Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, in partnership with Hotel Indigo Santa Barbara, is pleased to present Andy Coolquitt: …i need a hole in my head, an exhibition featuring a major commission of new works by Andy Coolquitt. Since the 1990s, the Austin, TX-based artist has garnered recognition for his dynamic assemblages and expansive installations composed of ordinary found objects and materials that explore relationships between art, its viewing context, and the human body. Aiming to confound the distinction between these three categories, Coolquitt produces atmospheres of comfort and sociability where his works companionably coexist, and at times are not always discernible, from their surrounding environments.
For this exhibition, Coolquitt has generated a vibrant body of work that includes paintings, sculptures, and video which the artist uses to form connections between some of the juxtapositional aspects of a place that is simultaneously private and public, homelike and commercial, an exhibition venue and a hotel. While acknowledging the tensions between these realms, Coolquitt’s focus is on the potential of their intersections. In conceiving the works for this exhibition, the artist employs a straightforward tomfoolery intended to dislodge the typical viewing practices associated with contemporary art.
Throughout the exhibition, Coolquitt uses the language of geometric abstraction to riff off of the hotel’s architectural and design facets, incorporating, for example, site-specific hard edge or gestural painting as a tactic to reimagine the lounge, stairwell, or skylight. Such interventions expand the engaging potential of these areas while they emphasize the impact of shapes, lines, colors, patterns, and textures on our spatial experience. Other works in the show consist of familiar domiciliary items such as bathmats, chairs, light bulbs, and nylon stockings. Coolquitt elevates the significance of undervalued ubiquitous objects that enhance our visceral response to interior environments, prompting viewers to critically analyze the dimensions of our attraction to these basic yet undeniably essential things.
Exhibition Curator: Brooke Kellaway
About the Artist
Andy Coolquitt was born in Texas in 1964, and currently lives in Austin. He is perhaps most widely known for the house which began as his master’s thesis project at University of Texas at Austin in 1994 and continues to the present day. The house is a multifaceted entity, serving as a studio, performance, and domestic space for Coolquitt. In the summer of 2016, Coolquitt produced a multi-exhibition project titled Studio Art………..Period Room while in residence at Artpace in San Antonio, TX. In spring 2014 he was artist-in-residence at the Chianti Foundation in Marfa, TX, which culminated in the exhibition, Multi-Marfa Room, at the Locker Plant in Marfa, TX. Notable solo exhibitions have included This Much at Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna, Austria; no I didn’t go to any museums here I hate museums museums are just stores that charge you to come in there are lots of free museums here but they have names like real stores at Maryam Nassir Zadeh in New York City, NY; attainable excellence at AMOA-Arthouse in Austin, TX; and, most recently, HopsonShouse at Jonothan Hopson, Houston TX.
[Read T: The New York Times Style Magazine exhibition coverage here]