Untitled Art Houston
The inaugural Untitled Art Fair in Houston proved to be a visual feast of emerging talent and bold creativity. From the inception, it was clear that this fair filled an important gap—serving as an incubator for artists and their ideas, all taking root in an intimate and engaging setting. Smaller and more selective than Untitled Miami, the Houston’s edition proved to be a very digestible intake of art. Thematically, the fair reflected the cultural richness of its host city, drawing on Houston’s African American and Latin American communities to shape the presentations and overall tone.
April Bey was one of the highlights of the fair. Her large-scale museum worthy works, tapestries layered with fur, glitter, and woven textiles, offered a joyful exploration into her heritage. She hierarchized real-life figures from her community as royalty adorning them with pineapples as headdresses, animals as emblems of stature, and nature as embellishments. With her unique collaboration of materials and striking portraits she made something relevant, personal, and unequivocally hers.
Many galleries from around the world graced Houston with their thoughtful artist selections. Alice Amati from London brought the applauded works of Abigail Dudley and Miko Veldkamp, Abigail being a particular favorite of mine. Her work drifted me back to the language of Fernand Ledger and Marc Chagall, a testament to her solid art education. Golden centric color palettes and flat forms expanded across her calming compositions. She narrated her illuminating scenes within a distinct carousel of personal memories, painted with delicacy and intention. Her budding talent is quite noticeable.
Artist Joya Mukerjee Logue of Rajiv Menon Contemporary, a gallery based in Los Angeles that promotes South Asian art, profoundly caught my eye. Her work Guardians of Story and Land had a premier spot at the fair. A large-scale oil on linen drenched in warm browns and punctuated with chamomile blonds and earl grey tones, depicted solemn figures in a social scene, a dreamy composition that seemed to wash away every time you glanced at it.
Nostalgia and the ache of past memories was a very recurring subject throughout the fair. It was slightly repetitive in the sense that many of these young artists were portraying these memories within a very similar visual vocabulary of washed-out brushwork, ghostly figures, and controlled color palettes.
Mason Owens also leaned into the power of memory with intimate, blurred vignettes. Lovely and relatable, his works captured familiar moments, though I did not resonate with them as much as others.
I admired Sean Cairns from 12.26 Gallery. By mixing oil paint with various materials, some things he would just come upon in his studio, he created mystical landscapes with vigorous surface texture and impeding line work. It was the perfect blend of representation with an alluding to abstract expressionism that I found quite powerful.
Carter Flacbarth, Maxwell Hendler, and Reginald O’Neal put their precise and humanly realistic technique on display in their sumptuous paintings. Whether it was through cropped scenes, mundane objects, or delicious delights, their style bordered between painterly and hyperrealism.
Samuel Olayombo’s work was another important artist and personal favorite of mine. His distinct brushwork, ridged mounds of paint achieved with a palette knife, caught the eye of every passerby. His subjects consisted of predominantly Black males, their skin exuding this ribbed paint texture, against traditional feminine colors such as blush pink and baby blue. His execution directly confronted patriarchal stereotypes, making his work both visually and conceptually striking.
Overall, the fair was inviting, engaging and palatable. I enjoyed seeing new artists and the directions they were charting. It is exciting Houston, who has often been overlooked as an art hub, now has such a prominent fair.