Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1544634
Clockwise from top left: Vargas-Suarez Universal, Cosmodrome, 2023, at Barbara Davis Gallery. Selven O'Keef Jarmon, Queen City, 2026, at Front Gallery. Mary Margaret Hansen & Patsy Craven, Blowin' in the Wind, 1980, at Houston Center for Photography. Eduardo E. Portillo, Alalik G19, 2026, at Barbara Davis Gallery. Art Notes P hoto Feminists: At Houston Center for Photography, "The Vanguard" — curated by executive director Anne Leighton Massoni on the occasion of the nonprofit's 45th anniversary — salutes 20 women who started it all, both for HCP and Massoni's own journey in the photography world. Pay attention to the collaborative duo Mary Margaret Hansen and the late Patsy Cravens (through May 24). Before Cindy Sherman, this pair was turning the lens on themselves in the early '80s series "Finding Our Way." Massoni's discovery of their work was inspired by Hansen and Cravens' inclusion in FotoFest/ HCP's 2015 Talent in Texas exhibition, which later traveled during 2020 to The MAC in Dallas. Stay tuned: Plans are also in the works for a Hansen & Cravens retrospective at FLATS. Back to Houston Center for Photography: There's buzz about the nonprofit's upcoming move. More in this column soon on HCP's next chapter. Bungalow Attraction: Have you been to Front Gallery? A Montrose bungalow turned art space, the home of artists Sharon Engelstein and Aaron Parazette is an insider destination. Curated by Engelstein, the program is rigorous and bows to hometown talent. Now on view, Houston- based artist Selven O'Keef Jarmon returns to his fashion-designer roots, then adds an activist stance in "Looking for New Guinea." The title alludes to one of America's historically displaced Black communities — this one in Nantucket — rendered in a sculptural garment informed by intricate crochet. Mixed-media wall works are also highlighted, textile creations of tensile strength that become drawings in space to converse with Jarmon's striking, understated Line Drawing Dresses (through June 20). Cosmic Doubleheader: In one of the more interesting pairings of the season, "Folding" at Barbara Davis Gallery presents a utopian dialogue between Vargas-Suarez Universal and Eduardo E. Portillo. The former, born in Mexico City and raised in Houston near NASA, has honed a global practice aligned with scientific investigation, especially of the cosmos, infiltrating for research purposes such closely guarded aerospace institutions as NASA Ames Research Center, Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, and even the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City outside Moscow and the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Portillo, born in El Salvador, migrated to Houston, where he garnered a BFA from the University of Houston. His vaporous abstract paintings — distillations of landscapes of displacement — nonetheless possess a futuristic appeal. Their sculpted nonobjective surfaces stand as foil to Vargas- Suarez Universal's canvases informed by dizzying vector perambulations (through June 20). Going Underground: For sojourners of the unexpected, nothing beats a visit to Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a century-old relic that once served as a reservoir for the city's municipal water system. The best time to go is during one of the Cistern's famed art installations. The fifth iteration opens this spring: "Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Undercurrents." The Mexican-Canadian digital-arts pioneer represented Mexico in the Venice Biennale in 2007 and is a veteran of many international biennials since. He's been tapped by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership and curatorial collaborator Weingarten Art Group for a site-specific commission that activates the Cistern architecture with a mile-long LED display of lights threading between the space's 221 25-foot-tall concrete columns, dramatically bouncing off the mirrored surface of the darkened pooling water below (through January 24, 2027). Catherine D. Anspon PRIVATE COLLECTION, CAROLINE HUBER 28