Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts

The Blaffer Art Museum is honored to present the first solo museum exhibition of work by artist John Guzman (b. 1984). Flesh and Bone focuses on works produced in the artist’s hometown of San Antonio and the Texas debut of paintings completed during, and immediately following, time at the NXTHVN Studio Fellowship Program in New Haven, Connecticut.

As a spectator to claustrophobic psychological and physical states growing up in San Antonio’s Southside, Guzman’s monumental paintings are a byproduct of experiences, recordings, and environmental reflections. The artist abstracts the human figure to reflect the harm endured by the body, and the unrecognizable transformation brought on by years of punishment, addiction, relapse, and self-destruction.

Histories and lives embedded in the land – and particularly the waterways that have alternately built and destroyed Houston over time – will be the subject of a newly commissioned, multi-disciplinary work by Mexican artist Tania Candiani. In her past work, Candiani has worked across a spectrum of media and practices to explore the intersections between people, place, labor and industry. In so doing, Candiani initiates explorations and collaborations that convene communal meditations on the past via music, architecture, and craft, with an emphasis on early technologies and vernacular practices of record-keeping. Her work in Houston will be developed out of an intermittent eight-month residency generously sponsored and supported by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts.

Join us for a voice masterclass with Grammy and Emmy award-winning baritone, Reginald Smith, Jr. Mr. Smith joins Houston Grand Opera this fall in the title role of Verdi’s Falstaff.

UH Dance faculty professor Toni Valle and her dance company, 6 Degrees, premieres “POP DEMO,” an original evening-length dance performance set in an immersive “Speakeasy” setting, at MATCH, September 2023. “POP DEMO” views the historical use of propaganda through the lens of political cartoons in a live 3-D experience of contemporary dance, aerial dance, theatre, and visual projections. Through 60’s Pop Art costume designs by Judy Masliyah, lighting by Hudson Davis, and music by George Heathco, “Pop Demo” creates the surreal world of political cartoons.