Rex Hausmann
Contemporary artist Rex Hausmann is a San Antonian, who started his art education at UTSA (University of Texas San Antonio), graduating from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) on scholarship with a BFA in painting (2006) and an MFA in painting (2016).
He has shown his artwork at the 53rd Venice Biennale, The Smithsonian in Washington DC, The McNay Museum, The Spencer Museum of Art, The Sheen Center NYC, The Institute of Texan Cultures, Neiman Marcus, The Lawrence Art Center, among others. Rex has also lectured nationally and internationally, appearing in many speaking functions including the renowned TED Talks with the TEDx San Antonio at Trinity University, McNay Museum of Art, The San Antonio Museum of Art, and The University of Texas at San Antonio as well as The Spencer Museum of Art. He has spoken on National Public Radio many times across the United States discussing his unique approach to art, his community, and his own genre of Meta-Modernism.
Hausmann is most inspired by Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Akira Kurosawa, George Melies, Antoni Gaudi, Tom Sachs, and Daniel Buren. These literary, cinematic, and visual artists are all storytellers, like the artist who bases most of his thematical concepts in American, French, and Chinese theory. Personal memories and conversations are the basis of his art—the synthesis of art and life.
Hausmann’s art is colorful, accessible, and autobiographical, as he tries to speak not only the language of the art world, but to everyday people as well. Highly influential in Hausmann’s artwork is the underlying trauma of two near death experiences from being shot in the leg at point blank range during a senseless gang initiation in Savannah. Georgia. The artist suffers from PTSD from this horrific experience, however his use of neon colors and heightened sense of hues for his signature palettes are directly derived from this life-altering experience.
“Rex Hausmann champions work in a wide range of styles… …which appeared in the 53rd Venice Biennale Detournement in 2009. …once-intrinsic parts of the community have become caricatures, mere pictures of the past…Hausmann has, with bent, misspelled text, laced Cavafy’s poem into his paintings, and formed the fragments to the styles of the signage and logos that fill his memories. Blended throughout all the highly colorful (in all meanings of the word) paintings is a layer of reference that slips neatly between company logos and family history memories together. Multi-layered, containing personal expression and reams of disappearing public experience, Hausmann has constructed a map to traverse decades of Bexar County life, a true San Antonio Codex.” – Scott Andrews, Art Critic | Based in Los Angeles.
Select Exhibitions include: “Rex Hausmann: The Prayer,” Sheen Center NYC, New York, New York ; 2019 “Stations,” Sheen Center NYC, New York, New York; “New Works,” Perkins & Will New York: New York, New York; “Play,” The San Antonio Children's Museum, San Antonio, Texas; “Conversation on the Constitution,” The San Antonio Library Foundation, San Antonio, Texas; “Dannon Art Project,” The Lawrence Art Center, Lawrence, Kansas; “Universal Language,” Cara & Cabezas Contemporary, Kansas City, Kansas; “6 Artists Celebrate The McNay's 60th,” McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; “Rex Hausmann’s Ithica,” The Institute of Texan Cultures, San Antonio, Texas; “Blood and Fire,” All Things Project, New York, New York; “Introducing Introduction," Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; “Revisitation,” Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; “A Seat for Social Justice,” The Smithsonian, Washington DC; “Selected Works,” The Waterfall Mansion and Gallery, New York New York; “Light House,” The Waterfall Mansion and Gallery, New York, New York; “Spin It Your Way: Art on Vinal,” McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; “Art in National Parks,” The United States Department of The Interior Atlanta, Hatsfield-Jackson , Atlanta International Airport, Atlanta, Georgia; “A Response: The Hispanic Society of America NYC,” Hausmann Millworks, San Antonio, Texas; “Texas Contemporary Artist Series,” The Institute of Texan Cultures, San Antonio, Texas; “The Print Project: Robert Indiana,” The McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas; “ “Détournement Venice 2009 (14),” The Venice Biennial, New York, New York / Venice, Italy 2009.