ANDY COOLQUITT
— one of my favorite things to do when i go somewhere is to look at the public sculptures. not necessarily the official public sculptures, although sometimes i look at them too, but the things that happen in public, usually in the street, or in this case, on the street. things that are clumped together, or stacked on top of each other, or simply placed just so. usually there’s something happening that captures the little design decisions that are being made—by officials, by regular folks or by chance, and that’s what makes me look. when i said one of my favorite things was to look at, i also meant to snap a picture of.
this set of pictures is from houston texas, and it might be helpful for readers to know that in houston the football team used to be the called the oilers (because…you know), and the basketball team’s the rockets (because of nasa), and these pictures were taken on the 4th of july, our national holiday of independence, and on that day we eat ribs.
which is a way of introducing another favorite thing i like to do when i’m looking at public sculptures in the city, and that’s to name them. and on this particular day, i kept coming upon these public sculptures of stripe paintings, and the stripe paintings always seemed to stripe over a circular man-hole cover, and those who work for the city, who inevitably have to pry open the man-holes, like to play a little joke on the composition of the stripe paintings when they put the covers back. i mean, how hard is it to line the stripe back up the way it’s supposed to go? and for some reason, on this day, the day of our independence, it really got under my skin. please excuse my outrage…
stick
bar
franzwest
which one
oilers
rockets
art school
oil and gas
ornament and crime
imi knoebel
wrong
wrong…
wrong again
right
magritte
this is a restroom
hubcap grill
almost
pigeon language
math
geometry
flowshafts
duh
round sculptures
4 round sculptures
real round sculptures
trim
dumbass
coolquitt
fake sign
fuckin idiot
2 pipe sculptures
happy 4th
—
Andy Coolquitt was born in 1964, in Mesquite, Texas and lives and works in Austin, Texas and New York City. Coolquitt is perhaps most widely known for a house, a performance/ studio/ domestic space that began as his master’s thesis project at the University of Texas at Austin in 1994, and continues to the present day. Recent exhibitions include attainable excellence, Blaffer Museum, Houston; chair w/paintings, Lisa Cooley, New York; + at Locust Projects, Miami; Everyday Abstract – Abstract Everyday at James Cohan Gallery, New York; Wirtreffen uns am Abend at Galerie Kamm, Berlin; Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork… at Galerie Johann Koenig, Berlin; dwelling at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; and Real Estate at Zero, Milan. In Summer 2013 was an artist-in-residence at 21er Haus, in Vienna, Austria.