Otis Houston Jr.

A performance by Otis Houston Jr., organized on the occasion of the artist’s new monograph Can't GO Unless WE ALL GO, co-published by Gordon Robichaux and Zolo Press.

Thursday, November 3rd, 7pm at White Columns

Doors will open at 6:30pm. The performance will begin at 7pm and will be followed by a book signing. Copies of the book will be available for sale throughout the night.

Otis Houston Jr.
Can't GO Unless WE ALL GO

Since 1997, Otis Houston Jr. (1954, Greenville, South Carolina, USA) has made the ritual pilgrimage from his Harlem apartment to his studio and gallery: A patch of highway under the triborough bridge. Here, before an audience of motorists on the FDR Drive, he performs alongside assemblages of objects collected from the street and paintings rendered on cardboard and towels. Can't Go Unless We All Go, Houston Jr.'s debut monograph, assembles three decades of the artist's radical sculpture and liberatory poetics, with an essay on the Black outdoors by critic Zoë Hopkins.

Co-published with Gordon Robichaux

184 PP / 170 × 240 MM / 600 COPIES / ENGLISH
ISBN: 979-8-9860930-0-0

Otis Houston Jr. (born 1954, Greenville, SC) lives and works in East Harlem, New York. He is a self-taught artist who began making work after taking an art class while incarcerated. Since 1997, he has maintained an ongoing presence under the Triborough Bridge on the FDR Drive in New York, where he stages impromptu performances and a site-specific installation of signage and sculpture.

Houston Jr. is represented by Gordon Robichaux, NY. His first institutional exhibition was on view at The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI through January 2023. He has presented solo exhibitions in New York City at Gordon Robichaux (2021) and Room East (2017) and two-person exhibitions at Gordon Robichaux (with Florence Derive, 2018) and Cave (with Miles Huston) in Detroit, MI. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at apexart (curated by Sam Gordon), Room East, the Broodthaers Society of America, Socrates Sculpture Park (curated by Chelsea Spengemann), and CANADA in New York City; Parker Gallery and Marc Selwyn Gallery in Los Angeles, CA; Rebecca Camacho Presents (curated by Bob Linder) in San Francisco, CA; and F in Houston, TX.

Profiles of the artist have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Hauser & Wirth’s Ursula magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Art Newspaper, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, ARTnews, and Contemporary Art Daily.

Image: Otis Houston Jr., Performance Documentation, 1990s, New York City. Photos: Ejlat Feuer