Redux Summer Selection

Jorge Alegría, Frances Bagley, Matthew Bourbon, Angela Faz, Lily Hanson, Gina Garza, Bryan Florentin, Floyd Newsum, Eduardo Portillo and Keri Oldham
July 27–August 31, 2019
Opening reception Saturday, July 27, 6:00-8:00 pm
Artists will be in attendance

Kirk Hopper Fine Art is pleased to announce our upcoming summer group exhibition, Redux Summer Selection, with selected works by Jorge Alegría, Frances Bagley, Matthew Bourbon, Angela Faz, Lily Hanson, Gina Garza, Bryan Florentin, Floyd Newsum, Eduardo Portillo and Keri Oldham.

Kirk Hopper Fine Art has assembled a great summer selection of works from a diverse group of artists who explore different material and mediums. Each artist has been chosen for her or his conceptual creativeness and storytelling, allowing for a dynamic exhibit to set the tone for our upcoming season.

Selected Artist Biographies

Jorge Alegría has been exhibiting his work regionally for nearly two decades. He and a friend started the independent art space Residence in Corpus Christi, hosting critiques, curating exhibitions, and posting art reviews until 2006. Alegría revived the space in 2013, renamed the Living Room, which features one-night shows of his new work and selected artists. He has lived most of his life in Corpus Christi and currently works as a curatorial assistant at the Art Museum of South Texas.

Frances Bagley received her MFA in Sculpture at the University of North Texas after earning an MA in Art Education and her BFA in Painting from Arizona State University. She has exhibited extensively in her career and in 2008 was awarded a top prize in the 10th Kajima Sculpture Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan. Her work is included in museum and corporate collections including the Dallas Museum of Art, the El Paso Museum and the National Museum of Women in Washington D.C. Her awards include the Individual Artist Grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Moss Chumley Artists Award 2011 and the 1995 Legend Award from the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art.

Matthew Bourbon is an artist and writer. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Bourbon earned separate undergraduate degrees in Studio Art and Art History from the University of California at Davis. Relocating to New York City, Bourbon earned his MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Since then, his art has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Past solo exhibitions include Arch Decievers, Avis Frank Gallery, Houston; Tender Pioneers, Darke Gallery, Houston; Crass, Cruel and Uncouth, Conduit Gallery, Dallas; The Artist's Eye, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; and True Fictions, Studio 107, Austin. Recently Bourbon was awarded the Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant by the Dallas Museum of Art to conduct research in Japan, and he was named an Institute for the Advancement of Art Fellow at the University of North Texas. He has also been selected twice to be included in the Texas Biennial and in New American Paintings, where his work was highlighted as a Juror's Pick. Bourbon is currently an Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Texas's College of Visual Arts and Design. He is also an art critic and contributor to Art Forum Online, Flash Art, ArtNews, New York Arts Magazine, and Glasstire, and served for several years as the regional editor for the journal Art Lies.

Gina Garza is a Dallas-based artist born in San Antonio. She attained her MFA from Texas Women's University in 2011. While completing her MFA and soon after, Garza exhibited in many juried and non-juried exhibitions within the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex including 500X, THAT THAT and WAAS Gallery. In 2014, Garza was one of seven local Latina artists chosen to show at the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas for an exhibit entitled ELLA. Garza is now currently working on expanding her body of work while participating in an artist's residency in Barcelona, Spain. Using line, her work primarily focuses on eradicating the assumed visual predicate and dismantling the ego. Garza's mechanical compositions are composed of thread, paper, and wood.

Lily Hanson's work in sculpture and assemblage combines her interests in the everyday, questions of value, and tactile aspects of the object world. In a variety of materials, Hanson looks at contrasts of soft and hard, fragile and strong, and small versus large. The results draw attention to ideas of function and expression (or lack thereof) in the object world and how they affect people, emotionally and physically. Lily received her BA from Hampshire College in 1995. Her final exhibition there looked at light and architecture and ideas around installation with sculptural objects and printmaking. She received her MFA from Southern Methodist University in 2000. There she started exploring the body relative to the sculptural object. Her thesis dealt with intimacy in human/object interactions, exploring how color, texture and design condition those relationships. This has been a continuing theme in her work. Hanson has taught at Hampshire College, Southern Methodist University, Vermont College, and Eastfield College. She has exhibited in Texas, Massachusetts, Oklahomas, California, and New York.

Bryan Florentin's work has been exhibited nationally. He is Assistant Professor of Practice and Photography Area Coordinator at the University of Texas at Arlington where he teaches photography, photo history, and the history of LGBTQ art. A member of the Society for Photographic Education, he was South Central Chapter Chair (2013-2018) and has served on national and chapter conference committees. Bryan holds an MFA in photography from the University of North Texas and a BA in art and performance from the University of Texas at Dallas. He is represented by Kirk Hopper Fine Art.

Salvadorian artist Eduardo E. Portillo arrived in the United States in 2003 to pursue his studies in fine art at the University of Houston. He received his BFA in Painting with a minor in Art History, after graduating with Honors in the summer of 2011. At an early age, Portillo found fascination with the idea of art and how it was created. Some of his earlier works were produced while he was a member of a small community art school in his native Santa Ana, El Salvador. After graduating from the University of Houston, his focus changed from painting to sculpture and more recently to installation-based work. Although Portillo's art practice has changed directions, he has made sure to retain elements of each medium he previously created work in. Portillo's recent body of work is far more than just installation. With the influences of painting and sculpture playing such pivotal roles in his work, Portillo strives to combine the various aspects of those different mediums to create an evolving body of work that challenges the preconceived notions of what a painting or sculpture is. Portillo has exhibited work in Houston at various galleries and venues including G Gallery, as well at Houston Community College. He has also shown work at Blue Star in San Antonio. In addition to exhibiting work, Portillo curates art exhibitions and also installs work for various galleries. He recently installed work for Boltax Gallery from Shelter Island, New York at the Texas Contemporary Art Fair in 2012.