New art opens behind Brochstein’s closed doors

By Juliana Lightsey     10/1/24 11:31pm

The morning after a terrible storm, inspiration struck Karyn Olivier on her commute to work. In a North Philadelphia neighborhood she had driven through countless times before, a huge swath of vines and ivy had been peeled off of a concrete wall by the rain and wind, crumpling forlornly over an adjacent fence. Olivier stopped her car and took a photograph. 

That photograph, titled “Revelation,” will be on view at Brochstein Pavilion until August 2025. “Revelation” is this academic year’s “Off the Wall” installation, an ongoing partnership between the Moody Center for the Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s Glassell School of Art. 

Olivier’s installation was revealed with a reception at the pavilion Sept. 27. The counter area remained sectioned off for construction. Despite the exhibit’s opening, Brochstein is still not open for student use, according to Beth Leaver, senior executive director of Housing and Dining.

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“We do not have an official date yet, but we are close and will be prepared to make a formal announcement soon,” Leaver wrote in an email to the Thresher.

Frauke Josenhans, a curator at the Moody, said that despite the pavilion’s delayed opening, the Moody Center chose to continue with Olivier’s “Off the Wall” installation as planned.

“We decided to move forward … out of respect for the busy schedule of the artist but also knowing that the work would be visible,” Josenhans wrote in an email to the Thresher. “The open architecture of the Brochstein Pavilion allows for the work to be seen from outside while the cafe is still closed.”

Olivier, like previous artists, was selected from the Glassell School’s Core Residency program alumni.

“This is now the sixth iteration of the ‘Off the Wall’ series, and each artist really brings a different vision to the wall,” Josenhans, who organized this year’s commission, said. “We always try to find an artist who has this ability to conceive something on a very monumental scale, who is interested in creating something for a very public space and likes a challenge, so [Olivier] has been on our list for a while.”

Olivier’s grounded photography is a sharp contrast to the previous year’s “Off the Wall” installation, an abstract collage of squares by the artist william cordova. According to Josenhans, the artists are given extensive creative liberty over what they choose to display in the space.

“We knew that [Olivier’s] approach would be very different than [cordova’s],” Josenhans said. “We had something that was very abstract last year, and this time it’s very figurative and illusionistic … But that’s just the beauty of letting the artist decide what they want to do. It’s an open invitation, and we are always thrilled to discover what the artist comes up with.”

According to Olivier, “Revelation” is rooted in the phenomenon of finding new ways to look at the familiar or mundane.

“I wanted the title to speak about how in the everyday there’s moments of revelation … There’s moments of unearthing something that was maybe always there and you didn’t see it,” Olivier said.

Although the image was taken on her way to her job as professor of sculpture at Temple University, the artist also found parallels between the neighborhood street in the picture and her time in Houston, both as a Core Program resident and teaching at the University of Houston. Two photographs of a pair of houses in Houston accompany “Revelation,” and are displayed around the corner from the principal photograph.

“We decided to include the two photographs that relate to this … [from] driving to the University of Houston and passing these two houses that are desolate, dilapidated,” Olivier said.

“I loved that they were a mirror of each other,” she continued, “and [showed] how the everyday can be kind of uncanny or surreal.”

The photo’s placement on the cafe’s wall is intended to create an illusion of immersion. Olivier’s Philadelphia road meets the floor of Brochstein Pavilion, drawing the viewer into the photograph, as if they’re standing on a stoop in the very neighborhood captured.

Olivier said that she also took into account the interactions between the presence of nature in her photograph and the nature that surrounds Brochstein Pavilion, visible through the building’s expansive glass windows.

“I like this idea of an interior space that’s revealing an outside, like two outsides happening at once,” Olivier said. “I think about this [photograph] being so much about the foliage and the vines and the leaves, and then you look around and that’s everything around you.”

Beyond just the sense of wonder Olivier hopes to communicate through “Revelation,” she noted a more somber dimension, as the photograph also reflects the erratic weather events that tore the vines from the wall in the neighborhood pictured. 

“I think it’s also about waking up,” Olivier said. “You know, a storm force overnight took down these vines that have been gripped onto a building … Every year trees are coming down because of the intense storms … It’s beautiful, but it also speaks to the progression of climate change.”

“Revelation” is on view at Brochstein Pavilion through Aug. 22, 2025.

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