Open Doors Downtown
AMLI at Third and Lavaca, through March 26 by appointment
“Open Doors Downtown” is the second exhibition for the Open Doors art group, an affiliation of ambitious local artists who have succeeded in garnering significant community support. The show takes advantage of the cavernous AMLI downtown space to present six new large, noncommercially oriented installation works. Cole Thompson’s wildly impressive weather balloons swell into the space, cyclically inflated and lit from within to create a sensation of otherworldly life. Cesar Alexander Villareal has produced a giant nest, complete with a feather lining, that individuals can walk into, as a camera overhead captures their image and projects their reaction to this imagined security to the room at large. Terra Goolsby has a wall-based sculpture with a vaguely medical appearance, consisting of an interconnected set of clear tubes in synthetic materials. In a subtle commentary on the nature of beauty, Goolsby employs nail polish as a surrogate for blood. Jacob Villanueva uses household furnishings to create a set into which the viewer walks, expecting to view him- or herself in a pair of dressing-table mirrors. Instead, a projected image taken from a different camera angle is seen in each of the frames, creating a surreal, fairy-tale-like sensation. Sandra Martinez uses twisted fragments of car tires to create an array of floor-based sculptures. Hunter Cross has created an interesting ceiling-hung sculpture made to be viewed from below, using stacked layers of transparent acetate and stickers. Through this layering process, delicate abstract forms emerge in three dimensions.
This article appears in March 25 • 2005.