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Ten days til the Texas Biennial

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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > February > 24 > Entry

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By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin | Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 02:46 PM

Full of brio and Lone Star chutzpah, the Texas Biennial opens ten days from today — March 6 — with opening receptions for the two group exhibitions.

Los Angeles-based curator and critic Michael Duncan served as the Biennial’s curator, a mighty task which he clearly embraced. And we’re flattered.

In Duncan’s own words:

“A frenzied eight day tour of studios around the Big State confirmed a fact that needs to be reiterated again and again: great artists can thrive anywhere. In El Paso, Lubbock, Dallas, Valley View, Greenville, Ennis, Edinburg, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston, remarkable artists are making things up their own way, conjuring some kind of sense out of the confusion of our troubled culture. Loners who know what’s up, these Biennial artists function on the periphery of the powers that be, satisfying aesthetics they’ve developed largely on their own. No copycats allowed.

But while a certain sense of isolation fuels their work, they are hardly oblivious of what’s going on in New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles - as well as Dallas, Austin, and Houston. The state seems newly aware of its own various scenes …

Still, Texas seems largely a self-contained world and that’s what’s good about it.”

“Yellow Line,” Charlotte Smith