Gabriel Lester: Odeon

The Blaffer Art Museum is proud to present Gabriel Lester: Odeon the first solo museum exhibition in the United States of preeminent European artist Gabriel Lester, who has gained an international standing for his art, performance, and film as well as his dynamic public art installations. Across the span of his decades-long career, Lester has developed a cinematic lens through which to see and imagine the world. For this exhibition, Lester is most interested in the interplay between light and shadow, as well as the seen and unseen, as he responds to Houston, its fossil fuel industry, and its incubation of NASA as elements intertwined. Through a series of experiential installations and kinetic sculptures this exhibition pierces heavy, weighted geometries with the delightful, if perplexing magic of discovery.

Gabriel Lester (b. 1972), is an inventor, visual artist and filmmaker. His works consist of spatial installations, video installations, sculptures, performances, and short films. Other activities include commissioned art in public space, designing physical structures, mentoring and teaching. Lester’s creations originate from a desire to tell stories and establish contexts and situations that support these stories or propose their own narrative interpretation. His vocabulary is characterized as cinematographic, without necessarily employing film or video as a medium. However, like moviemaking, Lester’s practice has come to embrace and utilize all imaginable media and talent. With emphasis on human existence and its experience, Lester’s projects aim to sharpen and flex the mind. Open ended, sustaining mystery and without over explicit messages or singular ideas, Lester proposes ways to relate to the world, how it is represented and what mechanisms and components constitute our perception and understanding of it.

This exhibition is organized by former Jane Dale Owen Director and Chief Curator, Steven Matijcio and runs until August 11, 2024. Major funding for Gabriel Lester: Odeon is provided by the John R. Eckel Jr. Foundation, the John P. McGovern Foundation, and the Stolbun Family Foundation. Generous support is provided by the Blaffer Art Museum Advisory Board members and the Ryan Lee Gallery. This program is supported as part of the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York.

The following donors sustain Blaffer Art Museum in perpetuity by giving through endowments: Cecil Amelia Blaffer von Furstenberg Endowment for Exhibitions and Programs, Jane Dale Owen Endowment in the Blaffer Art Museum, Jo and Jim Furr Exhibition Endowment in the Blaffer Art Museum, Sarah C. Morian Endowment, and the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation Blaffer Gallery Endowment.