New York, NY (PRWEB) October 12, 2012

The second annual Texas Contemporary Art Fair opens next week (October 18 21) at the George R. Brown Convention Center and will feature over 70 leading galleries from across the country.

Underscoring the Fairs commitment to the visitor experience, this years line-up of programs will again feature an extensive series of discussions, special events and tours, large-scale installations and the inaugural MRKTworks auction. These on- and off-site special events provide visitors with the opportunity to engage with art in an immersive and impactful way and to delver deeper into the innovation and experimentation of the contemporary market.

Events

Texas Contemporary Art Fair celebrates the burgeoning growth of Houstons cultural landscape with an extensive range of tours and events in some of the Citys newest venues.

The week will begin with a pre-show reception hosted by the Asia Society Houston, Julie Kinzelman and Texas Contemporary at the newly unveiled Asia Society designed by architect Yoshio Taniguchi. Throughout the Fair, visitors will be invited to attend a special ribbon cutting ceremony of The Andy Monument with artist Rob Pruitt at CAMH, and Claudia Schmuckli, chief curator and director of the Blaffer Art Museum will host a private lunch as part of a behind-the-scenes tour of the newly-renovated museum.

As well, for the second year, the Opening Night Preview on October 18 will benefit the Contemporary Art Museum Houston (CAMH) and is anticipated to raise over $ 20,000 to support the museums free admission policy and extended hours.

Discussions & Guided Tours

Texas Contemporary will host a series of discussions throughout the duration of the Fair. Speakers include artists Rob Pruitt and Eric Beltz as well as CAMH Director Bill Arning and a panel of photo and video artists will be organized and moderated by FotoFest International.

Fair visitors are invited to tour of several of the citys leading museums, private collections, the new Midtown Arts District, and the conservation studio, Whitten & Proctor Fine Art Conservation and Houston Collector Lester Marks, Museum of Fine Arts Curator Dena Woodhall, and Galveston Arts Center Curator and photography collector Clint Willour, will be among those giving guided tours of the fair. Curatorial Assistant Susan Sutton of the Menil Collection will also conduct a tour the critically-acclaimed exhibition, Silence, which looks at a century of art considering silence. For more information, visit: http://www.txcontemporary.com/texas/installations-and-events.

Installations

The artists whose works will be presented at this years Texas Contemporary Fair include Eric Beltz, Colby Bird, Dan Douke, Gina Phillips, OKAY MOUNTAIN, Travis Somerville and many others.

Eric Beltz, Revival Wall presented by Morgan Lehman

Beltzs site-specific 9 x 12 wall drawing for Texas Contemporary is derived from the sampler patterns of his Elementary Forces series. Beltz uses the cross-stitch grid-map to create eye-popping illusions in his signature grayscale palette. This installation marks the first time the artist will bring these drawings out of the frame and into this monumental scale.

Gina Phillips, A Sentimental Tree Reminisces presented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery

The installation will be constructed of textiles the largest of which will be a custom-made tree that will envelope a structural column. Interspersed among the spaces of the branches and the spaces between the ground and the branches will be various sized thought bubbles, representing nostalgic scenes from the trees past history. The installation will include cutout forms of animals, clouds and teeth; these three components are meant to represent the trees past, present and future.

OKAY MOUNTAIN, Roadside Attractions presented by Mark Moore Gallery

The artist collective, OKAY MOUNTAIN, was commissioned to create Roadside Attractions, 2011 for the Cress Gallery of Art at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga as part of the Diane Marek Visiting Artist Series. The sculpture draws upon the mythology and quirkiness of different categories of roadside attractions with the purpose of delighting and confounding the expectations of the browser and would-be tourist. The brochures themselves mimic the discordant imagery and incongruous information often found in a typical visiting center brochure rack. This is a place where do-it-yourself and professional design are typically forced to cohabitate. All one hundred brochures are uniquely designed by the members of the collective. The printed works -like the brochures upon which they are drawn–are free to take by the viewing public, giving Roadside Attractions of a performative life outside the institutional setting where it originated.

Travis Somerville, Well Division presented by Catharine Clark Gallery

Inspired by the famous photograph showing a refrigerated drinking fountain designated for WHITES sharing the same pluming with a porcelain fountain for COLOREDS, Somerville has created his own set of water fountains loosely based on the 2000 census and anticipation of changes for the 2010 census. Above each fountain is a label and inside each basin is a stereotypical image associated with that group.

Kim Beck, The Sky Is the Limit presented by Mixed Greens

This installation of light boxes of backlit prints captures a series of messages taken from advertisingSpace Available, All Sales Final, Everything Must Go–as they were drawn in the sky over Pittsburgh. The phrases, both exciting and portentous, indicate fantastic sales and business closings. The available space advertised is, of course, the most potent symbol of longing in the landscape: the sky. When loosed from paper signs and billboards, the texts evoke open-ended poetic phrases that, as evanescent marks in the sky, gradually fade back into air.

Colby Bird, Cord presented by Lora Reynolds Gallery

Colby Birds sculptures are minimal and precarious exercises in balance. The works are comprised of commercially abundant materials, such as chair parts, fruit, and lumber. While his work may appear to be elegant and effortless, he goes to painstaking lengths to create this illusion. Birds work carves out a space between high art and youthful insouciance.

Herbert Mehler, WV 745 & WV 716 presented by Lausberg Contemporary

The inspiration for Mehlers artwork comes from organic and natural matter, such as fruits and seeds. The sculptures serve as a play between light fluid shapes and the seemingly insurmountable weight of the material. Simultaneously, the rhythmic fan-like structure strongly suggests architectural and man-made forms- the rhythm of the corten-steel forms evoke the serene undulating forms of the changing tides or mountain landscapes. It is this ambivalence between the natural and the man-made that makes Mehlers works so captivating. These sculptures are from Mehlers KAVEX series (2003- 2009).

Agnes Denes, Pyramids of Conscience presented by Ballroom Marfa

These powerful monuments metaphorically and theoretically encapsulate our world’s most precious resource, water. Pyramid I is filled with tap water from Marfa, Pyramid II is filled with polluted water from the Rio Grande River. Pyramid III is filled with recycled motor oil, which symbolically references water as a commodity. Pyramid IV is constructed of mirrors, which reflect ourselves.

Dan Douke, Kingdom Come, presented by Peter Mendenhall Gallery

At first glance, Kingdom Come appears to be two large shipping crates on top of one another. In actuality, the five-sided work is composed of sixteen separate stretched canvases and is completely hand-crafted. The labels are hand-lettered, the wood texture, scrapes and smudges are all hand-painted, highlighting the artist