Josh Pazda Hiram Butler

This exhibition is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

Drew Bacon Jack Davidson David Hutchinson Terrell James Matt Kleberg Matt Magee Sam Reveles Brooke Stroud

In the midst of the Whitney Museum’s 2014/2015 departure from 945 Madison Avenue—the iconic building designed by Marcel Breuer—Bill Jacobson was given permission to photograph the building’s interior over the course of two weeks. The majority of its contents had been removed, and renovations by the museum’s next tenant had not yet begun. Working in this interim period allowed Jacobson to make the building itself his subject, which he hoped “to depict as it might’ve looked to Breuer upon its completion in 1965.” The resulting portfolio of thirty photographs is an intimate portrait of a well-known structure that captures its iconic features (ceiling, lights, windows, walls, elevators, and stairs), as well as the remarkable details of Breuer’s choice of building materials. Within the images are a variety of patinas generated by millions of bodies perambulating throughout the building over five decades. Over the past eight years, this storied location has been temporarily inhabited by two notable museums: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met Breuer), and The Frick Collection (Frick Madison). The evolution of the building’s occupants, and the spectra of art shown in its galleries, have provided transformative contexts for looking at art. More recently, it was announced that 945 Madison Avenue has been purchased by Sotheby’s. In light of this, Jacobson’s images allow us to see and understand the building in a pure state—not untouched, but fully lived through the first of its many lives. Bill Jacobson has been making photographs for over forty years. Though his methods have varied considerably, the work is joined by underlying concerns with memory, visual perception, and the subtle dialogue between absence and presence. Prior to moving to New York in 1982, he received a BA from Brown University (1977) and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (1981). He has exhibited widely in the US and Europe, and is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum; Whitney Museum; John Paul Getty Museum; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Victoria and Albert Museum; and many others.

Matt Magee: Animal Vegetable Mineral / Photo Composites (1980-2005) is a survey of a body of photographic works that spans nearly three decades. Beginning in 1980, Magee began shooting 35mm film with a Rollei camera, and abutted commercially developed 3 1/2 x 5 inch color prints together in pairs on slightly larger substrates. By seamlessly combining two images in each work, Magee poetically synthesized a new whole. The subjects of Magee’s images are quite varied, but have several consistent points of connectivity that are bookended by everyday observations and constructed or performed scenarios. These include the likenesses of friends, lovers, and family, scenes from travel, as well as objects from nature and culture. The physicality of these printed objects situates them firmly in a pre-digital era, before the ubiquity of digital cameras and the decline of commercial photo labs in the 2000s. This body of nearly one thousand works functions both as a personal archive and as a visual framework that encapsulates Magee’s foundational approach to image making, which is evident in his wide ranging practice that includes painting, sculpture, and printmaking.

Robert Rauschenberg The Fifth Veil is an exhibition that focuses on three lithographs that the artist made at Universal Limited Art Editions on Long Island in 1974-75: Treaty (1974), Kitty Hawk (1974), and Kill Devil Hill (1975). In the sequence of Rauschenberg’s print output, these works immediately follow a series of four lithographs titled Veils 1-4 (1974) that each depict an isolated image of a neckerchief that belonged to ULAE’s founder, Tatyana Grosman. The image of a fifth Veil was recorded in the same proofing session, and though it was not published as an individual print, the image would appear in the three aforementioned lithographs among an array of layered images. Many of the images that appear alongside the Veil are Rauschenberg’s own photographs that were taken in and around the print studio including paper bags, cheesecloth, a child’s shirt, and a fire exit sign. One particularly notable image of a mangled bicycle appears in both Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hill, which may be recognizable to some viewers as a tribute to the Wright Brothers, whose bicycle business in Dayton, Ohio, largely funded their early experiments in modern aviation. The assembly of these three works offers a rare opportunity to delve into Rauschenberg and ULAE’s experimental approach to printmaking on a large scale.

A site-specific wall painting by New York-based artist Kate Shepherd, on view through the front windows of the gallery

An exhibition of new paintings by New York based painter Matt Kleberg.

Jennifer Bartlett Daniel Buren David Hutchinson Matt Kleberg Matt Magee Robert Rauschenberg Kate Shepherd Martha Tuttle Terry Winters