Anya's Eye: A group exhibition honoring Anya Tish's legacy, Opens March 7, 6-8 pm
Schedule
Fri, 07 Mar, 2025 at 06:00 pm
UTC-06:00Location
4411 Montrose Blvd, Houston, TX, United States, Texas 77006 | Houston, TX
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ANYA’S EYEOpening Reception: Friday, March 7, 2025, 6 – 8 pm
On view: March 7 – April 19, 2025
Complimentary Valet & Bar
On Friday, March 7, Anya Tish Gallery will herald the spring with Anya’s Eye, a vibrant, sprawling group exhibition featuring more than two dozen of the gallery’s artists, many of whom were discovered early in their careers and have gone on to great acclaim, thanks to the “eye” of Anya Tish. Anya’s Eye celebrates the legacy of Anya Tish, a gallerist, art advisor, and mentor who was deeply devoted to and believed in the artists she shared with the world. Curated with great care and admiration by Anya Tish Gallery director, Dawn Ohmer, who worked closely with Anya for more than five years, the show is an opportunity to “see” what Anya saw in the artists she represented, and experience how enriching and life-changing those encounters were.
Dawn happily describes Anya’s Eye as “purposely overwhelming.” Viewers will delight in a floor-to-ceiling installation of art in traditional mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, and photography, alongside experimental works that stretch materials into new directions, often with unpredictable, yet captivating results. According to Anya, “the work of the artist I choose to represent needs to demand my attention and resonate with me. It needs to persist with me after I have left the piece. It needs to show me something that I didn’t know before or tell me something that I have felt. I must be able to connect to the work with both excitement and respect.” Anya believed in providing artists the freedom to explore and experiment within the physical dimensions of her gallery, allowing them to push the boundaries of their chosen mediums and challenge the stasis of the contemporary fine art world. By doing so, Anya Tish Gallery distinguished itself early on in Houston by exhibiting large installations and video art long before these mediums were celebrated as they are today.
Like Anya, who was born in Krakow, Poland, many of the artists in Anya’s Eye navigate the world from the perspective of the immigrant experience. Beginning in 1996, as the owner of a burgeoning Anya Tish Gallery, she showed and introduced collectors, art institutions, and major museums to several exceptional Eastern European artists, many of whom are on view in Anya’s Eye. Over the years, the gallery’s roster grew to include artists from across Texas and the United States, as well as from Mexico, Colombia, China, Germany, Switzerland, England, South Korea, Poland, amongst others.
I met Anya in December 2016. She saw something in me and my writing and introduced me to the work of, and coordinated interviews with, several of the gallery’s talented artists. I enjoyed the challenge of articulating, in plain and engaging language, the range of conceptual ideas infused in the work at Anya Tish Gallery. From Adela Andea’s evocation of her childhood in communist Romania via spooky, subterranean aquatic forms created with LED lights, flex neon, and foam; to HJ Bott’s Displacement of Volume Concepts, his original “single element/module” that generates the complex patterns and shifting shapes in his multidimensional art. Through Anya, I gained a deeper knowledge of and appreciation for art and the people who make it, and for that, I am forever grateful.
That such a diverse international collection of emerging, mid-career, and established artists hang together in such a complementary way is a testament to Anya’s genius and the gallery’s commitment to sustaining her legacy. Anya’s Eye is a rare opportunity to experience and be moved by an “overwhelming” yet sublime collection of art as it was seen through the eye of Anya Tish.
– Houston writer and composer, Chris Becker, 2025
Featured Artists: Featured Artists: Adela Andea, HJ Bott, József Bullás, Shannon Cannings, William Cannings Andrey Chezhin, Paweł Dutkiewicz, Saida Fagala, Árpád Forgó, Vincent Falsetta, George Grochocki, Vadim Guschin, Hedwige Jacobs, Bumin Kim, Dmitri Koustov, Katja Loher, Ruhee Maknojia, Neva Mikulicz, Shayne Murphy, Maxim Wakultschik, Lillian Warren, Natalia Wiernik
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Where is it happening?
4411 Montrose Blvd, Houston, TX, United States, Texas 77006Event Location & Nearby Stays:
