Opening Reception—Jacolby Satterwhite: We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other and Leslie Martinez: The Secrecy of Water
Friday, January 20, 2023
6:00pm—9:00pm
Artist & Curator Remarks: 7:00pm
Location:
Blaffer Art Museum
FREE and open to the public
The Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston is proud to present the first solo museum exhibition for Leslie Martinez, The Secrecy of Water and a monumental video installation by interdisciplinary artist Jacolby Satterwhite. Join us for the opening reception of these two new exhibitions at the Blaffer.
Parking: Free parking for this event is available via the six complimentary marked lot spots directly in front of the museum entrance and at the Elgin Street Garage (4224 Elgin Street). To take advantage of complimentary Elgin Street Garage parking, please first park in the garage and obtain your machine ticket and then bring to the museum front desk upon arrival.
Leslie Martinez (they/them/their) creates immersive, spellbinding paintings that explore ideas of place, climate, landscape, and personhood through unconventional methods of applying and interlaying various materials, textures, and hues on canvas. Their signature style of abstract painting features viscerally tactile and spatial atmospheres created with physical ingredients like fabric rags, recycled clothing, and crushed stone that reveal discordant visual intersections of destruction and emergence.
Born in the Rio Grande Valley of the South Texas-Mexico border, Martinez frequently traveled to and from their birthplace to Dallas. The ten-hour journey required crossing one of the deadliest Customs and Border Patrol checkpoints in the United States. Their encounters in this borderland space guided their interests in considering how racist and xenophobic perceptions of belonging and exclusion relate to the structures of existence for queer and trans peoples, as well as ideas of shapeshifting and coding necessary for survival. They received a MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2018 and a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2008. This will be their first solo museum exhibition.Leslie Martinez:The Secrecy of Water is on view at Blaffer Art Museum January 20—March 12, 2023.
Learn more about the exhibition
For over a decade, Jacolby Satterwhite has used 3D animation, sculpture, performance, painting, and photography to create fantastical, labyrinthine universes. Exploring the themes of public space, the body, ritual, and community, Satterwhite draws from an extensive set of references guided by queer theory, Modernist tropes, and video game languages to challenge conventions of Western art through a personal and political lens.
Created in 2020, We Are in Hell When We Hurt Each Other is a monumental video that translates the artist’s dance movements through digital bodysuits into animated Black fembot forms and other various creatures/humanoid elements. Jacolby Satterwhite: We Are in Hell When We Hurt Each Other, is on view at Blaffer Art Museum January 20—March 12, 2023.
Learn more about the exhibition
Images: (Left) Jacolby Satterwhite, We Are In Hell When We Hurt Each Other (video still), 2020. HD color video and 3D animation with sound, 24:22 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. (Right) detail of Filament Jetty, 2022. Fabric, paper scraps, charcoal, fine ballast, pumice and acrylic on canvas, 96 x 144 x 5 inches. Courtesy of the artist and AND NOW, Dallas.