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PRESS RELEASE
Joseph Havel
Toy, Dream, Rest
May 15 through June 14, 2003
Dunn and Brown Contemporary is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Joseph Havel. The opening of the exhibition will take place on Friday, May 16 from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. The artist will be present for the opening, and the exhibition will continue through Saturday, June 14.
Havel has created an installation of three monumental works for the exhibition. The title of the show, Toy, Dream, Rest, is culled from The Dream Shop by John Berryman. Influenced by Berryman’s writing since his early twenties, Havel has created delicate curtains entirely from shirt labels using words drawn from Berryman’s text. Each piece, composed of a single word from the title of the show, creates an ethereal drape as it hangs from the gallery ceiling. The largest curtain, Dream, composed of over 20,000 labels sewn in a lush shade of violet, cascades to the gallery floor from nearly twelve feet in the air. The other large works, Toy, a vibrant lime green and Rest, a hypnotic blue, form delicate drapes containing nearly 8,000 labels a piece.
Scattered among these monumental works are smaller ground oriented sculptures. Havel plays with light and scale as these objects relate to each other and the three larger works in the space. Inviting cotton shapes bound by heirloom handkerchiefs seem firmly grounded while small cast bronze pieces appear on the verge of floating away. Here, Havel succeeds in creating a quiet, captivating space for what at first glance appear to be disparate objects.
Havel’s work was included in the 2000 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. He has also shown at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston Texas. Havel’s sculptures and drawings can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Honolulu; Dallas Museum of Art; Musee Arte, Roubaix, France; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Havel now lives and works in Houston, Texas. He currently serves as the Director of the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Please contact Elizabeth Phy at the gallery for additional information or to request visuals. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. and by appointment.