The most enduring image of Ernesto Neto that remains after his weekend visit to Dallas for the opening of his exhibition, Cuddle on the Tightrope, at the Nasher Sculpture Center came during the opening reception. As rain began to drizzle down on the grounds of the Nasher garden, suited patrons and women in gowns squeezed underneath the overhang of Renzo Piano’s building, clutching their cocktails. Meanwhile, the artist, with his windblown curly grey locks falling down on his round, grinning ..read more

On Sunday, May 27, The Reading Room will feature a performance of experimental music by the Denton-based duo anteroom. Billed as a group interested in “the nurturing and delivery of text based scores,” it is difficult to describe the duo’s performances, which involve the two musicians sitting a rug in an intimate setting with various found objects and percussive instruments – from wooden xylophones to woks and alarm clocks – often to the accompaniment of projected imagery.

To whet your appetite ..read more

Here are this week’s gallery events and openings.

Image: Work by Duke Horn, part of the Oak Cliff Visual Speed Bump Tour

“Rewriting Art History” by Betsy Williamson at Mercantile Coffee House – May 17 : 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM; 1800 Main Street, Dallas, Tx 75201 .

“2012 Annual Membership Event” by the Texas Sculpture Association at Aloft Hotel – May 18 : 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM; 1033 Young Street, Dallas, Tx 75202.

“Mayan Prophecy” by Jonathan Ramirez at WAAS GALLERY – May ..read more

Here are this week’s gallery openings and events.

Image: Kevin Cooley, Skyward, 2012, (detail) 9 min 45 sec HD Video, in situ, installation view (in the video room at Marty Walker Gallery)

“Divorce Papers and Expensive Postcards” by Jose-Maria Cano at the Kristy Stubbs Gallery – May 10 : 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM; 25 Highland Park Village, Suite 106, Dallas, Tx 75205.

“Dreams and Delusions: Hand Altered Photographs” by Lindsay Gray at The Upstairs Gallery – May 10 : 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM; 1038 ..read more

A release regarding an art project prompted some of the usual, “Why is that art?” scoffing around the office yesterday, but I’ll let Cynthia Mulcahy take the lead in explaining her latest project, Seventeen Hundred Seeds, which has been sprouting on a field adjacent to Davis St. in North Oak Cliff.

You may remember Mulcahy’s last project, the community square dance she organized with fellow “art as social practice” practitioner Leila Grothe at the Audubon Center in South Dallas. Like that project, Seventeen Hundred Seeds ..read more

Paradoxically a one-off event, which ought to liberate it somewhat from the weight of expectations, the Dallas Biennale presents a fresh and stimulating cross-section of new art. It suggests that the sponsoring Dallas Contemporary, which in true hometown think-big fashion bills itself as “America’s Kunsthalle,” has the potential to be a kind of P.S. 1 for the city: fast-moving, improvisational and daring, if occasionally a bit rough around the edges. Happily, as curator Florence Ostende explains in her introductory essay, ..read more

As a photographer of art in its various forms, Art Fair week was exceptionally busy. I had planned on starting to shoot the Dallas Biennale for the Contemporary mid-fair, but as that time approached I had reached my limit and the last thing I wanted was to see was more art. Nevertheless, I slogged out to 331 Singleton, a space I knew from prior art installations, the most recent being one of the locations of the Shepard Fairey murals.  Not ..read more

In one of Tim Rogers excellent updates to his cover story about Museum Tower’s damaging impact on the Nasher Sculpture Center, he refers to the possible lack of viability of a “nuisance” claim by the Nasher. It occurred to me -  that as with art copyright issues brought against artists – how inarticulate and unsophisticated American law can be when it comes to litigating issues involving art, mainly because it doesn’t know how to value art in anything other than crass ..read more

Here are this week’s gallery openings.

Image:Work by Taro-Kun’s It’ll Be Worth Something Someday, opening at The Public Trust.

“Art Club Sale” at Brookhaven College – May 2 : 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM; 3939 Valley View Lane, Farmers Branch, Tx 75244.

“The Throwaways” by Bob Poe at the Rising Gallery – May 3 : 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM; 800 Jackson street, Lower Level, Dallas, Tx 75202.

“Art Club Sale” at Brookhaven College – May 3 : 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM; 3939 Valley View Lane, Farmers ..read more

After feeling pleasantly assaulted by the performers, sights, and sounds at the first Harakiri performance that took place at CentralTrak the week before, it seemed unlikely that the intensity would be increased in such a dramatic fashion for last Saturday’s week two performance. Unless you’re an Olympic-grade wallflower, such as myself, surgically attached to the outskirts of the main room, spectators found themselves surrounded by performers, musicians, or both. The rest of the work snaked its way in the surrounding ..read more

Here are the weekend’s gallery openings and events.

Image: Tabitha Pease and Danielle Georgiou from HARAKIRI: To Die For Performances! at Centraltrak.

“Gallery Show” by Denise Loveless at the Trenz Gallery – April 26 : 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM; 1315 East Levee Street, Dallas, Tx 75207.

“Exuberant Youth: Visual Fine Art Student Exhibition” at the H. Paxton Moore Fine Art Gallery – April 26 : 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM; El Centro College, 801 Main Street, Dallas, Tx 75202.

“Active 8″ by Daniel Adame, Dande Aguilar, Angel ..read more

Turns out Museum Tower’s facade isn’t the only glass that is hot in Dallas right now (buh- duh-ching). On May 5, the Dallas Arboretum will welcome a large exhibition of the work by famed glass artist Dale Chihuly. Running through November, Chihuly’s work will be installed in more 15 locations throughout the Arboretum grounds.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Talley Dunn Gallery will host a gallery show featuring some of the glass artist’s newest work, opening May 12. And all the glass excitement has ..read more

UPDATE: Will Architect Renzo Piano Sue Museum Tower?

In the May edition of D Magazine, Tim Rogers reports on the ongoing controversy over the construction of Museum Tower. Rogers has been following Museum Tower’s impact on the Nasher ever since he and Willard Spiegelman lofted a red balloon in the air to measure the impact the building would have on the James Turrell sculpture, Tending, (Blue). Now it is clear that the development will a  far greater impact on the museum than ever imagined.

When the Nasher Sculpture Center began leaking light in September, director Jeremy Strick didn’t immediately grasp the gravity of the situation. In the lobby near the cash register, just a few small splotches of light splashed across a travertine wall.

The leak should have been impossible. The Nasher was designed by Renzo Piano, arguably the world’s greatest modernist architect, a man famous for reinventing the roof. For the Nasher, he created an ingenious system composed of two parts: a barrel-vaulted roof-cum-ceiling made of 3-inch-thick, 1,200-pound glass panels and, suspended above the glass, a sunscreen of millions of tiny aluminum oculi aimed due north. The sunscreen was designed using the precise longitude and latitude of the Nasher, and it accounts for every hour of the Earth’s 365-day trip around the Sun. Standing in the gallery, a visitor looking up and to the south sees what appears to be a solid structure through the glass ceiling. Turning 180 degrees and looking north, though, he sees open sky. The system allows into the museum soft, full-spectrum light that is not only safe for artwork but creates ideal, transcendent viewing conditions. The roof system is patented, and Ray Nasher, who died in 2007, considered it part of the art collection that he gave to Dallas.

Strick saw the light hitting the lobby wall and looked north. Instead of open sky, he saw the new Museum Tower, where construction workers were installing glass panels on the lower levels of the 42-story building. Sunlight was reflecting off that glass and penetrating Piano’s roof. Nasher staffers took pictures of the light splotches and talked among themselves about whether they might affect an upcoming exhibit, but no one was ready to sound the alarm.

Continue reading the article here.

Here are this weekend’s gallery openings.

Image: From Juan Melé & Arte Concreto – Invención, at the Madi Museum.

“North Lake College 2012 Student Art Exhibition” – April 18 : 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM; 5001 N. MacArthur Blvd., Irving, Tx 75038.

“CGB Artists Studios” by Rob B. Aikey, Ashard Richley, Donna Davis Ball, Katherine Baronet, Patsy Davila, Marianne Gargour, Andrea Guay, David Anthony Harman, Erika Jaeggli, Shoka Kamaria-Ford, Jenny Keller, Jacque Kindle, David Klucsarits, David McGlothlin, Courtney Miles, Billy Milner, Ty Milner, Marsha ..read more

This past weekend, I found myself echoing again and again what Glasstire’s Kelly Klaasmeyer writes about this year’s Dallas Art Fair. “How was it?” the curious asked. “You know what?” I replied. “It felt better.”

The Dallas Art Fair did feel stronger than it has in years past, though my only real critical paradigm for that judgment was that it felt like less of a beating, like it took less work to dig through the booths and find work that was ..read more

Like one’s first visit to the Las Vegas strip, a first visit to an art fair can be a disorienting, even disturbing experience. Normally, in the gallery or museum context, an invisible army of curators does yeoman’s work in carefully selecting and presenting artwork according to specific historical and aesthetic criteria.

On the other hand, one of the great things about an art fair is that there is something for almost everyone. I was impressed by the small abstract paintings at ..read more

“The Mirror and the Monitor” sets up a thought-provoking inter-generational dialogue between artists who were present at the creation of the first video art (Joan Jonas, Martha Rosler, Lynn Hershman) and those who came of age during the post-MTV, pre-YouTube era (Alex Bag and Kristin Lucas). By presenting a range of work on the notional genre of the female self-portrait we are invited to consider how such reliable interpretive concepts as the spectacle, the masquerade or the cyborg may have ..read more

Here are this weekends gallery openings.

Image: Matthew Porter, Lower Canyon, archival pigment print mounted to Plexiglas with satin laminate, ed. of 5, 20 x 25 inches (From Marty Walker Gallery’s Dallas Art Fair selections.)

“Art 21 Season 6″ at Circuit12 Contemporary – April 13 : 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM; 1130 Dragon Street, #150, Dallas, TX 75207.

“Art & Coffee Superstition” by Kelsey Kincannon, Ixchel Aguilar, Brandy Collins, Cori Berg, David Jessup, David Yubeta, Nicole Norton, and Riley Holloway at artlovemagic – April ..read more

Here are this weekend’s gallery openings.

Image: David H. Gibson, Moments Along Cypress Creek: A Sequence, 11 9569 (detail). Archival pigment print. Courtesy of Valley House Gallery.

“Sherry Houpt” at Cafe Izmir – April 5 : 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM; 3711 Greenville Ave, Dallas, Tx 75206.

“Mother” by Kerry Pacillio at Cohn Drennan Contemporary – April 5 : 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM; 1107 Dragon Street, Dallas, Tx 75207.

“New Work” by Sharon O’Callagahan Shero at Times Ten Cellars – April 5 : 6:30 PM ..read more

Okay art-lovers—this one’s for you.

The fourth annual Dallas Art Fair is April 13-15. During the span of those three days, more than 75 prominent national and international art dealers representing painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, video and installation will be featured. And you’re going to be there (for free).

We’ve got a pair of three-day passes to the fair that will give you access to all Dallas Art Fair programming, including panel discussions and the opportunity to join a private ..read more

In the April edition of D Magazine, the Dallas Contemporary’s Peter Doroshenko speaks about launching the first — and last — Dallas Biennale as a way of using the platform of the Dallas Art Fair to bring up the idea of the “tired” (as he puts it) biennale model.

Well, as it turns out, the Dallas Contemporary’s conceptual “biennale,” which won’t actually repeat every two years, will not be the only Dallas art event this spring to call itself a “biennale,” or “biennial,” or however you want to spell the word that denotates a survey art exhibition repeating every other year (or in Dallas’ cast, not repeating). Three Dallas artists, Michael Mazurek, Jesse Morgan Barnett, and C.J. Davis (who all share a studio) have been planning their own Dallas Biennial, or, for short, DB12, Volume 1, with an inaugural event kicking off April 13 which will “address the phenomenon of the biennial.” From the curators’ release:

“When we began the process last year, we knew our first iteration of a biennial should challenge the format in some manner. The typical structure of a biennial is expansive, allowing curators to display what they offer as the highlights of the art world at large. DB12 is no different in this respect. We’re just adjusting the strategy a bit. To this end, we will embed our gallery, Dick Higgins, inside the office of Oliver Francis Gallery, which has been lent to us by the owner.”

This new biennial also has an online home, Dallasbiennial.org. When we were fact checking the story about the Dallas Contemporary’s biennale, we stumbled on that website, so I reached out to Mazurek to find out what the guys were up to. He said they were working on an event for 2014, but were mounting a web-based exhibition in 2012. “This is not a critique per se,” Mazurek wrote at the time, “But rather a multidisciplinary approach to curatorial jockeying. DB12 is also a hybrid: part event, part data, part research, part publication. It will probably be viewed in hindsight as the preface to a much larger catalog.”

Between now and then, however, DB12 has expanded somewhat. There will be the exhibition in the back office of the Oliver Francis Gallery — that’s a 300-square-foot space — featuring six artists representing five countries. These include:

- Artur Barrio, 2011 Venice Biennale representative for Brazil
- Guillaume Leblon, France, 2011 Prix Marcel Duchamp nominee
- Sharon Ya’ari, Israel
- Asger Carlsen and George Horner, both represented by Tony Shafrazi Gallery
- Michael Vorfeld, Germany, featured in “Documenta 8” with the artist group Heinrich Mucken

Again, from the curators:

“The unorthodox nature of attempting to curate a biennial in a 300-square-foot office forced a concision unheard of for an international survey. However,” the curators explain, “this is exactly why we chose this space.”

In addition to the exhibition at Oliver Francis (also, playfully enough, a spot on the Dallas Contemporary’s Dallas Biennale tour), DB12 will feature a screening at the Texas Theater of Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty;” Nam June Paik’s “Good Morning, Mr. Orwell,” “Documenta 6 Satellite Telecast,” and “Lake Placid ’80;” and Artur Barrio’s “Situations, T/T 1.” There will also be the promised online component, which will include some 23 participating artists, with a mix of local, national, and international participants.

I’m still digesting most of this, but here are two takeaways:

1) Oliver Francis Gallery continues to be an invaluable part of the local art ecosystem, in part because it offers the kind of open-ended, easy-to-use project space that Dallas has so desperately needed. Kevin Jacobs has proven that if you rent it, they will show. I’d love to see what would happen if we had two or three more such spaces open up.

2) While we still have a thirst for sitting around and gabbing about what is going on in the scene, I’d like to invite you to stop for a second and look at all of these events and ask yourself, are things improving in Dallas art? I think you can feel okay saying “yes.” And if you follow up with a “why,” the answer points to Michael Corris’s comments in the post linked to above, a repetition of something he said at the original DMA State of the Arts panel: “Artists should stop asking for permission and take the situation into their own hands.” Indeed.

The release:

DALLASBIENNIAL.ORG ANNOUNCES “DICK HIGGINS GALLERY: DB12, VOLUME 1” AT OLIVER FRANCIS GALLERY

April 13, 2012 – May 5, 2012
Six Artists From Five Countries to Present Works in Dallas
Dallas, Texas (April 1, 2012) — DB12 will be on view in Dallas from April 13 – May 5, 2012. The Dallas Biennial’s inaugural event will address the phenomenon of the biennial.

The curators state, “When we began the process last year, we knew our first iteration of a biennial should challenge the format in some manner. The typical structure of a biennial is expansive, allowing curators to display what they offer as the highlights of the art world at large. DB12 is no different in this respect. We’re just adjusting the strategy a bit. To this end, we will embed our gallery, Dick Higgins, inside the office of Oliver Francis Gallery, which has been lent to us by the owner.”

The installation features work selected specifically to meet the challenges of the space, while ensuring that each artist’s selection speaks to the essence of their work. “The unorthodox nature of attempting to curate a biennial in a 300-square-foot office forced a concision unheard of for an international survey. However,” the curators explain, “this is exactly why we chose this space.”

Despite these demands, Dallas will have the opportunity to view firsthand seminal works from both U.S. and international artists. A diverse group from five countries will be on display, including the 2011 Venice Biennale representative for Brazil, Artur Barrio, and the 2011 Prix Marcel Duchamp nominee, Guillaume Leblon. Leblon’s sound piece, entitled 4pm, Frévent, will provide the backdrop for the succinct exhibition. Every hour of the day, a recording of four church gongs from a village in Northern France will play, marking every hour as though it were 4pm. The artist elaborates: “This is an in-between hour, a suspended time. As the sound is heard throughout the space, one will become aware of time as a hyper-conscious passing.”

Another work by Sharon Ya’ari from Israel, Frame Loops, presents time as a compilation of moments. Made from a group of video images captured as stills, it tells a “tiny story of a moment of observing and listening to a private, negligible activity.” In addition, the exhibition will include an installation by Dallas’ own Stephen Lapthisophon, called Offal—a work about states of interiority and subjectivity.

Other artists on view include Asger Carlsen, George Horner (of Tony Shafrazi Gallery), and Michael Vorfeld (featured in “Documenta 8” with the artist group Heinrich Mucken).

Coinciding with the Dallas installation, DB12 will also host a free film screening and present an online exhibition. Launched in tandem with the exhibition at Oliver Francis Gallery, the Internet-based presentation will continue through 2014. DB12’s first online phase, Volume 1, will take place April 13 – June 8, 2012 and remain open-ended, spanning over two years. The curators state, “This dual format allows us to expand the dialogue, unconstrained by location or time and unrestricted by conventional institutional parameters.”

The screening will take place at the historic Texas Theatre on May 31 from 7-10 pm. Films featured thus far include Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty; Nam June Paik’s Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, Documenta 6 Satellite Telecast, and Lake Placid ’80; and Artur Barrio’s Situations, T/T 1.

Artists in the Dallas-based exhibition include: Artur Barrio (Brazil), Asger Carlsen (Denmark), George Horner (USA), Stephen Lapthisophon (USA), Guillaume Leblon (France), Michael Vorfeld (Germany), and Sharon Ya’ari (Israel).

Artists in the Internet-based exhibition include: Artur Barrio (Brazil), Asger Carlsen (Denmark), Petra Cortright (USA), Ted Davis (USA), Jeff Gibbons (USA), Matthew Girson (USA), Matt Hanner (USA), Mishka Henner (United Kingdom), George Horner (USA), Devin King (USA), Irena Knezevic (Serbia), Stephen Lapthisophon (USA), Guillaume Leblon (France), Lou Mallozzi (USA), Gustavo Matamoros (USA), Antonio Ottomanelli (Italy), The Estate of Nam June Paik (Korea), Bjorn Ross (Denmark), Amber Hawk Swanson (USA), Brad Tucker (USA), Michael Vorfeld (Germany), Sharon Ya’ari (Israel), Jeff Zilm (USA), and others.

Artists in the film screening at Texas Theater include: Artur Barrio, The Estate of Nam June Paik, The Estate of Robert Smithson, and others.

About the curators:

Michael Mazurek, Jesse Morgan Barnett, and C.J. Davis are Dallas-based artists.

Dates for THE DALLAS BIENNIAL

DB12: Web Exhibition (April 13, 2012 – April 13, 2014)

DB12: Volume 1. Web Exhibition (April 13 – June 8, 2012)
DB12: Volume 1. At Dick Higgins Gallery (located inside Oliver Francis Gallery) (April 13 – May 5, 2012) (Opening Reception April 13, 6-9pm)
DB12: Free Film Screening at Texas Theater (May 31, 2012, 7-10pm)

Last night, Centraltrak hosted “Radical Regionalism,” a panel discussion organized by Leigh Arnold to address issues, races, and genders missing from the Dallas Museum of Art’s now infamous State of the Arts panel discussion.

In direct opposition of the ‘four old white guys’ who led the State of the Arts conversation, this panel consisted of artist Matthew Cusick, UT Arlington architecture professor Wanda Dye, artist and UT Arlington professor Benito Huerta, artist and South Dallas Cultural Center director Vicki Meek, and ..read more

Here are this weekend’s gallery openings.

Image: From Mylan Nguyen’s “Les Grand Personnes Ne Comprennent (The Big People Do Not Understand)” at Public Trust.

“Fashion as Art” by Isabel Varela at the Ross Akard Gallery – March 29 : 7:00 PM – 10 PM; 1717 N. Akard Street, Dallas, Tx 75201.

“The Mirror and the Monitor: Female Self-Portraiture in Video Practice” by Alex Bag, Joan Jonas, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Kristin Lucas, and Martha Losler, at the Haggerty Gallery of the University of Dallas – ..read more

If you have ever assumed that touring and being in a band that gets reviewed on blogs and music websites is a glamorous life, then look no further than artist Chloe Lum’s wonderfully written, yet poignant essay, ”On the End of an Era,” for a strong dose of reality. Lum has performed in the self-described “Abstract Rock” (or “Formalist/Unknown Wave”, also self-described) band AIDS Wolf for the past nine years. Due to a complex variety of factors described in the piece, the ..read more

In the article about The Power Station from the March edition of D Magazine, owner Alden Pinnell speaks about how he has specifically decided to program the space around other events on the local art calendar, most notably Two x Two For Aids and Art, hosted each fall at The Rachofsky House, and the Dallas Art Fair. Both events are occasions for members of the jet setting art world to touch down in Dallas, and both offer local arts promoters ..read more