If you are in the Boston area go check out Houbens solo show at DTR Modern. Titled "Houben Paints Money" the works are comprised of works based on “symbols mined from American currency as keys to understand national dreams and fantasies.” Concentrating on details in both new and old currency, Houben “exhumes their meanings and contradictions, revealing the subliminal power that currency images have.
On view at DTR Modern in Boston. 167 Newbury Street, Boston through March 31, 2012.
If you are in the Dallas area tonight go see this art opening featuring Brandon McLean, Clark Goolsby, and Rocky Grimes. The show is titled "Amazing Isn't Enough" and it explores the pressures of manhood, the fragility between life and death and the triumphs and disasters that occur socially, worldly, and personally. RO2 Gallery is located on 110 N. Akard Street in Dallas. The reception will be from 7 - 11 PM.
Robert Mars’ work is an evolving chronicle of Americana. He is determined to capture the independent aesthetic of the not-so-distant past that has been replaced by homogenized corporate culture and standardized cityscapes. Industrial design, graphic design, architecture, collage, and vintage neon all render important roles in his work.
Mars‘ paintings employ layers of color, collaged mid-century printed matter, and stark, black imagery. Remote, indistinct landscapes capture the poetic strips of nearly lost American highway that are unique, but fading under the modern mass-advertising onslaught. Formerly the promise of hope and prosperity; the rusted icons in Mars’ work are now a sign of desperation and ruin.
His eye for a distinct facet of American history is impeccable and precise, with hints of whimsy and an ability to manipulate the wordplay of vintage advertisements.
Mars’ work is exhibited with the likes of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg,
and has been shown worldwide including galleries in Munich, Tokyo, Amsterdam, London, Australia, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, Atlanta, Aspen, and Naples.