UMLAUF PRIZE 2017
Bucky Miller: GRACKLE ACTIONS

September 5 - November 26, 2017

"Bucky Miller is the type of rule-breaking, thought-provoking artist that gives me faith in the next generation of artists emerging from grad programs today. His mixing of photography and object, nature and its artificial mirror, deployed memorably to create spatially orchestrated experience made giving him the top honor an easy choice."
- Juror, Bill Arning 

mentoring a muse: Charles Umlauf & Farrah Fawcett

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February 16, 2017 - August 20, 2017

This exhibition explored the lifelong artistic friendship between Charles Umlauf and his most famous student, Farrah Fawcett. This pioneering exhibition featured never-before-seen work made by both artists from the UMLAUF, private collections, and a generous loan from the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin. 

2015

Umlauf Prize 2015: Murmurs

Ryan Hawk &

Gracelee Lawrence

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The 2015 UMLAUF Prize Juror, Suzanne Deal Booth, selected Ryan Hawk and Gracelee Lawrence from an impressive group of candidates.

For this exhibition, Ryan Hawk and Gracelee Lawrence created site-specific work in response to Charles Umlauf’s twentieth century sculptures. Hawk’s video installation features a male figure taking the pose of Umlauf’s iconic 1960 Spirit of Flight bronze sculpture. The video captures a dark green/grey colored polymer slowly flowing down the subject’s bound body, with intercuts of the original Spirit of Flight. Lawrence’s work engages both Umlauf’s Lovers V and The Kiss by reinterpreting the figures as enormous fiberglass fruit fountains installed in the Garden near the original sculptures.

Umlauf’s secular and religious sculptures align with the dominant culture’s mindset during the 20th century. Although totally different in execution, Hawk’s and Lawrence’s works function similarly as alternatives to the heterosexual masculine ideology underlying Umlauf’s art. Hawk reinterprets Spirit of Flight through a Queer lens. Lawrence’s installation engages concepts of fertility and fecundity that shed light on Umlauf’s representation of women and his valorization of men. Although the artists take inspiration from perspectives that were marginalized in the last century, Hawk and Lawrence both encourage new possibilities for a variety of 21st century viewers.

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Exhibition Brochure: 

Eve & Shiva
Sculpture by Charles Umlauf and Gene Owens

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May 9 - August 30, 2015

Eve & Shiva: 

Sculpture by Charles Umlauf and Gene Owens

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May 9 - August 30, 2015

Eve & Shiva: Sculpture of Charles Umlauf and Gene Owens belongs to an ongoing series of exhibitions that juxtapose the art of Charles Umlauf (1910-1994) and his 20th century peers. Fort Worth-area native Gene Owens (b. 1931) is a pioneer of modern sculpture. He spent the summer of 1952 studying with Umlauf, quickly becoming an accomplished abstract and figurative sculptor in his own right. He worked at the side of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi throughout the 1960s, traveling between New York and Texas.

In the same era, while teaching art full time at The University of Texas at Austin, Umlauf spent every summer casting bronze sculptures in Italy. His studies in Italy intensified his appreciation and knowledge of Renaissance and Medieval art.

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Eve & Shiva centers around two bronze figures: Umlauf's Eve with Apple/Eva con Mela (1974) and Owens's Shiva (1965). The two sculptures convey the different influences and journeys of these artists. Their many other works in the exhibition are arranged so viewers can closely compare subject matter, surface texture, and materials of the two artists.

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Exhibition Brochure:

Luis Jiménez: Sodbuster

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Jan. 21 - Apr. 19, 2015

Originally from El Paso, Texas, Luis Jiménez studied sculpture with Charles Umlauf at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1960s. The UMLAUF brought one of Jiménez earliest and most powerful monumental works into the Gallery. Sodbuster, San Isidro (1982; cast 1995) is a rare pristine fiberglass sculpture that celebrates contributions of indigenous and local people to the expansion of the Great Plains. Special thanks to Russell Tether Fine Arts for lending Sodbuster, San Isidro.

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Exhibition Brochure:

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UMLAUF: Process

Nov. 12, 2014 - Jan. 11, 2015

UMLAUF: Process presented a behind-the-scenes look at the lost-wax casting technique Charles Umlauf used for his bronze sculptures. The exhibition featured fiberglass sculptural molds never seen by the public. Supplementary studies and finished bronzes complemented the sculptural molds.

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Exhibition Brochure: 

2014

UMLAUF Prize 2014: Intermodal
Adam Crosson

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2014

"With this body of work I seek to negotiate strategies of intermodal freight transport (IFT) with the social and literary theory of negative capability. The literary theory of negative capability was first described by John Keats (1795-1821) as the creative necessity of being comfortable with the unknown. In the late 20th century, Roberto Mangabeira Unger (born 1947) outlined in his social theory of negative capability an individual’s ability to eliminate illusions of social constraints in order to achieve maximum individual freedom.

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IFT utilizes multiple modes of transportation to haul freight in standardized intermodal containers, commonly referred to as shipping containers. Goods of varying sizes and shapes are conformed to the internal dimensions of the containers, rendering a systematic uniformity. IFT strategies have decreased the amount of direct human handling of goods in lieu of cranes, hoists, and other large scale mechanized equipment as a way to increase efficiency and safety.

Keats writes that an embodiment of negative capability includes being able to project oneself into different roles, the necessity of indifference, and a presence of insecurity and neurosis. Unger states that negative capability undermines the simplified binary that an individual’s only choices pertaining to social structuring is either assimilation or rebellion. At the heart of negative capability is the discovery and negotiation of internal conflict—of a persistence of social forces, both internal and external, simultaneously attempting to deliver the self into something well defined.

I am seeking a reflexive relationship between efforts to contain and forces pushing against that containment. Where some of my previous works have utilized moving parts, this body of work questions the relationship between movement and stasis by way of the familiar and the speculative. Through a layering of intermodal freight transport and negative capability, I look to create episodes of tension between the processes of transportation efficiencies and the social negotiations of routine and rebellion." - Adam Crosson

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Exhibition Brochure: 

Reflect
Margo Sawyer

May 6 - October 19, 2014

Four indoor and outdoor site-specific installations created by Margo Sawyer. Reflect subtly related to the bricks on the floor, the garden, the changing light-even the visitors- while echoing our Lawrence Speck-designed Museum.

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Exhibition Brochure: 

C2 Sculptors
Charles Umlauf & Charles Williams

 

February 19 - April 20, 2014

Two of the most prolific sculptors in twentieth century Texas, Charles Umlauf and Charles Williams competed for juried prizes, commissions and museum shows. Each man was powerfully influenced by the art and events of the era.  At times their midcentury work was uncannily similar; at other points it diverged sharply.  Yet the two artists barely knew each other. C2 Sculptors offers rare insight into these two creative minds, exhibiting many objects that have never before been displayed.  

This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of our members and the Austin Community Foundation.

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Exhibition Brochure:

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