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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > March > 17 > Entry
Texas Biennial brims with brio: 2
At the Mexican American Cultural Center is “Eye to Eye” one of the two group shows of the Texas Biennial 2009. Here we see the hand — or really, the eye — of Biennial curator Michael Duncan at work.
Super colorful (or is that supercolorful?), full of story, marked by craft, body-centered, organic and fantastic, swirly and girlie — the 30 artists in “Eye to Eye” all try for maximum impact (a few succeed). And to be sure, there’s plenty of raw energy here: After all, in the self-selecting pool of Biennial entrants swim mostly early career artists looking for a Big Break.
Adrienne Cullins gets all Dr. Seuss, with her “Black Market Kidney Factory.” Half-plant, half-animal, half-whatever, there are organs and veins and roots and bladders that churn in a fabulous tableaux. Oh that we could hear the sound of this churning thing. Or maybe not.
Adrienne Cullis, “Black Market Kideny Factory” (detail), acrylic on canvas
Jeannette Hernandez does much of the same yet her’s is pure body — or at least the body reimagined as a chaotic visual symphony of internal viscera and organs. This can’t be a healthy body, but it sure is gorgeous to look it, gorgeous and grotesque as it is.
Jeannette Hernandez, “Sideshow,” oil on canvas.
Jade Walker gets 3-D crafty with her impulses toward the girlie. She jumbles the handmade with the factory-made to create super-sized imaginative yet disconcerting forms. “Figure #6” is charming with its whimsy, but also eery; compelling yet unsettling with its scale.
Jade Walker,”Figure #6,” fabric, crutches, cotton stuffing, cast rubber.
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