Katie Grinnan
Nocturnal Hologram
September 11–November 14, 2015
DiverseWorks
4102 Fannin Street, #200
Houston, TX 77004
Hours: Wednesday–Saturday noon–6pm
Performance: Astrology Orchestra
Co-presented with Rice Public Art
Saturday, November 14, 3pm
The James Turrell Twilight Epiphany “Skyspace” at Rice University
Free admission
Los Angeles-based artist Katie Grinnan’s sculptures, photography, sound, and video works investigate the relationship between visual and cognitive experience. Nocturnal Hologram features three recent large-scale sculptural installations that explore the productive space of the dream state and our attempts to understand how thought patterns are created and can be made physically manifest. This exhibition is the first solo presentation of Grinnan’s work in Texas.
The three works on view take the form of video reenactments, objects, and sculptures inspired by Grinnan’s childhood and adult anxiety dreams. Pursuing her interest in the relationship between “vision/representation/interpretation and physicality/kinesthesia,” the large-scale installation Enter-Face (2012–15) is the central focus of the exhibition, comically translating the artist’s unconstrained thought patterns into visual and physical form, creating a dynamic associative network that mimics the brain in an off-line state. Also featured in the exhibition are two free-standing sculptures: Nocturnal Hologram (2015), which consists of interconnected molds of the artist’s sleeping figure overlaid with photograms of the imagery created for Enter-Face; and Twister (2015), which interprets the artist’s own twirling body as a series of “glitchy,” pixelated moments in time. The works encourage the viewer to contemplate the imagery and narratives created while in the dream state, and the relationship of the body to visual and cognitive experience.
In conjunction with the exhibition, DiverseWorks and Rice Public Art are pleased to present Grinnan’s Astrology Orchestra on Saturday, November 14 at the James Turrell Twilight Epiphany “Skyspace” on the Rice University campus. Astrology Orchestra is an ongoing symphonic performance project in which each instrument represents a planetary position and maps the artist’s astrological birth chart as seen from the perspective of each planet. The chart is translated into the strings of handmade instruments that are tuned accordingly. Echoing Turrell’s pyramidal structure, Grinnan’s live performance in Houston will reference ancient astrology, which relies solely on planets that can be seen with the naked eye.
Astrology Orchestra will be performed by Grinnan together with Houston musicians, students, and artists (Kelly Johnson, Juan Sebastian, Jhon Stronks, Molly Turner, Ken Watkins, and Tek Wilson). Grinnan has previously performed this work in a series of significant artistic and architectural locations, including the 60-inch telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory; Venice Beach; and the Integratron, a structure designed and built by ufologist George Van Tassell near Joshua Tree in the 1950s.
Katie Grinnan (b.1970, Richmond, VA; lives and works in Los Angeles) received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, attended Skowhegan, and received her MFA from UCLA. She has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York; the Aspen Art Museum; and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles. Grinnan has been included in many group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Real World: The Dissolving Space of Experience at Modern Art Oxford, England; and The Artist Museum at MOCA, Los Angeles. Her work is included in collections at MOCA, the Hammer Museum, and LACMA, and she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and a Pollock-Krasner grant.
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.
Support
This project is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.
DiverseWorks season sponsors: The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, and The Houston Endowment.
