Opening Reception: Thursday, March 9, 6 - 8 pm
Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present SurREAL | Houston, featuring photographs by Kenny Morrison and Chuck Ramirez. This exhibition explores the interconnections between the real, imagined and simulated.
Kenny Morrison is a photographer, director, and cinematographer. He is passionate about making images and storytelling. His work pushes boundaries as he searches for limits to situations. Photographs from Morrison’s Storm series are included in this exhibition, which are specifically inspired by the surreal ambiguity in John Brosio paintings. Morrison resides in New Orleans, a city that embraces and reinforces his craft by allowing him the flexibility and creativity for pursuing the many adaptations of film.
Chuck Ramirez was an artist, graphic designer, and a major force in the San Antonio art community before his untimely death in 2010. He employed the visual and conceptual techniques found in contemporary advertising and package design, isolating and re-contextualizing familiar objects to explore cultural identity, mortality, and consumerism through his photographs and installations. Ramirez’ work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and his works are within many prestigious collections including the San Antonio Museum of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; The European Museum of Photography, Paris; and the AT&T Center Art Collection, among others. The works included in this exhibition are through a collaboration with RH Art, the exclusive representative of the Chuck Ramirez estate.
SurREAL examines these artists' representations of reality as a subjective and malleable state of mind or a fixed truth. Morrison uses the tool of illusionistic representation to subvert reality entirely, while Ramirez captures realism, which can also be perceived as surreal.
