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Landscapes, Portraits and Still Lifes

May 12-13 and 19-20
OPENING: Friday, May 11 from 7-10 PM
Performance by San Antonio-based artist Raul Gonzalez on Saturday, May 19 at 4 PM

Austin, Texas, April 25, 2018 - Visual Artists Eric Manche and Sara Vanderbeek, announce the opening of DORF, a pop-up alternative and experimental project space located in their South Austin in-home studio. With DORF, Manche and Vanderbeek provide a space to support and promote Texas-based artists as well as add vitality and momentum to the South Austin art community. The inaugural exhibition, Landscapes, Portraits and Still Lifes, opens May 11.  

Manche and Vanderbeek open DORF as response to recent closures of art spaces in East Austin, attributed to skyrocketing real-estate prices. “Over the past few years, rising rents have displaced hundreds of artists and art spaces in Austin,” comments Sara Vanderbeek, “When we were priced out of our East-Side studio in 2014, Eric and I converted our two-car garage into a furnished studio/gallery space, which we now open to the public to provide Austin’s creative community another space for exhibitions and creative exploration.”

DORF’s inaugural exhibition Landscapes, Portraits and Still Lifes is a group exhibition of Texas-based artists creating contemporary inroads within these age-old art-historical genres. The show features Elizabeth Chapin, Jeffrey Dell, Joey Fauerso, Ana Fernandez, Raul Gonzalez, Jules Buck Jones, Drew Liverman, Raymond Uhlir, Vincent Valdez and Sara Vanderbeek.

The exhibition, organized by Sara Vanderbeek, coincides with the West Austin Studio Tour.

Austin's new DORF project space presents artist Raul Gonzales performing Self Portrait on the DORF driveway. In this performance, multi-dimensional artist Raul Gonzalez alternates between Children’s-Book-Storyteller and Dancer. He reads his daughters’ favorite books and busts out dance moves across the DORF driveway atop one of his iconic abstract duct-tape installations. Gonzalez is best known for his energetic and versatile approaches to painting, drawing, performance and dance. His abstract paintings and socially-charged drawings have been exhibited locally and nationally. He holds an MFA in Painting from the University of Texas in San Antonio. His artwork is part of public and private collections such as the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, Capital One Financial Services in Plano,TX, and Artes de la Rosa in Fort Worth,TX. Originally from Houston, Raul and his wife have called San Antonio home since 2012. Raul spends his days as the primary caretaker to his two young daughters. This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department. DORF is an alternative and experimental project space located in the South Austin studio of artists Sara Vanderbeek and Eric Manche.