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Arts & Culture
Galveston Arts Center
News Release
Thursday, May 17, 2012
HJ BOTT
A 40 Year Celebration
 GALVESTON, Texas - Galveston Arts Center is pleased to present a 40-year survey of work by Houston-based artist HJ Bott. The exhibition will feature paintings, drawings, reliefs and sculptures and will open during the June 2nd ArtWalk. It will remain on view through July 8, 2012. Curator Clint Willour will lead a gallery talk with the artist beginning at 6:30 pm during ArtWalk. The event is free and open to the public.
On March 7, 1972, working in a studio located across the Strand from the Galveston Arts Center, artist HJ Bott developed what he calls the “Displacement of Volume Concepts” or DoV. This single element/module can be found throughout his drawings, paintings, sculpture, installations and as well as his DoV-Z Robott performances. The exhibition will explore the intermingling aspects of geometry, math, science, technology, perspective, cultural anthropology, social psychology and the world’s cultural symbols.
 Juxtaposing earlier with more current iterations of the module, the exhibition celebrates the discovery of the motif which occurs in a variety of two- and three-dimensional media as an organized system of archetypal patterns and symbols into grid-like structures. “My oeuvre,” notes Bott, “is dedicated to a spinning off of light, color, form, retinal vibration, space, and the materiality of a chosen medium and its respective immateriality.”Simply put, Bott encourages viewers to enjoy the harmonies and tensions evoked by his exploration of line, color, pattern, and symbols to create their own personal narratives.
Born in Colorado to a German-Russian family, Bott began taking drawing lessons at the age of 9 and had his first major two-person exhibition at Trinity University when he was only 14 years old. After high school, he began a tri-coastal and European education process that included joint studies in art and cultural anthropology at Art Center College and the University of Southern California; the Art Students League, New York University and Columbia in New York City; and the Dusseldorf Kunstakademie, Bamberg Kunstchule and the University of Heidelberg. Bott and his wife DeeDee moved to Galveston in 1969 where they operated the “Loft-on-Strand” gallery for ten years before settling in Houston. Bott has shown in over 75 solo exhibitions and more than 700 group gallery exhibitions. A concurrent exhibition, HJ Bott: Rhythm and Rhetoric: New Works Celebrating 40 Years of the DoV System is on view at Anya Tish Gallery in Houston through June 9. An exhibition catalogue with preface by art writer Kelly Klaasmeyer, and entries by James Edwards, Casey Stranahan and Catherine Anspon has been published in conjunction with the exhibition, which will also travel to Kirk Hopper Gallery in Dallas in October.
 Galveston Arts Center is operating in a temporary downtown location on the corner of Market and 25th Streets. The exhibition gallery and selections from GAC’s retail gallery, ArtWorks, are open to the public Monday through Saturday, from 11 am to 5 pm, and Sunday from noon to 5 pm. Admission is free at all times. A flyer listing all ArtWalk participants with times and locations can be downloaded at www.contemporaryartgalveston.org.
Funding for the Galveston Arts Center is provided by the Houston Endowment, Inc., The Brown Foundation Inc., The City of Galveston Park Board of Trustees through the Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund, The Meyer Levy Charitable Foundation of The Dallas Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund, Jack and Annis Bowen Foundation, and the generous support of the community, an active membership and many volunteers. GAC’s Art for All Education Program is supported in part by the Alice Taylor Gray Foundation, Harry S. and Isabel C. Cameron Foundation, Galveston Rotary Foundation, Inc., and VSS.
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