Steel Lounge Underground - August 28th 2009 August 28, 2009

DJ Pooks and Josh Zulu host the next edition of Steel Lounge Underground Friday August 28th at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (5216 Montrose, 77006) from 8pm-11pm.

Steel Lounge Underground is a monthly event showcasing Houston based musical artists performing live in the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Steel Lounge Underground showcases Houston’s diversity and talent by bringing together musical artists representing a variety of genres and attracts an audience representing all walks of life. During the event, the audience is free to explore the exhibitions currently on display within the Contemporary Arts Museum.

This is a free event!

This month’s musical line-up features DJ Drew, Tax the Wolf & Eddie Spettro!

Musical Lineup:
DJ Drew - http://www.facebook.com/people/Patrick-Drew/728361625
Tax The Wolf - http://www.myspace.com/taxthewolf
Eddie Spettro - http://www.myspace.com/spettromusic

Exhibits on view in the museum:

*In The Brown Foundation Gallery:*
*No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston*
On view: May 9 - October 4, 2009

Free from the land-use and zoning ordinances that shape other large American cities by separating residential, commercial, and industrial areas, Houston allows a mixed-use approach where disparate architectures and functions blend. In this often chaotic, jarring urban topography, many Houston artists have been able to carve out spaces and opportunities for themselves, their work, and their communities. No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston is the first museum exhibition to consider the current and past efforts of regional artists working in the urban environment.

The exhibition will feature work by approximately 18 individuals and collaborative teams. Participants contributing new projects include The Art Guys (Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing), who will present a performance that involves marrying a tree; Mary Ellen Carroll, who is reconfiguring an abandoned tract house in the southwestern Sharpstown neighborhood; and Rick Lowe, who celebrates residents of the Third Ward in billboards. Also included is work by current and former Houston artists Bill Davenport, Ben Tecumseh DeSoto, Sharon Engelstein, The Flower Man (Cleveland Turner), The Fundred Dollar Bill Project (Mel Chin et al.), Andrea Grover, collaborators Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, George Hixson, Lauren Kelley, KnittaPlease (Magda Sayeg et al.), Eric Leshinsky, Lee Littlefield, Benjy Mason and Zach Moser of Workshop Houston, Jim Pirtle, and Nestor Topchy.

No Zoning will include examples and documentation of important city interventions and visionary structures from the 1980s to the present. The exhibition will incorporate a combination performance, lecture, and video screening space that will present special programs during the museum’s extended Thursday evening hours. In addition, a series of special artistic programs and educational tours will be located throughout the city.

*In the Zilkha Gallery:*
*Perspectives 167: Jason Villegas*
On view: August 14 - November 1, 2009

Jason Villegas’s installations combine wall murals, soft sculpture, performance and video. For Perspectives 167: Jason Villegas, the artist debuts a new site-specific installation to mark his first solo museum exhibition. The work extends his ongoing narrative about the lifecycle of luxury goods, but it also introduces an emerging and complex mythology surrounding these goods. Foraging thrift stores to recover castoffs such as the once prized logo polo shirts, Villegas has created a series of portraits—totems that speak to the zealousness of want and the consequence of waste. The artist’s work provides a window into his evolving parable about the absurdity of consumption in the face of a local, national, and even global economic crisis.

Jason Villegas was born in Houston, TX (1977) and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA from the University of Houston and an MFA from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in 2007. His work has been featured in several group exhibitions including Phantom Sightings, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2008); Young Latino Artists #10, Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin, TX (2005); Artadia@Diverseworks, DiverseWorks (2005), and The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX (2003). Solo exhibitions include projects at Commerce Street Art Warehouse, Houston, TX; Cactus Bra Space, San Antonio, TX; Plush Gallery, Dallas, TX; Okay Mountain Gallery, Austin, TX; and most recently, Receiver Gallery, San Francisco, CA.