Courtesy Photo / McNay Art Museum
"Beyond Reality" features work by Texas-based artists Dan Lam, Angela Fox, Carlos Donjuan and Ernesto Ibañez.
"Beyond Reality," which debuted on March 22, features murals, sculptures and drawings by four Texas-based artists who grew up at the turn of the 21st century: Dan Lam, Angela Fox, Carlos Donjuan and Ernesto Ibañez.
The exhibition as a whole is a conglomerate of pieces that challenge the boundaries of reality — many of the pieces use organic shapes or lifeforms as a jumping-off point before moving beyond the real world into mythology and unnatural colors.
Take Ibañez’s carpentry nail-covered sculptures of animals and other creatures, for example. The San Antonio-based artist's creatures possess humanlike names — like Harry and Antonio — and look deceptively furry and soft.
Dallas-based Dan Lam’s drippy, spiky, colorful sculptures are similarly surreal. Built out of foam and resin, the pieces have garnered her a significant social media following. Her sculptures resemble melting stalagtites or growing fungal spores, all rendered in glossy rainbow hues.
San Antonio-based artist Fox’s gouache paintings and murals contain geometric angularities and dynamic, contrasting colors. She uses a female hero-warrior archetype throughout her paintings, which carry fantastical and mythological undertones.
Donjuan’s works call to mind cartoons and comic books — though his poignant and colorful watercolor portraits also address issues of migration and other slices of contemporary life.
In a press release, McNay Collections Manager and co-organizer of the exhibition Liz Paris said, “The work by these artists exudes a playful, tangible richness and complexity that goes beyond a photograph. The in-person experience is the reward.”
Related by their colorfulness and sense of whimsy, the pieces in the exhibition make it a psychedelic feast for the senses.
"Beyond Reality" is on view through August 13, 2023.
$10-$20, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday, McNay Art Museum, 6000 N. New Braunfels Ave., (210) 824-5638, mcnayart.org.
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