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| Gil Hartman: Dreamscapes & Devices April 19 – May 26 |
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Front Gallery is a community-oriented project that thrives on audience enthusiasm and involvement. As a steadfast champion of Houston artists, Cynthia Toles is the perfect guest curator, and we were delighted when she introduced us to Gil Hartman. She is a long-time admirer and collector of his work, but when she discovered their shared admiration for the Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump she was compelled to delve further, and the exhibition “Dreamscapes and Devices” was born. Toles describes Hartman as a self-taught artist with a “quiet yet ecstatic and steady artistic production.” She remarks, “For days, weeks, months, and years, Gil has been creating beauty out of whatever the universe places in his path.” His work is complex and playful; meticulous and free; serious and exuberant. It is shaped by an eclectic range of influences, from Kurt Schwitters and Hilma of Klint to Psychedelic and Pop Art, religious symbolism, and urban decay. Inspired by everything from the morning sky to discarded objects, Hartman embodies a "magpie" instinct, collecting overlooked fragments—bicycle reflectors, broken jewelry, computer parts—to transform them into assemblages and collages. The assemblages explore a concept Hartman calls Iconography From A Future Religion, imagining distant civilizations unearthing today’s discarded artifacts and interpreting them as sacred symbols. Mandalas appear as representations of the artist himself like “snapshots of me in my environment.” He refers to his collages as backdrops for the play that is his life. One imagines the setting for this play to be a chaotic yet vibrant world of decayed data and forgotten relics. |
Reception: Saturday April 19, 6-8 PM 1412 Bonnie Brae Street, Houston 77006 |
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