Rebecca Holland

Rebecca Holland

Exhibition: Mar 9 – Apr 16, 2000


For her residency, Holland responds to the shifting northern light of her ArtPace studio. In her studio, she has applied silver leaf to the entire ceiling of the industrial space. The result is a reverberation of light, showering the room and the viewer with a cool, soothing glow. This deceptively simple embellishment of surface envelopes the viewer in a visual silence. The ceiling’s reflection on the gallery’s waxed concrete floors appears liquid.

On ArtPace’s roof deck, Holland offers another visual surprise. The artist has responded to the horizontal lines and industrial materials of the concrete-and-steel roof pavilion, softening the surfaces and injecting graceful lines.

A third piece takes place off-site. A large outdoor billboard has been painted with a mica finish, which produces a subtle, iridescent glow. Sometimes blue, other times gray, the billboard becomes a painting. Bisected with a horizontal line, the sign extends the vast Texas sky. Again, Holland injects a sense of mystery into an otherwise mundane location, interrupting the viewer’s routine environment.

Through her ArtPace installations, Holland evokes emotional responses from the viewer, shifting multiple perceptions. Although her interventions are subtle, the effort is not—the artist’s process-based approach makes the viewer aware not only of appearance but also effect. Her works activate all of the senses: they shimmer and swell, divide and unify, surprise and beckon.

Artist

Rebecca Holland

San Antonio, Texas, USA

Born in Colorado Springs, CO in 1962, Rebecca Holland lives and works in San Antonio, TX. Holland holds an M.F.A. in ceramic sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, North Dartmouth and a B.A. in ceramics and painting from Bennington College in Vermont. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE and is currently an adjunct professor at San Antonio College.
Holland has exhibited her work throughout Texas, including one-person exhibitions in San Antonio at San Antonio College (1998): ArtPace (1998); Cactus Bra Gallery (1998); House Space (1997); and Milagros Contemporary Art (1996). Group exhibitions have taken place at Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio; The Arlington Museum of Art, TX; and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. James Gallery, Houston, TX represents her work.
Holland’s background as a sculptor and ceramicist inform her use of materials and approach to working with mass and volume. In recent years, she has been working almost exclusively with wax, creating minimalist paintings and objects. Concurrently, her investigations of space have resulted in poetic site-specific installations involving unexpected materials: a gallery space bisected by a screen of dental floss, an isolated, gilded stone in a house’s wall, yellow roses lining the crack between a wall and a floor in a dilapidated warehouse. Heightening architectural history, natural light and sense of smell, Holland’s spatial interventions transform mystery and discovery into matter.
Rebecca Holland was chosen for her ArtPace residency by the March 1998 panel consisting of Dan Cameron, Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Amada Cruz, Kellie Jones, Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Nancy Rubins.

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Curators

Amada Cruz

Los Angeles, CA
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Kellie Jones

New York, NY
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Nancy Rubins

Topanga, California, USA

Born in 1952 in Naples, Texas, Californian Nancy Rubins received her MFA from the University of California, Davis. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, including shows at Paul Kasmin Gallery, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Venice Biennale Aperto. Rubins’ work was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’ Helter Skelter exhibit in 1992. Rubins teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Art Department. She has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Annette DiMeo Carlozzi

Austin, TX

Independent curator Annette DiMeo Carlozzi has built an expansive practice across the US as a curator of modern and contemporary art, focusing on ideas and experiences, artists and audiences. Raised in Boston and trained at the Walker Art Center, she has served in a variety of foundational roles: as the first curator at Laguna Gloria Art Museum (now The Contemporary Austin); executive director of the Aspen Art Museum and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Visual Arts Producer for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta; and in multiple positions—ranging from founding modern and contemporary curator to Deputy Director for Art and Programs to Curator at Large—at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin. Committed to expanding the canon, she has created notable exhibitions (Luis Jiménez, Paul Chan, Michael Smith, Deborah Hay, Negotiating Small TruthsAmerica/AmericasDesire), produced important commissions (Nancy Holt, Siah Armajani, Betye Saar, Vito Acconci, Byron Kim, Teresita Fernández), and acquired major works by a wide range of international artists. Carlozzi has had a long relationship with Artpace, having served as an early advisor, artist interviewer, and program panelist, member of the 1998 artist selection panel and 2001–03 Board of Visitors. In 2015 she curated Immersed from Linda Pace’s art collection, now called Ruby City.

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Dan Cameron

Newport Beach, California

From 2012 to 2015 he was Chief Curator at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California. In 2006, Dan Cameron founded the Biennial Prospect New Orleans, where he worked at until 2011. From 1995 to 2005 he was Senior Curator at the New Museum, New York, where he developed numerous group exhibitions, such as East Village USA and Living inside the Grid, and several individual shows dedicated to the artists Martin Wong, William Kentridge, Carolee Schneemann, Carroll Dunham, Doris Salcedo, José Antonio Hernández Diez, among others.
As independent curator he has organized many exhibitions that brought him international attention, such as El arte y su doble (Fundación Caixa, Madrid, 1987); El jardín salvaje (Fundación Caixa, Barcelona, 1991); Cocido y crudo (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1995), among many others. In 2003, he was the Artistic Director of the 8th Istanbul Biennial, and in 2006, Co-curator of the 5th Taipei Biennial.
He has published hundreds of texts in books, catalogues and magazines, and has given numerous talks and conferences at museums and universities around the world, also carrying out an important teaching activity in New York.

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Hans Ulrich Obrist

London, England

Hans Ulrich-Obrist is the Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programs and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London, positions created for Ulrich-Obrist in April 2006. As a curator at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France since 2000, among many other exhibitions he organized solo shows with Jonas Mekas (2003), Anri Sala (2004), and Cerith Wyn Evans (2006). Before this position Ulrich-Obrist was an independent curator for a decade, organizing the group show Take Me I’m Yours at the Serpentine (1995) and Retrace Your Steps: Remember at the John Soane Museum (1999), also in London, England. Ulrich-Obrist was a panelist in 1998 for the 1999-2000 year of artists, and was invited to be a speaker at the 2003 symposium, but was unable to come due to illness.
Photo by Dominik Gigler

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