Glasstire // Christopher Blay // 07.11.20: Public Art of the University of Houston System (Public Art UHS) and the Temporary Public Art Program present the first curated exhibition of outdoor sculpture at UH. Titled Color Field, it’s on view through May 2021. The second project in the Temporary Public Art Program (supported by Houston’s Brown Foundation) is a traveling show organized in partnership with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Public Art UHS director and chief curator Maria C. Gaztambide states that “Color Field (inspired by the mid-twentieth painting style of the same name) is an optimistic exhibition that will offer multiple touch points for experiencing outdoor art in an immediate and natural way.” Taking this style of painting as a point of departure, Color Field considers a group of contemporary artists concerned with exploiting color for all of its expressive and evocative possibilities. “By placing [works] in and around UH’s iconic campus buildings, its main pedestrian arteries and existing permanent artworks in the Public Art collection, we truly want to incite dialogue not only between them and our campus’ natural and built environment, but also with other works for which color is also a central node,” Gaztambide says. “Taken as a whole, Color Field will allow us to consider some of today’s exciting contemporary artists in the context of modern masters including Carlos Cruz-Diez and Dorothy Hood, among others.”