Gustavo Díaz: Houston Chronicle
Jan 3, 2014
I kept hearing John Lienhard’s voice as I pondered a pair of exhibits that bridge the worlds of visual art, science and engineering.
The creator of the University of Houston’s popular “The Engines of Our Ingenuity” radio segments could no doubt explain, better than I, the theories of physics and philosophy behind Gustavo Diaz’s thinking.
A catalog of Díaz’s work at THE MISSION (which appears in a group show of work by Latin Americans) explains how the Argentinian artist has been influenced by Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Niels Bohr’s theory of complementarity, Albert Einstein’s argument against quantum mechanics and Athanasius Kircher’s 17th-century drawings.
In simpler terms, Díaz wants to visualize the invisible.
He does a spectacular job of suggesting the explosive energy of creation with his largest acrylic relief, “The Universe as a hypothetical origin between a certain ambiguity and an ambiguous certainty.” Inside a huge acrylic box affixed to the wall, myriad acrylic chips have been combined to resemble layers of shattered glass. Longer, rodlike bits protrude into space from the frame’s exterior, which also has etched lines.
With its intricate complexity, the piece also calls to mind the circuitry of some vast communications system. It is utterly mesmerizing.
Only slightly less magnetic are a series of smaller acrylic sculptures that achieve optical illusions through the layering of laser-etched rectangular plates They’re like spliced views of organic forms that could be flowers or snow crystals.
In the same building, upstairs at Barbara Davis Gallery, Lienhard would probably also appreciate the material wizardry on view in “Troy Stanley: concrete-spring.”
Stanley’s “Perennial” series, a trio of macrame hanging planters, contains “plants” made from 2,000-foot-long rolls of green paper; they grow as they pass through hidden shredders that operate intermittently and randomly. A few weeks into their life, the shredded ribbons drape all the way to the floor, looking like ponytail palms fed by the same magic that made Audrey II a monster in “Little Shop of Horrors.”
“Something Between This and That and Then and Now” echoes the wintery feel of Diaz’s acrylic sculptures but with a profound simplicity. It’s a small tower of nine resin blocks, each molded from an alphabet block and containing a suspended acorn.
Stanley, a University of Houston graduate who’s been a resident at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, is a master experimenter. For this show, he’s also riffed on the botanical theme with concrete, casting it from propagation planters that are stacked like a small city on a pallet in “Procession” and dripping it on the wall around stenciled negative spaces for the site-specific installation “Bouquets,” a technique he’ll demonstrate at a performance Friday.
He’s also dyed and painted vintage crocheted tablecloths. Perhaps most spectacularly, he’s pressed and glued strips of cardboard into a piece that resembles a slice of a many-ringed tree trunk.
Regardless of the material he chooses, Stanley brings life to the lifeless. With this body of work, he seems like the curious botanist to Diaz’s mad scientist.
Einstein famously dismissed something called entanglement in quantum mechanics by referring to it as “spooky action at a distance.” I don’t have the aptitude to wrap my head around that, but the action at these galleries is spooky good, begging for a close-up view.
The creator of the University of Houston’s popular “The Engines of Our Ingenuity” radio segments could no doubt explain, better than I, the theories of physics and philosophy behind Gustavo Diaz’s thinking.
A catalog of Díaz’s work at THE MISSION (which appears in a group show of work by Latin Americans) explains how the Argentinian artist has been influenced by Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Niels Bohr’s theory of complementarity, Albert Einstein’s argument against quantum mechanics and Athanasius Kircher’s 17th-century drawings.
In simpler terms, Díaz wants to visualize the invisible.
He does a spectacular job of suggesting the explosive energy of creation with his largest acrylic relief, “The Universe as a hypothetical origin between a certain ambiguity and an ambiguous certainty.” Inside a huge acrylic box affixed to the wall, myriad acrylic chips have been combined to resemble layers of shattered glass. Longer, rodlike bits protrude into space from the frame’s exterior, which also has etched lines.
With its intricate complexity, the piece also calls to mind the circuitry of some vast communications system. It is utterly mesmerizing.
Only slightly less magnetic are a series of smaller acrylic sculptures that achieve optical illusions through the layering of laser-etched rectangular plates They’re like spliced views of organic forms that could be flowers or snow crystals.
In the same building, upstairs at Barbara Davis Gallery, Lienhard would probably also appreciate the material wizardry on view in “Troy Stanley: concrete-spring.”
Stanley’s “Perennial” series, a trio of macrame hanging planters, contains “plants” made from 2,000-foot-long rolls of green paper; they grow as they pass through hidden shredders that operate intermittently and randomly. A few weeks into their life, the shredded ribbons drape all the way to the floor, looking like ponytail palms fed by the same magic that made Audrey II a monster in “Little Shop of Horrors.”
“Something Between This and That and Then and Now” echoes the wintery feel of Diaz’s acrylic sculptures but with a profound simplicity. It’s a small tower of nine resin blocks, each molded from an alphabet block and containing a suspended acorn.
Stanley, a University of Houston graduate who’s been a resident at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, is a master experimenter. For this show, he’s also riffed on the botanical theme with concrete, casting it from propagation planters that are stacked like a small city on a pallet in “Procession” and dripping it on the wall around stenciled negative spaces for the site-specific installation “Bouquets,” a technique he’ll demonstrate at a performance Friday.
He’s also dyed and painted vintage crocheted tablecloths. Perhaps most spectacularly, he’s pressed and glued strips of cardboard into a piece that resembles a slice of a many-ringed tree trunk.
Regardless of the material he chooses, Stanley brings life to the lifeless. With this body of work, he seems like the curious botanist to Diaz’s mad scientist.
Einstein famously dismissed something called entanglement in quantum mechanics by referring to it as “spooky action at a distance.” I don’t have the aptitude to wrap my head around that, but the action at these galleries is spooky good, begging for a close-up view.