Groundbreaking Houston Art Gallery Makes a Big Move Into 4411 Montrose — a PaperCity Exclusive

Foto Relevance Evolves Into a Museum District Force

BY Catherine D. Anspon // 01.10.20

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Collector Bryn Larsen and with her business partner, Geoffrey Koslov, of Foto Relevance gallery. (Photo by Jenny Antill Clifton)

4411 Montrose Gallery Building gets a new art space opening Friday, January 10, 2020, as Foto Relevance relocates.

Jane Szabo's "November 10, Sunshine Skyway," 2019, highlights the power of nature over man. Szabo, who's in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is the grand opening solo act for Foto Relevance, set for Saturday, February 8, at the gallery's new space, on the ground floor of 4411 Montrose.

Jane Szabo's "June 7, Spy Mountain," 2019, will be among the works on view in Foto Relevance's grand opening, a solo for this Los Angeles-based photographer entitled "Somewhere Else."

Letitia Huckaby's "Beautiful Blackness," 2019, is the work that gives title to the artist's FotoFest show at Foto Relevance, now in the 4411 Montrose Gallery Building.

Letitia Huckaby's "Cattle on a Thousand Hills," 2019. The Fort Worth-based artist will be Foto Relevance's headliner timed to FotoFest at the gallery's new 4411 Montrose space.

Marti Corn's "Road to Nowhere #4 (9487)," 2016, features the Houston photographer's ongoing series documenting the African refugee crisis; proceeds fund Corn's humanitarian/activist work in Kakuma, Kenya, for the Lost Boys & Girls, as well as young photographers.

Robert Calafiore’s “Untitled,” 2017, speaks to the photographer's innovative practice that employs historic glass vessels as objects of beauty and contemplation.

Margeaux Walter's "Borderline," 2015, is a Pop and fashion-influenced work from one of the feminist voices in the Foto Relevance stable.

Julia McLaurin's "16. Abraham Lincoln," 2017. The Houston artist is one of the witty talents that Foto Relevance has fostered.

Lou Peralta's "Disassemble #23," 2018. The Mexico City artist was a Foto Relevance discovery who recently made her American debut last year at the gallery.

Collector Bryn Larsen and with her business partner, Geoffrey Koslov, of Foto Relevance gallery. (Photo by Jenny Antill Clifton)

Jane Szabo's "November 10, Sunshine Skyway," 2019, highlights the power of nature over man. Szabo, who's in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is the grand opening solo act for Foto Relevance, set for Saturday, February 8, at the gallery's new space, on the ground floor of 4411 Montrose.

The new year brings news about the move and expansion of a Houston gallery set to become a prime player in the Texas photographic world — Foto Relevance.

Founded in 2016 as a virtual art gallery, PaperCity first covered the art space’s brick-and-mortar digs in its May 2018 print issue. Our feature singled out co-founders Bryn Larsen and Geoffrey Koslov as one of that spring’s bold arrivals on the Houston art scene.

Their new gallery debuted during FotoFest that year in a space tucked into in a Mayfield and Ragni Studio architecture-designed restoration of a mid-century building owned by Davis Commercial.

Less that 24 months later, Foto Relevance’s photography program has outgrown its original 550 square-foot footprint within it original 616 Hawthorne location.

As you read these sentences, it’s now opening in a Museum District haute art spot: 4411 Montrose Gallery Building, a plum piece of contemporary neo-Brutalist architecture crafted out of a patented, bullet-proof building material called Monocrete.

University of Houston professor Peter Zweig is the architect of the sculptural structure — known by everyone in the art world simply as 4411 — which serves as one of Houston’s destination zones for a cluster of prime gallerists.

Elizabeth Anthony

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ASSAEL

OLYMPIA LE-TAN

EMILY P. WHEELER

MARIA OLIVER

KATHERINE JETTER

MEREDITH YOUNG

LEIGH MAXWELL

MEREDITH YOUNG

Now Foto Relevance will be among them.

With newly expanded Tuesday-through-Saturday hours, the well-connected dealers — both are board members of Houston Center for Photography and have served on the Photography Subcommittee for the MFAH — are set to occupy a high-profile, ground-floor address within the 16-year old kunsthalle complex.

Their new space was last home to Mexico City-arrival Guerrero-Projects and needed no major layout or design changes.

“It is a very exciting opportunity to get started so quickly and to be able to time our events with FotoFest,” Koslov tells PaperCity.

In an official statement, Larsen notes, “To have a dedicated gallery space will allow us to see the work of our contemporary, photo-based artists in a new, sophisticated setting, and will afford lots of opportunities to host events, gallery talks and collector and patrons groups.”

Future Headliners + In Good Company

Across the concrete breezeway from David Shelton Gallery, Foto Relevance joins Shelton on the first floor. On the second level are other respected 4411 dealers, Barbara Davis and Anya Tish.

Most significantly, ramping up its visibility, and space by five-fold (to 2,500 square feet), Larsen and Koslov’s arrival signals a significant commitment to exhibit works that focus upon the photographic medium, as well as those that expand its definition.

Foto Relevance’s soft opening is set for today (Friday, January 10) from 6 to 8 pm — a group showcase of talents in its stable.

Then Saturday, February 8 serves at the gallery’s grand opening.

For the occasion, Los Angeles-based Jane Szabo debuts a new series for Texas audiences. The LACMA-collected talent presents “Somewhere Else,” poignant staged photographs depicting dollhouse-sized homes precariously placed in the landscape or within domestic environments.

Following Szabo, Fort Worth artist Letitia Huckaby will be in the limelight with elegiac mediations on place, race and the African diaspora, specifically migrations from the South into dust bowl states Kansas and Oklahoma.