New Contemporary Artists at Arthouse

Fresh from their stunning 5x7 art sale and exhibition, Arthouse at the Jones Center debuted their latest showcase last weekend, New American Talent: The Twentieth Exhibition. Austinist happened to stop by Arthouse last Saturday - after checking out the brilliant Annie Liebovitz display at AMOA, which you need to see - and caught a snippet of the fascinating slide presentation by Dan Cameron, Senior Curator at Large of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. Cameron was principally responsible for the current selection of works, which features artists from all over the United States with a significant emphasis on those from Texas.

We stopped by again this weekend for a closer look, and came away quite impressed by the breadth of this mixed-media exhibition. Among our favorites was Austinite Jonathan Marshall's "Rocket Launch", a cartoonish painting of propellant smoke spiraling into the heavens, set amidst a solid tan canvas backdrop. Equally compelling was "Salton Sea Marina Club" by J. Bennett Fitts , a photograph of the dessicated husk of a resort swimming pool overlooking the dying Salton Sea. What left a strongest impression was Paul Chojnowski's series of burned paper drawings of a metropolitan boulevard at night, all three hyper-stylized and rendered in charcoal black and luminescent yellow. Set from the perspective of an apartment dweller gazing down at the night traffic below, the heavily unfocused images seem to capture both the sense of anonymity and ceaseless momentum of the big city.

The free exhibition runs through August 21. Check it out on your way to the Austin Museum of Art!