Southwest Contemporary’s Favorite Exhibition Reviews of 2021
Southwest Contemporary’s favorite exhibition reviews of 2021, from Ed Ruscha in Oklahoma City and Hong Hong in Houston to group shows in Albuquerque and Tempe, Arizona.
December 28, 2021
Review
Review: Ciara Elle Bryant’s Server: Love Ta, Love Ta Love Ya at the MAC
Ciara Elle Bryant’s installation Server: Love Ta, Love Ta Love Ya at McKinney Avenue Contemporary collages photographs to create a visual bibliography while building a physical space for Black representation.
December 15, 2021
Review: Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia at Phoenix Art Museum
Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia takes an in-depth look at fifty years of works that highlight the Latin American artist’s compelling examination of life’s fleeting moments via multiple artistic processes and media.
December 13, 2021
Review: Gaku Tsutaja: Enola’s Head at Rubin Center
Gaku Tsutaja: Enola’s Head at UTEP’s Rubin Center recreates the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima—and tells a different history of the victims and survivors of nuclear warfare.
December 06, 2021
Review: Poetic Justice at the New Mexico Museum of Art
In Poetic Justice at the New Mexico Museum of Art, the social impacts and artistic contributions of Judith F. Baca, Mildred Howard, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith are on display.
November 30, 2021
Review: AH’-WAH-NEE at UNLV’s Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery
AH’-WAH-NEE brings together Indigenous women artists throughout the Southwest for an exhibition about feminine Indigeneity at Donna Beam Gallery at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
November 23, 2021
Review: Temporary in Nature at Lisa Sette Gallery
Amid the escalating climate crisis, a dozen artists explore the impacts of human activity on the natural world during the Anthropocene era in Temporary in Nature at Lisa Sette Gallery.
November 19, 2021
Review: 2021 Texas Biennial at SAMA and the McNay Art Museum
The 2021 Texas Biennial explores cross-sections of identity and project optimism in A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon across five venues in San Antonio and Houston.
November 15, 2021
Review: Dawolu Jabari at Galveston Artist Residency
Dawolu Jabari's large-scale drawings in Lessons from Above: Constellation Quilts at Galveston Artist Residency embed Black history, mythology, and folklore into the fabric of the cosmos.
November 10, 2021
Review: Robert Burnier: Song Cycle at David B. Smith Gallery
Robert Burnier's exhibition Song Cycle at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver features small acrylic-on-aluminum wall sculptures folded into aesthetically and conceptually compelling shapes.
November 05, 2021
Review: 40 Years, 40 Stories at San Antonio Museum of Art
The San Antonio Museum of Art celebrates its fortieth anniversary with an exhibition showcasing the global and chronological breadth of its permanent collection.
November 04, 2021
ReviewArizonaVol. 4 Winter 2021
Review: Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration
The artists in Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration explore the relationship between visual culture and imprisonment at the Arizona State University Art Museum.
October 29, 2021
Review: Michael Menchaca: The 1836 Project at Artpace, San Antonio
San Antonio artist Michael Menchaca’s Artpace exhibition, The 1836 Project, is an immersive video installation employing poppy animation to take aim at “the colonial fantasies of the Texas creation myth.”
October 29, 2021
ReviewArizonaVol. 4 Winter 2021
Review: Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America, 1940-1978
A retrospective of German-American female photographer Marion Palfi at the Phoenix Art Museum, the first major exhibition since her 1978 death, places her towards the top of social research photographers.
October 29, 2021
Review: Source Material at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center
Source Material, an exhibition at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver, features eight photographic projects that engage with archival imagery.
October 29, 2021
Vol. 4 Winter 2021New MexicoReview
Review: Maja Ruznic: In the Sliver of the Sun
Maja Ruznic’s exhibition In the Sliver of the Sun at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos was reminiscent of a dream state, a loose and subdued world of imagination, distant memories, and notions of home and family.
October 29, 2021
ReviewColoradoVol. 4 Winter 2021
Review: Armor at Center for Visual Art
Armor, a group exhibition at the Center for Visual Art in Denver, explored physical and metaphorical barriers in the art-making process.
October 29, 2021
ReviewNew MexicoVol. 4 Winter 2021
Review: Hung Liu: Sanctuary at Turner Carroll Gallery
Hung Liu’s Sanctuary at Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe illuminated and paid respect to the renowned artist and her moving works.
October 29, 2021
Review: Mimi O Chun: It’s all cake at SMOCA
Mimi O Chun: It’s all cake at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art magnifies societal ills and amplifies women’s issues through soft materials.
October 18, 2021
Review: Four Exhibitions in Mesa Explore Visionary Arts
Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona explores the Visionary Arts movement with exhibitions featuring Alex Grey and Allyson Grey plus several contemporary artists based in and beyond the Southwest.
October 15, 2021
Review: Peggy McGivern Retrospective at Taos Art Museum
Peggy McGivern’s retrospective at Taos Art Museum at Fechin Studio enters dreamscapes and everyday scenes, tracing forty years and more than seventy-five works by the Taos artist.
October 13, 2021
Review: Matthew Bourbon: Hive at the Fort Worth Community Art Center
Matthew Bourbon: Hive at the Fort Worth Community Art Center challenges us to settle our buzzing brains through bold color, composition, and paint-manipulation strategies.
October 12, 2021
Review: Rania Matar: SHE at Obscura Gallery
The photography exhibition Rania Matar: SHE at Obscura Gallery centers female complexity and empowerment.
October 04, 2021
Review: Hunt Slonem: Curiouser and Curiouser at K Contemporary
Hunt Slonem: Curiouser and Curiouser at K Contemporary in Denver features 200 pieces from the New York artist's career—including his signature bunnies.
September 29, 2021
Review: The Art of SA Eats/Sabor a San Antonio at the McNay Art Museum
The McNay Art Museum celebrates San Antonio food culture with The Art of SA Eats, an exhibition combining poppy depictions of sweets and recreations of old-school restaurants and signage.
September 23, 2021
Review: Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology at MoCNA
At the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, worldwide Indigenous artists render the effects of uranium mining and nuclear bomb testing on their lands and people.
September 22, 2021
Review: Thais Mather: Western Blue at form & concept
Thais Mather: Western Blue at Santa Fe’s form & concept ponders the comprehensive characteristics of the color blue in a cunning display of sculptural installations, micro-pointillist drawings, watercolors, and holograms.
September 17, 2021
Review: Gulf Coast Anthropocene at Project Row Houses
Gulf Coast Anthropocene, the latest exhibition at Project Row Houses in Houston, features works that stray from traditional narratives of the climate crisis to center the Black and brown communities most at risk.
September 13, 2021
Review: Jerry Takigawa: Balancing Cultures
In Balancing Cultures at Foto Forum Santa Fe, Jerry Takigawa reckons with family history and trauma, and finds beauty in the process.
September 08, 2021
Review: Unsilenced: Indigenous Enslavement in Southern Colorado
In the tiny town of Fort Garland, Colorado, Unsilenced: Indigenous Enslavement in Southern Colorado by Chip Thomas (the artist known as jetsonorama) spotlights uncomfortable and paramount histories of Indigenous captivity.
September 06, 2021
