Off the Wall, launched in 2019, is a partnership between the Moody Center for the Arts and the Core Residency Program at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The series commissions Core alumni to create a site-specific installation for the Brochstein Pavilion, that remains on view for one year. The goal of the series is to meet students, faculty, staff, and visitors with innovative works of art in one of the most utilized spaces on campus, the café at the Brochstein Pavilion. To date, the artists commissioned for Off the Wall include william cordova, Danielle Dean, Harold Mendez, Sondra Perry, and Clarissa Tossin. The current installation by Karyn Olivier will remain on view through August 22, 2025. 

Karyn Olivier is known for her public art, sculptural installations, and image-based work that conflate collective histories with current questions about remembrance and reconciliation. She translates her extensive research visually by manipulating familiar objects or places, thus disrupting conventional perceptions and assumptions and offering new avenues for engagement instead.   

Her work for this installation, titled Revelation, is based on a photograph that Olivier took in North Philadelphia on her commute to Temple University where she teaches. The image and neighborhood recall experiences the artist had while living locally and teaching at the University of Houston. In 2004 Olivier photographed two decaying houses in the Third Ward (Double houses). The mirrorlike symmetry and double desolation of the houses intrigued the artist, who returned a year later to photograph the same dwellings, then almost completely overgrown and returned to nature. 

Inspired by a similar scene in Philadelphia, Olivier captured this view (Revelation) after a storm had peeled a thick matting of vines off the wall, depositing a massive woven rug of living plant matter across part of the house and fence. The sculptural form of the fallen vines both covers and reveals the built environment. Though geographically disparate, both the Third Ward and North Philadelphia include areas of urban sprawl that can feel almost rural, composed of empty green lots and white fences, amid a mix of both tidy and dilapidated houses. 

Off the Wall: Karyn Olivier is organized by Frauke V. Josenhans, Curator, Moody Center for the Arts. It is made possible by Leslie and Brad Bucher and by Susan Brochstein in memory of Raymond Brochstein.

Listen to the artist speak about her work