Cris Worley Fine Arts is proud to present our first solo exhibition of paintings by Houston-based artist Terry Suprean. The exhibition entitled, The Fatale Softness in the Earth, opens Saturday, April 19th, and will be on view through May 30. The gallery will hold an Opening Reception for the artist, Saturday, April 19th from 5-7pm. The artist will be in attendance.
Drawing on the tensions between man and the earth found in Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation, Suprean’s new exhibition reflects man’s difficult relationship with our planet. Suprean sees our relationship with the world as a paradoxical one, as we both desire to know the earth and to conquer it. His works reflect the tradition of the “sublime landscape,” referencing artists such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church. But while these artists see the earth as a powerful and overwhelming subject, Suprean’s awe lends to a kind of “revelatory mourning.” When overwhelmed by the beauty of the earth, Suprean focuses on how that beauty will one day be lost. The focus Suprean grants to the surface of his paintings reflects his desire to hold onto a landscape that is in the process of existentially fading.
Suprean’s work abstracts the sublime landscape around him. Using pigments that are mineral-based and sourced from the earth, the landscape becomes inherent in the literal make-up of his paintings. The various viscosities and chemical properties of his paints build up over time, mirroring sedimentary and geological landscapes. Suprean foregoes the use of a brush, using his own body to move the liquid pigment, making himself intrinsic to the landscape processes. He draws on the color field work of the Abstract Expressionists, using color to paint the abstracted world he sees around him. But he transforms the work of the Abstract Expressionists when using his own experimental paint materials and processes that are only recently available. Within both the process and the inspiration, Suprean draws from the earth and his own personal relationship with it.
Terry Suprean is an artist, arts organizer, and educator based in Houston, Texas. He spent his youth embedded in the activist punk movements of the 90’s playing in bands and show promoting in his hometown of New Orleans before moving to Houston in his early 20’s. Before being turned onto visual art by Houston artist Virgil Grotfeldt in undergraduate school, he was a physics major—an influence still felt his experimental, process-based approach to painting and paint making.
Suprean has worked since 2014 as an art organizer and curator; first through Civic TV, an artist-run gallery space he founded in Houston’s warehouse district dedicated to collaborative curatorial practices and exhibiting new media art and experimental music. After Civic TV closed during the pandemic, he opened Ruth Street Projects in 2022—a small community-centered gallery run out of a spare room in his home. Ruth Street Projects is currently active producing exhibitions for Houston-based artists several times a year. These art organizing projects, influenced by Joseph Beuys’ “Social Sculpture” model, have been as important and essential to Suprean’s practice as his studio work.