Ian Gerson

Tremble

On View: May 26 - July 22, 2023 I Main Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday, May 26, 2023 | 6 - 8 PM

Artist Talk: Saturday, May 27, 2023 I Starting at 2 PM

Art League Houston (ALH) is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by 2022 Houston Artadia Awardee Ian Gerson, whose multidisciplinary practice incorporates sculpture, installation, and community engagement. Titled Tremble, this exhibition investigates climate injustices, trans consciousness, and queer longing. Gerson weaves flimsy tapestries with ropes culled from Galveston Bay and the Houston Ship Channel, mylar, personal and hand-dyed clothing scraps, and dried plants as a way of centering the refused, the invisible, the marginal. The weavings are architectural, freestanding and leaning, taking on bodily references and transforming over time.

Tremble features a body of work that utilizes text, intentionally challenging and refusing easy legibility, depending on the vantage point, viewer, and context. Stemming from personal encounters navigating (un)natural disasters, mental health, and transitioning, Gerson’s work asks how a trans experience, embodying adaptability and resilience, can be looked to as a model for surviving climate crises and social precarity.

The exhibition takes its title from Eduard Glissant’s “un tremblement,” of which he writes,  “The thinking of trembling is not the thinking of fear. It is the thinking that is opposed to the system.” Building on this idea of the trembling, Gerson follows in Paul B. Preciado’s footsteps and is fixated on how trans embodies the tremble; in the voice on T, in the refusal to conform to normative legibility, and in expanding the bounds of the possible.

About the Artist

Ian Gerson is a queer and trans interdisciplinary artist and educator born and based in Houston, TX. Ian has shared work across art spaces in the US and in Mexico City, including Socrates Sculpture Park, The Bronx Museum, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and BOX13 ArtSpace, and has participated at several residencies including Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, MacDowell, and the Galveston Artist Residency. Their work has been supported by a 2022 Houston Artadia Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant, and a Public Art Grant from the City of Galveston. Ian holds an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin.

Artist Website

Instagram: @ianmilesgerson