Jeremiah Teusch: A Most Horrible Room

Hardcore art-sluts don’t wait until First Friday to take in all the new work bubbling up from the depths of Southtown ? they git-r-done on Thursday. The only “problem” with this is that you might not run into those people: not the hot mess you’ve been stalking on Facebook, not the “nice couple” you and the wifey keep pretending you’re gonna call for a playdate, and probably not the one(s) you “accidentally” slept with during Fiesta. I don’t care which day you go ? as long as you go. Let’s start with the Mothership: At Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, Austin-based Steve Brudniak, whose work has been shown at the McNay and SAMA, presents a series of assemblages that takes inspiration from “the emptiness from which all things emerge.” Brudniak’s Noumenon, and Other New Work remixes ye olde found-object sculpture as an institutional science model that incorporates “specimens,” lenses, and fiber optics. Photographs of Brudniak’s Astrogenesis Mementos, a collection that was “launched into orbit and exhibited on the International Space Station for the first art exhibition in outer space,” are also on view (6-8 p.m Thursday and 6-9 p.m. Friday, Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, 116 Blue Star). Moving right along, John Davis presents Complex, an exhibition of “methodical” paintings, at Joan Grona Gallery. Davis’s process of cutting out and rearranging elements rooted in ’80s-era suburbia aims to expose “underlying tensions within the American lifestyle.” Artists Brittany Kennedy (whose work comments on the devastating BP oil spill) and Gene Elder (who’ll unveil a poster inaugurating Political Art Month) join Davis, making the exhibition even more Complex (6-9 p.m. Thursday & Friday, Joan Grona Gallery, 112 Blue Star). Follow your nose to Jeremiah Teutsch’s artful assault on the senses ? A Most Horrible Room, at Three Walls Gallery. Teutsch claims to “hate art,” but I happen to know that’s a lie. You may recall Teutsch’s old-world illustrations of comedian Richard Lewis and author John Philip Santos — both of which graced Current pages. Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s A Clean Well-Lighted Place, Teutsch decided to “create a room that challenges the audience in a myriad of awful, grating, and horrible ways.” While there’s still an air of mystery to A Most Horrible Room, one thing’s confirmed: No one’s going home with this installation (it’s not for sale), but you might go to bed smelling like you bought it (6-8 p.m. Thursday and 6-9 p.m. Friday, Three Walls Gallery, 106D Blue Star). Now let’s aim for cactus bra SPACE, where Ryder Richards goes ballistic with Trajectory, an exhibition of drawings, installations, and sculptures exploring “Newtonian determination” and the “physical and metaphorical quandary” of a shot fired from a Winchester rifle. Richards’s money shot, it seems, is an antelope head rendered in gunpowder and gold leaf. Animals, explosives, and precious metals: these are a few of my favorite things (6-8 p.m. Thursday and 6-9 p.m. Friday, cactus bra SPACE, 106C Blue Star). We’ll finally be able to see where all the money went when artist Thomas Cummins unveils Residential Construction at Stella Haus, an exhibition of paintings and photographs created with the help of travel grants and residencies that landed him in New York, Vermont, Copenhagen, and Berlin (6-10 p.m. Thursday & Friday, Stella Haus, 106 A Blue Star). In unexpected corners of the Sterling Houston Theatre, Jump-Start Performance Co. will treat audiences to a preview of their upcoming season. Off the Grid 2 features works by the Push Pens and Lisa Suarez — performed in the heat of the night — in honor of former July resident CAM (6:30-8:30 p.m. Friday, the Sterling Houston Theatre, 108 Blue Star). Now, let’s step slightly Off the Grid 2 see what the politically minded art-spawn over at SAY Sí have been up to. Based on research projects, SAY Sí students expanded on the concept of slums for Stories Seldom Told – the Informal City, an exhibition that comments on globalization and the economy (6-10 p.m. Friday, SAY Sí, 1518 S. Alamo). If you happen to tackle this artsy endurance-challenge on Thursday, you’d be silly not to come in for a crash landing at Fl!ght Gallery when Walley Films debuts “Candy Apple Daydreams,” a music video they recently shot for synth-pop duo Hyperbubble, starring an exquisite beast named Smokey the Cat (7:30-9 p.m. Thursday, Fl!ght Gallery, 1906 S. Flores).