SCULPTURE MONTH 2022: Synaptic

• Sat, Oct 8, 2022 - Sat, Dec 3, 2022  12 - 6 PM. Wed - Sat
• Saturday, Oct 8, 2022  Opening Reception: 6 - 9 PM

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Site Gallery at The Silos at Sawyer Yard
1502 Sawyer Street Suite 400, Houston TX 77007

OPENING RECEPTION:
Saturday, October 8, 2022 from 6 pm- 9 pm 
Exhibition runs October 8, 2022 – December 3, 2022

Also Saturdays: Artist Talk / Tours at 2 pm by
Curator Volker Eisele
Ambient Avenues Performing Arts Series (Select Saturdays)
Performance art TBA

Sculpture Month Houston is proud to present its new exhibition “Synaptic” at the Site Gallery at the Silos at Sawyer Yards. Since 2016 Sculpture Month Houston has celebrated 3 dimensional and installation art and the artists who create them. After five successful previous shows, “Synaptic” is the sixth exhibition and Festival and this year’s theme is a rarely explored subject: the transformation of neural and psychological systems into tangible sculptural objects.

The architecture of the Silos with its cylindrically shaped spaces has always fostered associations that referred to defined spaces like caves or interior structures. This exhibition has asked its participating artists to look at the individual silo space as a cranial cavity where the brain is housed and performs its amazing feats. 

The human brain its the least understood and the most mysterious of all organ structures. The neural networks seemingly effortless can perform the most complex cognitive tasks at lightning speed. These functions are all produced by a tangled web of 100 billion neurons or nerve cells supported by its network of 100 trillion synapses. These synapses are responsible for the neuron to neuron transmissions, they stimulate and inhibit, they connect and sever and all the while forge new pathways and networks: a striking analogy of the creation of art.

The main mystery of the brain, however, may be how basic chemicals like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and a few others plus an electric spark can be transformed into ephemeral images, thoughts, feelings or emotions. How can that be? The sciences have no good answers, the conceptual jump from a constellation of biochemical substrates converted into colorful images or deep emotions is simply beyond the current scientific knowledge base.

So we asked our artists to try to make an end run around this conceptual impasse. After all, art is not bound by scientific dogma or the constraint of a strict and cumbersome logic. Artists are comfortable working in the liminal space of fiction and reality and they would like to share their creative interpretations and unorthodox insights. They also may find some humor in these inherent contradictions and invest their installations and sculptures with a light hearted note. They are the intermediaries working “between a thought and a thing.

For press or sponsorship information, please contact us at smhfestival@gmail.com 

SYNAPTIC FEATURED ARTISTS:

Christie Blizard
Laurie Frick
Jeff Gibbons
Dave Greber
Stephan Hillerbrand / Mary Magsamen
Hillary Holsonback
Ronald L. Jones
Sharon Kopriva / John Berry
Meredith Jack
Dameon Lester
Beili Liu
Virginia L. Montgomery
Chris Sauter
Matthew Steinke
Brad Tucker

Meredith Tucker