Encompassing 73 Texas artists from small towns as well as metropolitan centers, the bulk of the third Texas Biennial consisted of two large thematic group shows and four regional solo exhibitions, all held at six nonprofit and artist-run venues throughout the city. Guest-curator Michael Duncan, a Los Angeles-based art critic and curator (and A.i.A. corresponding editor), selected participants from an open call, which resulted in 650 submissions, amplified by wide-ranging studio visits. While several of the biennial artists show at commercial galleries, the majority are unknown to the wider art world.

Jason Middlebrook’s ambitious project “Live with Less” used as its basic material discarded cardboard boxes collected on campus over a two-month period.

At 84, Jane Freilicher understands more than most painters that the landscape, whether urban or pastoral, is humankind’s living record. For over 50 years she has painted the vistas seen from her homes in Water Mill, Long Island, and Greenwich Village in New York City, and in doing so, movingly witnessed these disparate environs as they have changed.

Mira Schor’s small, unframed paintings—oil on linen and ink on gessoed tracing paper—suggest the vulnerability of barely formed thoughts arising unbidden between waking and sleep.

“Infinite Patience” draws together three artists who have been developing their approaches and iconographies since the 1970s. What unites the trio—James Drake, Kunié Sugiura and Stanley Whitney—is a “not-quite” sensibility, a willingness to resist categorization.