Big Medium is proud to open a new exhibition by Hillerbrand+Magsamen, Kirk Lynn, and Peter Stopschinski on January 16, 147 Devices for Integrated Principles. The exhibition will feature photography, video, sculpture, and an interactive closing virtual event on February 10 at 6:30pm.

Rooted in our society’s ever-growing desire to exercise control over our lives through various devices, 147 Devices for Integrated Principles is informed by the artists’ experiences during Hurricane Harvey. Not only was it the stress of a natural disaster, but also, divisive politics, economic pressures, and concerns with the aging of elderly parents, that brought Hillerbrand+Magsamen the idea to invent new devices for more intimate and personal problems. They turned to the concept of homo faber, or the notion that human beings can control their fate and their environment through tools. Once again, our culture is faced with a new wave of technology that can either help us with our problems or exacerbate them.

Download the Performance Kit
This PDF is an important part of the performance. Gather listed materials and print the document to participate.

Kick off the opening of PrintAustin’s The Contemporary Print: 5x5 with a special conversation between Jeanne Claire van Ryzin of Sightlines and exhibition Juror Delita Martin of Black Box Press Studios on January 15 at 7pm. 

Presented in partnership with Big Medium, PrintAustin’s 8th annual international juried exhibition The Contemporary Print: 5x5 showcases five works by five contemporary artists from the United States, Australia, and Slovenia, giving us a broad survey of printmaking happening across the globe. The virtual exhibition will go live January 15 - February 19 on bigmedium.org.

Hillerbrand + Magsamen + (Stopschinski) + [Lynn] will share music, images, and activities intended to provide Comfort and Preparation for quarantines both actual and internal. In order to play along and make your own art at home, download your Performance Kit with instructions and follow on YouTube. You can also continue the project off-line for the following 7 days to unlock a special gift.

Hear more about the project directly from the artists in this video:

Postponed until further notice.

Join us for a conversation with time.Set within the context of Betelhem’s solo exhibition, Rock Standard Time (RST), artist Betelhem Makonnen and University of Texas professor Dawna Ballard will facilitate a collective discussion about our society’s current mentality around time and how our temporal practices and attitudes impact our lives.

Betelhem Makonnen researches questions on perception, presence, and place within a trans-temporal and trans-locative topology that operates on the relational dynamics of diasporic consciousness. In addition to her artistic practice, she is on the curatorial team of Fusebox Festival and co-editor of the online arts periodical Written & Spoken. She is also a founding member of the Austin-based contemporary arts collaborative Black Mountain Project.

Dr. Dawna Ballard, associate professor of organizational communication and technology in the Moody College of Communication, is an expert in chronemics—the study of time as it is bound to human communication. She researches what drives our pace of life and its impact on the communication practices and long term vitality of organizations, communities, and individuals.

Betelhem Makonnen
Rock Standard Time (RST)

Tito's Prize Exhibition
March 6 – April 4, 2020

Opening Reception
Friday, March 6, 7 – 10pm

Member Preview
Friday, March 6, 6 – 7pm

Big Medium is pleased to present the third annual Tito's Prize exhibition featuring winner Betelhem Makonnen. The solo exhibition will open with a special reception on Friday, March 6 and run through SXSW.

Big Medium partnered with Tito's Handmade Vodka to create the $15,000 award; intended to help grow the recipient’s artistic career and support their life in Austin.

Makonnen was selected by a curatorial panel that includes Florencia Bazzano, Assistant Curator, Latin American Art at the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin); Annette Lawrence, Artist, and Professor of Studio Art at the University of North Texas (Denton); and Rigoberto Luna, Director and Curator at Presa House Gallery (San Antonio).

Rock Standard Time (RST) is an invitation to res(e)t our current climate of temporal anxiety. Feeling exiled from time, rather than being in and of it, it seems everyone is continually chasing after it and never catching up. How can we have time outside of imposed standards and within our best interests? Can we rush, if we must, but slowly? Works in photography, video, text and installation made through, with, and just in time ask us to shift our perspective and consider multiple scales and registers for time accounting.

Born from continuing conversations, correspondence and collaborations, the exhibition is a meditative resistance to the internalized ticks and tocks that assert we have no time to respond to ourselves, to each other, nor our world. Time in all its conjugation and tenses is inseparable from the human experience – we are time and time is on our side, yes it is.

Betelhem Makonnen researches questions on perception, presence, and place within a trans-temporal and trans-locative topology that operates on the relational dynamics of diasporic consciousness. In addition to her artistic practice, she is on the curatorial team of Fusebox Festival and co-editor of the online arts periodical Written & Spoken. She is also a founding member of the Austin-based contemporary arts collaborative Black Mountain Project.

Join PrintAustin in celebrating its 7th annual juried international exhibition, The Contemporary Print, presented in collaboration with Big Medium. The Contemporary Print is a survey of traditional printmaking techniques and innovative approaches in contemporary printmaking. Our 2020 exhibition was juried by Claudia Zapata.

Texas-born curator, artist, and doctoral candidate, Claudia Zapata, joins us from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where she currently acts as the Latinx art curatorial assistant in support of their upcoming exhibition ¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965-Now. Claudia's passion for Chicanx and Latinx art, and identity-based exhibitions has inspired her previous work as the Curator of Exhibitions and Programs at Mexic-Arte Museum, the Co-Founder of the Puro Chingón Collective, and now the pursuit of a Ph.D. in Rhetorics of Art, Space and Culture at Southern Methodist University.

Selected artists include:
David Avery, Kelly Belter, Lisette Chavez, Briar Craig, Tania Cruz, Angela Faz, J.Leigh Garcia, Dirk Hagner, Veronica Hallock, Anna Hoberman, Daryl Howard, Raluca Iancu, Brian Johnson, Wayne Madsen, Michelle Martin, Jonathan Nicklow, Ryan O'Malley, Samantha Osborne & Alan Pocaro, Kristina Paabus, Sumi Perera, Ramiro Rodriguez, Terry Schupbach-Gordon, Emily Stokes, Wendi Valladares, and Carson Werner.

For more information, visit printaustin.org.

Canopy
916 Springdale Rd, Bldg 2, #105

This is your chance to support Austin's local creative community. Due EAST is the official kick off party and fundraiser, all in support of local artists and community access to the arts. Get your copy of the EAST catalog and map before the tour begins and experience nearly 400 artists in the 2019 East Austin Studio Tour Group Exhibition. Music by Joaqu.n, Easy Compadre, and NJUNE. Immersive installations by Essentials Creative. Complimentary bites from our favorite food trucks and beverages provided by our EAST sponsors. Creative cocktail attire encouraged.

Love EAST? Become a Big Medium Member at any level today and receive a code for the member ticket price and an EAST catalog mailed directly to you: east.bigmedium.org/support

Purchase Tickets

Happiness is a Journey chronicles the daily life and art of Bear Lopez, East Austin resident of 60 years. Artists Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan met Bear at the Austin American Statesman’s printing warehouse where Lopez has been working for over 20 years without a single day off, delivering papers. 

Bear’s paper route cuts through the heart of East Austin, traversing César Chavez from I-35 to the Holly Power Plant. Watching alleyways and business districts that define everyday life, he is a steadfast witness to the transformation and gentrification of East Austin. With Happiness is a Journey, Lucas and Bresnan seek to bring the home and works of Bear Lopez, while recording the resilience of those who like Bear remain faithful and proud of their East Side roots.

Join us for an artist talk with Jaime Zuverza and Alyssa Taylor Wendt about our current exhibition, Sanctum.

Sanctum brings together a collection of international artists to present work in conversation around the concept of genetic memory. Long fascinated with the idea that we inherit not only DNA but fear, habits, triumph, trauma and love, among other things from our ancestors, Wendt has gathered these artists to explore how this affects our collective cultural consciousness.

Join us for a conversation with artist Scott Vincent Campbell and curator and artist Alyssa Taylor Wendt.

One of six artists in the exhibition Sanctum, curated by Alyssa Taylor Wendt, Scott will discuss the concepts behind his work, his influences, process, and how he thinks these things relate to the underlying theme of the exhibition.

Scott Vincent Campbell is a visual artist and curator born in New York and currently based in Detroit, MI. He received his BFA from Haverford College in 2005 and has exhibited widely in New York and throughout the Midwest. Conceptually, Campbell is interested in the difference between perception and objective reality; the disconnect between how one interprets the world around them and how it actually is.

Alyssa Taylor Wendt works as a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and curator that works in Austin, Texas and Detroit, Michigan. Her recent projects reference themes of ritual, animism, interactivity, monuments, mysticism, the primordial, architecture and the palimpsestic nature of history using video, sculpture, staged photographs, sound and performance.

Sanctum brings together a collection of international artists to present work in conversation around the concept of genetic memory. Long fascinated with the idea that we inherit not only DNA but fear, habits, triumph, trauma and love—among other things from our ancestors—Wendt has gathered these artists to explore how this affects our collective cultural consciousness. Hailing from diverse practices and working in video, installation, photography, painting and sculpture, this group of work includes an excerpt from Wendt’s latest film The Memory Inheritance, which she filmed this past summer in Detroit.