Contemporary at Blue Star, San Antonio’s first and longest running exhibition space for contemporary art, proudly announces the opening of three solo exhibitions on July 7, 2023. These exhibitions feature new work by Brittany Ham, Adam Schreiber, and Michael Velliquette, three artists with strong ties to the San Antonio community. Ham and Schreiber are alumni of the Contemporary’s Berlin Residency Program and Velliquette is a former San Antonio resident, now based in Madison, WI. This year marks the 20-year anniversary since his first solo exhibition at the Contemporary. These exhibitions offer unique perspectives on self-portraiture, urban landscapes, and intricate paper sculptures, captivating audiences with their distinct artistic visions. (Contemporary at Blue Star, 2023)

Brittany Ham: Unmooring reaches into the exploration of interior and exterior spaces, both architecturally and psychologically. Through oil paintings, Ham chronicles her personal experiences with lockdown, social distancing, and the challenges of early motherhood. The seemingly longing subjects in her artworks often escape claustrophobia through imagined landscapes. Her works draw inspiration from sculptures, woodcuts, and paintings of exhausted women, including the Virgin Mary which she researched during her time at Künstlerhaus Bethanien International Studio Program as a grantee of Contemporary’s Berlin Residency Program. Ham’s works employ line and value to create molded planes that provide multidimensional perspectives. The curious contortions and collapsing of space in her pieces evoke a melancholic humor, inviting viewers to reflect on challenging times and the unknown horizons ahead.

Adam Schreiber: Stadtwald showcases photographs created during and since his residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien as part of Contemporary’s Berlin Residency Program. Employing large format film cameras, he adopts the role of a photographic surveyor to document the city’s quiet and suspended scenes devoid of action. Schreiber’s images of isolated and decontextualized objects ignite viewers’ curiosity. Some of Schreiber’s photographs are visually dense with textural descriptions of the subject, yet they leave the viewer to decipher what exactly the subject is and what its significance might be. Grids, recurring in his work, hint at the artist’s camera lens and reflect the meticulous process of inspection. By presenting his subjects as unknown and encouraging active observation, Schreiber’s work engages viewers in a delightful game of curiosity and concentration.

Michael Velliquette: The Direct Path features an extraordinary display of intricate paper sculptures, making it the most comprehensive exhibition of these works to date. Velliquette’s installations create intimate spaces that invite viewers into these structural collages. Through layering, complexity, and vibrant colors, his works communicate a sense of ornate preciousness. However, their material and meditative creation process—meticulously measuring, cutting, composing, and gluing paper—reveal a delicate yet ordinary quality. This convergence of methods symbolizes transformation, showcasing unexpected metamorphoses of materials and offering moments of reflection to viewers as they visually enter these temple-like constructions.

As an artist-centric organization, the Contemporary is delighted to showcase the work of these talented artists and to nurture their creative practices. This commitment to supporting artists highlights the vital role that accessible spaces play in fostering a vibrant and dynamic art scene, encouraging artistic growth, and amplifying the diverse voices and perspectives that contribute to the richness of our cultural landscape.