January 21–March 18, 2017
Live performance schedule:
Friday–Saturday noon–8pm
DiverseWorks
3400 Main Street
Houston, TX 77002
Hours: Wednesday–Thursday noon–6pm,
Friday–Saturday noon–8pm
Only in Your Way features new works by New York-based artists Kate Gilmore and Heather Rowe that address sculpture and architecture in relation to the female body. This collaborative exhibition includes commissioned site-specific sculpture and a live durational performance. Questions concerning definitions of labor, acts of looking and seeing, and how framing devices shape our contemporary world are raised by this unique collaboration. Performances take place every Friday and Saturday from noon to 8pm.
In the exhibition, Gilmore and Rowe’s works are physically and conceptually intertwined, yet each artist maintains a distinct voice. Gilmore’s site-specific work continues her investigation of the physical constraints of materials through the juxtaposition of bulky, brightly colored sculptural objects with female bodies. This new project features a lone female performer who navigates the gallery space along a bright red elevated walkway. She carries one of Rowe’s delicate sculptures, which plays a short pop song sample, over and over again, conjuring emotional feelings of frustration. The performer follows Gilmore’s pathway through and around Rowe’s architectural installation, and engages with the sculptural elements through her proximity to them.
Rowe’s work pivots at the intersections of sculpture, architecture, and installation, often creating settings that produce psychological tension within the viewer. Her new installation for Only in Your Way consists of three free-floating pavilions made of wooden grids atop slender metal columns that have individual sculptures—constructed of wooden frames, glass, screens, and mirrors—attached to them. Through her use of mirrors and semi-transparent materials, Rowe’s sculptures allow for the reflection, reframing, and obscuring of the body (both the viewers’ and the performer’s) throughout the gallery space.
Only in Your Way expands the artists’ individual practices and speaks to the idea of creating sculpture as proxy for drama and emotionality. For Gilmore and Rowe, the gallery is an architectural space to be navigated, with sculpture and performers both acting as objects and conceptual material for the work.
About the artists
Kate Gilmore was born in Washington, D.C. in 1975 and lives and works in New York, NY. Gilmore received her MFA from the School of the Visual Arts, New York, NY and her undergraduate degree from Bates College, Lewiston, ME. She has participated in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art; The Moscow Biennial, Russia (2011); and Greater New York, MoMA/PS1 (2005 and 2010), in addition to solo exhibitions at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY (2016); the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2014); MoCA Cleveland (2013); Public Art Fund, Bryant Park, NY (2010); and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2008). Gilmore is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at Purchase College, State University of New York.
Heather Rowe is a New York-based artist who received her MFA from Columbia University. She has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries including PS1/MoMA, Long Island City; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; UMMA/University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; Galerie Zink, Berlin; D’Amelio Terras, New York; Michael Benevento Gallery, Los Angeles; Ballroom Marfa, TX; Andrea Rosen, New York; White Columns, New York; and Artists Space, New York. In 2008 her work was featured in the Whitney Biennial. Most recently, she installed a large-scale solo outdoor project at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, and presented solo exhibitions at James Cohan Gallery and Lucien Terras in New York City.
About DiverseWorks
DiverseWorks is a non-profit multidisciplinary art center in Houston, Texas. The mission of DiverseWorks is to commission, produce, and present new and daring art in all its forms through innovative collaborations that honor each artist’s vision without constraint.
This project is made possible through support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance. DiverseWorks is a Partner of the Visual Artists Network (VAN). This project is made possible in part through support from the VAN Exhibition Residency, which is a program of the National Performance Network.
DiverseWorks Season Sponsors: The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, Houston Endowment, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Wortham Foundation
