TEX KERSCHEN

SWINE

JANUARY 20 - FEBRUARY 28, 2018 

Civic TV Laboratories is pleased to announce the opening of “Swine,” an exhibition by Tex Kerschen, developed out of the artist’s extensive collage and text based practices. “Swine” is the first comprehensive exhibition of Kerschen’s work in Houston, and opens Saturday, January 20th.  
 

Tex Kerschen is a Houston based artist, musician, writer, and curator. His band Studded Left (previously known as Indian Jewelry) has long been one of Houston’s most interesting and lauded musical exports.  
Kerschen's coverage of art and music for the Houston Press has been an important voice of support for Houston's creative community over the years, and his poetry has been collected and published in the books “Tidal Economics” and “Hothouse.”
Kerschen served as curator at the The Station Museum and the Art Car Museum during the crucial period between 1998 and 2004; during which time he spearheaded the now infamously FBI surveilled exhibition "Secret Wars" at the Art Car Museum, as well as the groundbreaking "Made In Palestine" exhibit at The Station Museum. 
Kerschen's cultural contributions to Houston have been enormously important over the last twenty years, and it is a honor to host his work in our first exhibition of the 2018 season.

From Tex Kerschen:
Daddy is no goth, but he understands your pallor in the face of barbarism, it’s like Eugene Levy says in Waiting For Guffman, “I wasn't the class clown but I sat next to him and took notes.”
I hear clocks ticking and I can’t sleep. I miss the faces of people I used to see everyday, and in the quiet hours I whisper their names. 
Maybe we’re all sleeping. Soon, we may wake up, full of life, prepared to redeem all the terrible decisions we have made so far.
Around my house, the mail piles up on every surface. Liquefied trash whooshes out the pipes and into the estuaries. At least some of the printed garbage can be ripped-up and put to better use. 
Here are a bunch of collages. If they mailed me paint and canvas I’d take up painting again and paint droves of pigs, including some which might look like you and I. If they sent me huge blocks of Carrera marble, I’d mark those Return 2 Sender.
These works aren’t monuments, or portraits, or symbols, or statements. They are flowers.
I have statements, I have metaphors, I have potent allegories. But these are flowers.