Poster as well as the Philokalia album cover by Golden Cities.

Chicome-Xochtli's Children

A group exhibition curated by Beth Secor

HUMBERTO SAENZ

ROBERTO CASTILLO

DANIEL ANGUILU

ARIELLE MASSON 

Reception for the Artists Friday, March 11, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. 

Exhibition on view March 11 - April 22, 2011

Houston, TX - Art League Houston is pleased to announce the opening of Chicom-Xochtli's Children, which is curated by Beth Secor and features the work of Humberto Saenz, Roberto Castillo, Daniel Anguilu and Arielle Masson.  The opening reception is March 11, 2011 from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. with an artist talk at 7:00 p.m.

Chicome-Xochtli's Children presents a group exhibition of artists whose innovative works in painting, photography and printmaking explore themes of identity, tradition and social justice through aspects of their own Hispanic heritage. Chicome-Xochtli refers to the Gulf Coast Nahuas' name for Xochipilli, the Aztec god of agriculture and the arts. (The Nahua were an indigenous people of Mexico, thought to have originated in what is now the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico, later migrating to the Gulf Coast and Central Mexico). Secor chose the title of the exhibition, as it seemed fitting in that all four artists in this exhibition have cultural connections to Mexico and now live in the Gulf Coast's largest city, Houston, Texas.

Humberto Saenz is a printmaker, whose work "aims to empower the viewer with knowledge about immigration issues, which have affected and segregated Mexican immigrant communities."  Through his symbolic use of the piņata, which he uses as a signifier of Mexican immigrants and culture, Saenz depicts "the objectification of minorities, [and] the loss of culture, identity, and ... division of disenfranchised immigrant communities."

Roberto Castillo's black and white photographs "explore the duality in human beings," and the dichotomy that "has manifested itself through [his] experience as a soldier and an Indian" whilst Daniel Anguilu's aerosol and acrylic paintings rise far above the typical graffiti style; drawing inspiration from his study of pre-colonial art and cultures of Asia, Africa, and Central America as well as with his own Mexican Heritage.  Anguilu "strongly believes in freedom of expression and the inherent need to use this freedom in the decoration of public spaces."  

And finally, Arielle Masson's gouache paintings reflect her fascination of the cultural memories left on the walls of cities, what she refers to as "a sort of architectural and cultural palimpsest, where inscriptions on the walls fade away, and are covered with a new layer of fresh colors, [and where] one thing remains the same: the long lasting human impulse to use color." 

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Beth Secor is an artist and writer who was born in Houston, grew up in Wharton, and returned to Houston where she has pretty much lived for over thirty years, barring a short lived and ill advised move to Baltimore in the early 21^st century.  Her connection to Mexico is through her grandfather, who although Scotch, Irish and Welsh by ancestry spent his first four years in Chihuahua, Mexico with his alleged father who helped build the Copper Canyon Railroad that runs from Chihuahua in the North to Topolobampo on Mexico's west coast. 

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