Drive

Work by The Art Guys, Anthony Álvares, Jesse Morgan Barnett, Claudia Casbarian, Bryan Gardner, Heather Johnson, Cody Ledvina, Lars Lerup, Mike Osborne, Flash Gordon Parks, Susie Rosmarin, Thumb (Luke Bulman and Jessica Young) and Charisse Weston.

Freeways are a ubiquitous presence in Houston, circumscribing its inner and outer loops, bisecting downtown, and stretching over its neighborhoods and bayous. Snaking through and around the city, I-10, 59, 45, and the 610 and Beltway 8 loops have physically and psychologically shaped the everyday lives of Houston residents in profound ways. In this group exhibition Drive, Joshua Fischer and Katia Zavistovski explore the various roles that freeways and driving culture have played in our human experience and perceptions of the city. Questioning how freeways have impacted art making – whether as inspiration, antagonist or more neutrally as platform or stage – the exhibition will feature a broad range of work by artists and architects who engage with the topic from multiple perspectives and in diverse media. These range from works that address the subject directly – for example, Bryan Gardner’s recreation of the 610 loop that draws from his experiences commuting – to the more indirect and open-ended, such as Susie Rosmarin’s abstract paintings that explore visual repetition and seriality. The exhibition will also feature work by The Art Guys, Jesse Morgan Barnett, Claudia Casbarian, Cody Ledvina, Lars Lerup, and Mike Osborne, among others; as well as visual ephemera that provide a brief history of the freeway as it has shifted from an optimistic symbol of growth and freedom to what is now commonly seen as a problematic piece of infrastructure associated with traffic jams and long commutes.