By Kathleen Coleman, Art & Entertainment
The Station Museum of Contemporary Art is proud to present Clark V. Fox: Subversion and Spectacle, an expansive survey exhibition of the work of Native American artist Clark V. Fox, opening on Saturday, February 5, 2022, through June 26, 2022. Subversion and Spectacle highlight Clark’s consistent mixing and appropriation of styles and movements from pop art to abstraction as a political statement, examining his work as an artist and philosopher who thinks broadly about the subtle connections between the imagery of consumerism, history, identity, and formalist considerations. Organized by Station Museum of Contemporary Art Director James Harithas with Senior Curator Alex Tu, Subversion and Spectacle is an expansion of Insurgent: The Paintings of Clark V. Fox, an exhibition curated by Ann Harithas for the Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art in Victoria, Texas.
“As an artist beyond categorization, Clark’s prodigious achievements are measured in the outsized influence that his pieces exert on the viewer and the shock waves his work continues to send through contemporary art,” said James Harithas.
Using appropriated corporate and political icons, Clark dismantles the effects of capitalist culture on our consciousness. His iconoclastic portraits of American heroes provide a framework for reconnection and reinstatement as he acts to challenge our national myth-making. Political undercurrents can be found in Clark’s entire body of work, from his more subtle Situationist architectural paintings to the more apparent political symbolism of his pop-informed works that inflects history painting.
Clark delivers difficult-to-swallow truths cloaked in seductive color and texture with his biting humor. This exhibition triangulates his position between and beyond the D.C. Color School, the Situationist International, Pop Art, and history painting.
“Clark is a thoroughly avant-garde artist dealing successfully with complex color problems and, on a profound conceptual level, with the central problems of synchrony and diachrony,” said Harithas. “The result is that he not only creates a new context for the use and perception of color, but he also sheds new light on our understanding of the static, salient elements of the past and how they emerge into the present.”
The Station Museum of Contemporary Art is located at 1502 Alabama St. in Houston, Texas 77004 and is open to the public 11 AM-6 PM, Wednesday through Sunday. Admission at the museum is always free. For more information, please visit our website at www.stationmuseum.com