“Of Tunnels, Time and Tumult” Opens August 9, 2025 at The Silos at Sawyer Yards
Houston, TX — On Saturday, August 9, 2025, renowned artist, martial arts innovator, and storyteller John Perretti will open his most expansive—and final—exhibition, Of Tunnels, Time and Tumult, at The Silos at Sawyer Yards in Houston, Texas.
Marking his 69th year, this powerful and immersive show features over 50 works, including large-scale paintings and sculptural installations, each offering a raw, layered journey through myth, memory, combat, and cosmic reflection.
Perretti—equally known for coining the term “Mixed Martial Arts” as for his deeply conceptual artworks—draws on a lifetime of experience spanning the battlefield of the ring and the quiet discipline of the studio. His work fuses classical draftsmanship with emotive abstraction, often inspired by historical trauma, poetic memory, sexuality, and the frailty of human perception.
“Of Tunnels, Time and Tumult” invites viewers into a world where angelic light collides with trench warfare, where Sumerian myth whispers through elliptical color fields, and where a rabbit—drawn from his son’s childhood painting—is surrounded by knives, suspended in both innocence and peril. It is a body of work that is as vulnerable as it is unflinching.
“This is the show of my life,” says Perretti. “I want the audience to feel the time I’ve lived, the tunnels I’ve traveled through, and the tumult I’ve never stopped documenting. I want them to feel as if I had put my hands on them.”
This final exhibition presents a culmination of themes that have defined Perretti’s career: violence and grace, truth and distortion, collapse and transcendence. Works range from poignant graphite studies created in youth to massive oil paintings echoing Turner’s turbulent skies, Kiefer’s historical ghosts, and Twombly’s chaotic lyricism.
The sculptures—crafted from black walnut, iron, and hybrid materials—evoke sacred architecture, battlefield debris, and future relics.
Highlighted Works Include:
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The Deluge – An abstracted floodscape blending biblical narrative with postmodern chaos.
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The Forest of Argonne, 1917 – A kinetic, hatch-marked canvas channeling Van Gogh through the horror of WWI.
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Event 1966 – A fragile cartoon figure frozen before a velvet stage—part history, part hallucination.
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Rabbit Surrounded by Knives – A tender, haunting homage to fatherhood, innocence, and fear.
This is not a farewell, but a declaration. A lived archive. A final chapter without restraint or regret.
Exhibition Details
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 9, 2025
Location: The Silos at Sawyer Yards, 1502 Sawyer St., Houston, TX
Show Dates: August 9 – September 13, 2025
Gallery Hours: Monday – Saturday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Admission: Free and open to the public
About the Artist
John Perretti is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, writer, and pioneer of modern mixed martial arts. His work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. A former professor at the School of Visual Arts and a member of the Screen Actors Guild, he is also the founder of Tao Jutsu Do (est. 1974) and co-creator of Extreme Fighting. He is the author of The Origin of a Species and the Mixed Martial Arts, and an inductee into the Martial Arts Hall of Fame as a Living Legend. His working studio is based at Winter Street Studios, where Sawyer Yards first began.
About Sawyer Yards
Sawyer Yards is a dynamic and nationally recognized creative community in Houston’s historic First Ward. Home to hundreds of artists and makers, its Silos gallery space is one of the region’s premier destinations for contemporary art.
For media inquiries, interviews, or preview appointments, please contact:
Alisa Weldon at 512-663-9321
or email John Perretti at theoriginofaspecies@gmail.com
