Fluid Dynamics
by Jana La Brasca
Here are some images that inspire California-born, Texas-based artist Ariel Wood: a colony of giant tube worms gathered on the ocean floor; the curved, candy cane-like shape of a vent pipe rising, curious, from an underground plumbing system; sinks, showers, and drains; exploded-view diagrams; pipes, tubes, and openings. Wood is the type of person who is excited by the sight of the open ends (or beginnings) of plumbing and wiring that emerge from the ground on a construction or demolition site, patiently awaiting the arrival of a building (or left behind in its wake). In rest, raze, cullect, Wood constructs open-ended, suggestively queer horizons populated with enigmatic forms that emulate the “silly side of infrastructure” as much as they trouble binaries and norms of function and nonfunction, gender and embodiment.1
Wood has conceived of the present exhibition as a kind of mini-retrospective, or a family portrait featuring their finely crafted ceramic pipework, custom stands, and open enclosures.2 In Lawndale Art & Performance Center’s John M. O’Quinn Gallery, they have assembled objects from three of their major bodies of work to date, which correspond to the three words in the exhibition’s title.3 Each of these terms—along with those they deploy in titles for individual works such as console, hunch, portal, and transition—carries double or triple meanings that plumb the bodily implications of support, pose, emergence, and porosity. Reconfiguring elements from prior installations in this new context, Wood coaxes them into new relations with each other and the room’s spatial conditions. More specifically, they respond to the room’s pillars and unique baseboard—or rather, the lack of one—by building and carefully painting curving papier mâché and wood pedestals that emulate how the building’s actual wall meets gallery wall and the floor around the perimeter of the space and its four pillars.4
1Ariel Wood, Passing Between Poses (MFA Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2022), p. 31.
2They refer to their objects as “pals,” “bois,” and “little guys.”
3 rest corresponds to the works in the MFA thesis show, Painted Hooves, at the Visual Arts Center at UT Austin (May 2022); raze was the title of their solo exhibition at grayDUCK gallery (August 26–October 1, 2024) ; and cullective was the title of their exhibition at Cage Match Project at the Museum of Human Achievement (April 13–July 7, 2024).
4The building was originally a Barker Brothers, a retailer of furniture, home furnishings, housewares, designed by Joseph Finger, also the architect of Houson’s City Hall.
The objects that rest on these new bases are also delicately suspended from the gallery ceiling on long, thin, blue ropes, which articulate architectural space without displacing it. This same rope forms the handwoven netting that lines Wood’s consoles, which evoke utility boxes, water towers, and shower stalls, rendered schematic and strange through the strategic introduction of shims, mirrors, and fully open planes. Meanwhile, works like access 1b, 2b, and 3b seem to emerge from the floor, echoing not only the load-bearing columns in the room but also the vertical members depicted in the etching access, which hangs on a wall nearby.
These works are based on a scene Wood observed in their everyday movement around Austin, a rapidly-growing city constantly under construction. Seeing the exposed and vulnerable structures undergirding water main access covers struck Wood as an image full of pathos, as well as productive confusion around concepts of “ground,” “above,” and “below.” Although they do photograph scenes like this, Wood prefers to work from memory when rendering them in art, whether in sculptural or graphic form. While the three-dimensional work in the exhibition offers ample proof of their technical precision, commitment to process and material, and embrace of contingency in three dimensions, the five etchings on view hint at the fullness of their ambition (Wood started out as a printmaker). The etching Transition (2021) is a surrealist dreamscape that houses a many-limbed tube-creature in a desert expanse, whose hoses and gaskets are tautly pressurized by some unknown fluid. Neither public nor domestic, both crafted and manufactured, Wood’s imagined system courses with humor, idiosyncratic logic, and radical possibility.
cullective, 2024
weave, 1b (peak), 2023-2024
access, 3b (detail view), 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Transition, 2021
Ariel Wood is a Texas-based artist by way of California and Wisconsin. They received a BFA in printmaking and drawing from The University of Wisconsin, Madison 2016, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from Santa Reparata International School Of Art, in Florence 2016, and their MFA in Sculpture from The University of Texas at Austin 2022, where they were the recipient of the Lomis Slaughter, Jr. Endowment Scholarship In Sculpture and the Continuing College Fellowship. In 2022, Wood attended Watershed Ceramics’ Summer Residency and in 2023, they were a finalist for the Alice C. Cole Fellowship. Ariel Wood is a sculpture artist, educator, and member of MASS Gallery. They have exhibited their work nationally and internationally in Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas, New York, and Florence, Italy.
“My heartfelt thanks to the Lawndale Art Center team for their generosity of time, effort, and expertise in bringing this exhibition to fruition. I am deeply grateful to Jana La Brasca's inquisitive dedication to the work made evident in her beautifully thoughtful essay. Finally, a special thank you to my wife, Lauren, for her unwavering love and support.” – Ariel Wood
Jana La Brasca is a researcher, writer, and PhD candidate in art history at the University of Texas at Austin and the 2024-2025 Menil Drawing Institute Predoctoral Fellow.
cullective (detail view), 2024
console (stall) (detail view), 2023
Mission
Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time.
About
Lawndale believes in the role of art and artists to inspire and inform the world around us. By serving as an intimate gathering place to experience art and ideas, Lawndale seeks to foster connections between communities in Houston and beyond. Lawndale presents a diverse range of artistic practices and perspectives through exhibitions and programs, including lectures, symposia, film screenings, readings, and musical performances.
Through exhibition opportunities, the Artist Studio Program, institutional collaborations, and the engagement of an advisory board comprised of artists, curators, and scholars, Lawndale seeks within its mission to support all artistic and cultural communities of Houston.
Supporters
Lawndale’s exhibitions and programs are produced with generous support from The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation; The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Foundation; The John M. O’Quinn Foundation; The John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Houston Endowment; Kathrine G. McGovern/The John P. McGovern Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation; The Rose Family Foundation; the Scurlock Foundation; the Texas Commission on the Arts; the Vivian L. Smith Foundation; and The Wortham Foundation, Inc. Additional support provided by Lindsey Schechter/Houston Dairymaids, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and Topo Chico.
Funding for Lawndale’s exhibitions is provided by presenting sponsors, John Bradshaw, Scott R. Sparvero, along with sponsors Jereann Chaney, Alexa Clements, Piper & Adam Faust, Marco Hernandez, Amy Holmes, Mary Catherine & Bailey Jones, Emily & Ryan LeVasseur, Jeryn & Walter Mayer, Meghan Miller & Jeff Marin, Adrienne Moeller, Winnie & Nic Phillips, Teresa Porter, Regina & Frem Reggie, Stephanie Roman, Nicole & Joey Romano, Jessica & Blake Seff, Dr. Andre Shaw and generous gifts from the Friends of Lawndale. Images and catalogue design by Tamirah Collins.
