Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1462584
ART TOPICS B otero Celebrated: Marking 90 is a momentous milestone, and Art of the World Gallery organizes a r e t r o s p e c t i v e for Fernando Botero, a fellow countryman of owners Liliana Molina and Mauricio Vallejo. The couple inaugurated their global art space in 2016 with Botero masterworks. Five-and-half years later, the gallery brings together a collection, working in tandem with Botero's studio, that spans seven decades, across many media: oil on canvas, watercolor, pastel, pencil drawings, charcoal, and bronze sculptures, from intimate to monumental (through May 31). Drawing Obsessive: Ever since his first appearance in a Contemporary Arts Museum Houston group exhibition more than a decade ago, we've had artist Michael Bise on our radar. The Houston artist's biennial exhibitions at Moody Gallery, featuring highly personal drawings both haunting and brave, make us contemplate what it means to be human. Catch his latest, "Afterlife," and be amazed (through May 7). Having Her Way with Steel: Another Houston talent we've been tracking across the decades is Tara Conley — maker of pop-confectionary sculpture featuring a giant bunny and pithy little text phrases that borrow from eavesdropped conversations. At the newly minted Ellio Fine Art, Conley debuts her most minimalist and honed work yet. Not unlike drawing in steel, these reductive twists and turns of metal possess all the purity of a Matisse line (through April 16). Let There Be Light: Romanian-born Adela Andea has crafted an illuminated practice that concocts riotous, joyous environments of luminescence from a panoply of plastic, electronic components, lights, and other materials of industrial manufacture. Now this Texan makes a star appearance at the futuristic Centre for International Light Art in Unna, Germany. The center mounts a group exhibition where Andea's Chaos Incarnate is in good company with others in the collection who create with light, including James Turrell, Christian Boltanski, Olafur Eliasson, Rebecca Horn, and Keith Sonnier (through April 24). Cosmic Connection: The name of Meredith Pardue's latest exhibition borders on poetry: "The Space Between Stars." At her longtime dealer, Laura Rathe Fine Art (River Oaks District gallery), the Austin artist departs from canvases that channel creek beds and streams and heads to deep space, where star clusters and galaxies become inspiration for her lapidary mixed- media paintings (April 2 – May 9). By Catherine D. Anspon Clockwise from top left: Fernando Botero's Bird, 2011, at Art of the World Gallery. Tara Conley's Continuous Trace, 2021, at Ellio Fine Art. Adela Andea's Chaos Incarnate, 2021, at Centre for International Light Art, Unna, Germany. Meredith Pardue's Nebulous Flux IV, 2022, at Laura Rathe Fine Art. It's a bounteous spring, with 90 candles for a Latin American luminary, lyrical sculptures in metal and beams of light, Texas' best drawing talent, and an artist inspired by the cosmos. 48