Must-See Art: Montrose Galleries Hang Six New Shows at 4411 Complex

HAPPY FALL EQUINOX! It’s the start of a new season of art, music, theater, and plenty of other groovy happenings around the city — including superb new shows up at all six galleries at 4411 Montrose, the grey, brutalist-styled building you may have overlooked in between trips to the MFAH and the CVS on Alabama for your combo seasonal flu shot and new COVID vaccine. (Seriously, folks. Get your shots. You don’t want to miss all the cool stuff coming up this fall.) But as art-lovers will attest, and ART IS BOND gallery owner Janice Bond puts it, “the building has a history,” and history continues to be made this month.

After a summer retrospective dedicated to photographer Ming Smith, ART IS BOND is shifting gears to present a group show called Golden Ratio: Mapping Self, Space, and Other. It’s a vibrant exhibit of works by eight uniquely talented artists, including Mia Ghogho, Tomiwa Arobieke, Floyd Newsum, Jasimin Penelope Charles, J. Johari Palacio, Payton Harris-Woodard, Sonja Henderson and — one of our faves — Houston-based artist Wayne Bell. Regarding the installation, ART IS BOND’s website states, “the meticulously curated arrangement adheres to the golden ratio.” We encourage Fibonacci fanatics to leave their measuring tape at home and just bask in the glow of the rich selection of figurative and abstract art on the walls.

Jasmin Penelope Charles's 'Zen Garden Security Guard' at ART IS BOND

Next door to ART IS BOND, the relatively new kid on the block Foto Relevance is showing With Hands Clasped Tightly, the first solo show by Los Angeles-born multi-disciplinary artist Daisy Patton. In these large-scale works, Patton combines abandoned family photographs of unidentified subjects with layers of juicy colors, vintage patterns, and unfurling strands of alien flora. The results are sublime and a bit spooky. Anyone with memories of a long-distance, now-deceased relative they may or may not have met as a child will wonder if Patton has somehow tapped into their ancestral dreaming.

'With Hands Clasped Tightly' by Daisy Patton

Meanwhile, over at David Shelton Gallery, you’ll want to check out Marigold, a suite of paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Benjamin Edmiston, each named after a type of flower and each full of colorful contrasts inspired by the natural world.

Up one flight of stairs at Anya Tish Gallery is Pattern and Power, the gallery’s debut solo exhibition of 30-year-old, Houston-born, South Asian-American artist Ruhee Maknojia, whose work draws inspiration from the aesthetics and philosophies of ancient and contemporary Indo-American culture. This vibrant show includes ten acrylic-on-canvas paintings or “Magicalscapes,” each with its own mysterious tale to tell, an animated film charmingly narrated by Maknojia, and a site-specific, walk-in installation of Banarasi fabric and artificial grass titled Manufactured Paradise.

Across from Anya Tish Gallery at Assembly is Mumbai-born, multimedia artist Manjari Sharma’s Surface Tension, a beautifully installed exhibit of photos, video, and installations that explore the artist’s personal connection to the archetypal power and poetry of water. The theme of nature continues at Barbara Davis Gallery with The Trees are Humming, a stunning solo exhibition by 75-year-old Japanese-born American artist Yuriko Yamaguchi of mysterious, spectral-like sculptures, each constructed with hand-cast resin, paper pulp, and steel wire that seem to hover in mid-air.

A colorful piece by Ruhee Maknojia