When the Dallas Art Fair launched in 2009, the British artist Richard Patterson, who has lived in Dallas since 2002, called it the latest manifestation of a phenomenon he calls the Dallas Effect. In short, the Dallas Effect means that whenever a new cultural trend arrives in Dallas, you know it is the beginning of the end of that particular cultural trend.

Patterson is being only half-facetious. Dallas has a history of warming to ideas, artists, and architects only after their ..read more

Here are this week’s openings.

Image: Work by Bruce Lee Webb, opening at Magnolia Gallery.

“Revisiting the Discarded” by Norman Kary, Nancy Ferro, and Chase Yarborough, at North Lake College – March 20 : 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM; 5001 N. MacArthur Blvd., Irving, Tx 75038.

“Artist Talk” by Kael Alford, at the University of Texas at Dallas – March 20 : 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM; Visual Arts Building, 800 W. Campbell Road, Richardson, Tx 75080.

“7th Annual Juried Exhibition” at the Arts Gallery at ..read more

Ann Stautberg has nine photographs, hand-colored with oil, on view at Barry Whistler, all characteristically titled with a kind of date stamp, for example 1-10-12, PM (all works 2012). They are nighttime landscapes, populated with cars’ taillights, shadowy trees, and buildings silhouetted against moonlight and starlight. Everything looks quiet. In 9-23-11, PM #1, a few lights gleam through the stand of trees in the distance, and another one onto the tops of the telephone wires and the passing car; it ..read more

Katie Paterson’s art addresses some of the biggest subjects around, both literally and figuratively—subjects about which we may be accustomed to thinking in terms of numbers or quantities, but which are difficult or impossible to subjectively feel or experience. For example, what is the age of a glacier or a galaxy? What is the distance from the earth to the moon? How big is the Milky Way? We can easily find numerical answers to such questions, but can we really ..read more

Among the most engrossing works in Linda Ridgway’s exhibition are the prints made by placing a graphite-dusted child’s dress against a sheet of paper, then putting them together through a printing press, so that the form of the flattened dress is imprinted in graphite outline on the paper. This process precisely preserves the contour of the little dress, down to every fold, pleat, ruffle and seam. Made by the operation of the machine, the image (Yet the new girl more ..read more

Deborah Aschheim’s work explores memory as an imperative. In response to the threat of forgetting, it undertakes a general effort to remember. The title of this exhibition, the “method of loci,” is named for the ancient technique, described by scholars such as Frances Yates, of exploiting the capacity to remember spaces and places by mentally “placing” other information in those imagined places. One might memorize a list of people by imagining each of them in a particular location, then recalling ..read more

Glenn Ligon’s work shares elements with certain of his peers in the New York art world, such as a palette frequently restricted to monochrome or grayscale ranges, commercially flavored media (neon and screen printing, for example), and a heavy use of text and photography arranged in a grid matrix. However, compared to counterparts such as Bruce Nauman, Jenny Holzer, and Lawrence Weiner, all of whom use text, neon, or both, Ligon’s work can be much more accessible and engaging.

This is ..read more

On February 13, a new addition to the local cultural media launched, Central Track, founded by former Dallas Observer music editor Pete Freedman. Even before the launch, some local art watchers were scratching their heads, not over the new site, but over its choice of names. After all, since 2008, CentralTrak, the University of Texas at Dallas Artists Residency (originally founded in 2002), has housed artists visiting Dallas as part of its residency program while hosting exhibitions and other events in ..read more

Here are the week’s gallery openings and events.

Image: Antonio Martinez, Symbols and Memory, 2011 (detail). ink on dictionary paper; 30×45. (Courtesy of Mighty Fine Arts)

“Incidental Transformations” by Jon Shumway and Ian F. Thomas at Brazos Gallery at Richland College – March 7 : 4:00 PM – 6:30 PM; 12800 Abrams Road, Dallas, Tx 75243.

“Artist Talk and Image Presentation” by Jill Magid in Sabine Hall, Rm 118, of Richland College – March 7 : 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM; 12800 Abrams Road, Dallas, Tx 75243.

“OPEN HOUSE” at ..read more

The eight oil and acrylic paintings on view at Galleri Urbane are from Forrest Solis’s Self and Sex Series: What a young woman ought to know. Most are three or four feet in size, and each is divided into two sections. The first section (at left or on top) is an excerpt of text from the 1913 advice manual of the same title by Mrs. Mary Wood-Allen, M.D. National Superintendent of the Purity Department of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, ..read more

Here are this weekend’s gallery openings.

Image: Linda Ridgeway, The Alice Chronicles #3, 2011-2012 (detail) Graphite on paper; 72 x 42 1/4 inches. (Courtesy of Tally Dunn Gallery)

“Landscapes and Figures” by P. A. Jones at Aubergine – March 1 : 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM; 2642 Elm Street, Dallas, Tx 75226.

“The Fresh Breath of Art” by Kiki Curry at Cafe Izmir – March 1 : 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM; 3711 Greenville Ave, Dallas, Tx 75206.

“The FAB 50″ at The Soda Gallery – ..read more

If you haven’t been to Taos, don’t worry, prior expertise is not necessary to appreciate Taos (Taos Thrift Shop), Ludwig Schwarz’s madcap exhibition at Conduit Gallery. As the artist himself asserts in his statement, “I don’t know a thing or two about Taos,” although that should be taken with a grain of salt, since later in the same statement, he declares “the above has little or nothing to do with the exhibition.” Clearly, the important thing is to avoid a ..read more

Precise attention and subtle framing of the traces of powerful action are the hallmarks of Jesse Morgan Barnett’s photographs and video at MartyWalkerGallery. The series “To Accident and Abandon,” of which six Ultrachrome prints are on view (all from last year), presents direct frontal views of the streaks left on Jersey barriers by high-speed highway collisions. Long after the wrecked vehicles, emergency crews and victims have gone home from a crash, these artifacts remain on view, at once sobering evidence ..read more

Here are this week’s gallery openings.

Image: Work from Michael O’Keefe, Continuum, at Valley House Gallery.

“The Sum of Parts Create a Whole” by George Tobolowsky at illume GALLERIE – February 23 : 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM; 4123 Cedar Springs, Suite 107, Dallas, Tx 75219.

“Across America” by Marty Ricks at Banks Fine Art – February 24 : 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM; 1313 Slocum Street, Suite # 103, Dallas, Tx 75207.

“Gary Bishop Images: Past/Presence” by Gary Bishop at the Afterimage Gallery – February ..read more

Suspending blue netting and burlap from the walls and ceiling, Eric Eley has created a transitional ocean or aerial landscape. Structurally, the installation was derived from early 1900’s wartime camouflage: this kind of  netting was historically part of a tenting system that disguised ground-based activities from aerial bombers. In Coincident Disruption the relationship has been reversed: the mottled netting obscures the sky from the ground dwellers.

During Eley’s artist talk about his show at the McKinney Ave. Contemporary, he spoke of ..read more

Here are this weekend’s gallery openings and events.

Image: Ludwig Schwarz, Untitled, 2008-2009 (detail). Oil on canvas, 72×72” (Image courtesy of Conduit Gallery)

“Illuminations” by Bruce Brainard at Gremillion & Co. Fine Art – February 16 : 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM; 2251 Vantage Street, Dallas, Tx 75207.

“Good Memories: An Exhibit of Photography by Michael Blackwell and His Students from Creative Arts Center of Dallas” at the Art Gallery in the Point, Center for Arts and Education, on the campus of C.C. ..read more

The moment one crosses the threshold of Brand 10 for the “Town and Country” exhibit, a confounding interior/exterior dilemma ensues: urban street noise ceases and you walk smack into a fence. Skirting the picket fence finds you staring at a man-made tree. Deeper within the space, a love seat, television, and back yard await. Constructing the exhibit as a microcosm of traditional suburban life, the space capitalizes on our domesticity, familiarity, and a creeping sense of displacement.

Upon entering one encounters ..read more

“It is no accident that Eugène Atget’s photographs have been likened to those of a crime scene,” wrote Walter Benjamin. Just such a combination of straight forward depiction and enigmatic narrativity can be seen in Bryan Florentin’s photographs in “Inscrutable Evidence,” at Kirk Hopper Fine Art. The exhibition includes 31 digital pigment prints, most displayed on their own but a few combined with other accessories such as a light stand or an umbrella. Most of the images depict items that ..read more

Virginia Overton’s installation on two floors of The Power Station collects tokens of a couple of specific experiences: a road trip and an elaborate opening-night party. For the artist and the participants, these are memories, while for other visitors, they are simply allusions. The difference between these two perspectives will account for a range of responses to the work.

A now-legendary pickup-truck journey through the artist’s home state of Tennessee is the origin of Chevy Deluxe (2012). This is a sky-blue ..read more

Here are this week’s gallery openings and events.

Image: From ‘Confessors,’ 8mm on Digital Video – 19m – 2010 by Michael Morris, who is opening a video exhibition at Oliver Francis Gallery.

“Sculpture” by Marko Kratohvil in Gallery A of the Cohn Drennan Contemporary Gallery – February 9 : 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM; 1107 Dragon Street, Dallas, Tx 75207.

“Portraits” by Cabe Booth at Ro2 Art at The Belmont – February 9 : 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM; 901 Fort Worth Avenue, Dallas, Tx ..read more

A twelve- by thirty-foot wall of white shirt labels, arranged in a grid and each pinned about one inch above the wall’s surface, is the dramatic opening statement in “Joseph Havel: Plus or Minus.” The woven labels hang with a slight irregularity which registers in their shadows on the wall. Unless you look closely, you won’t see the white text that reads “nothing,” embroidered into the white surface of each label. This move is echoed in another set of works ..read more

Last week, artist Shepard Fairey completed a series of murals in West Dallas and at the site of the Dallas Contemporary, which brought the artist to Dallas for the project. Fairey is perhaps most well known for his iconic “Hope” poster of Barak Obama, which became a calling card for the 2008 presidential campaign and also landed Fairey in a legal battle over copyright with the Associated Press. Fairey is used to legal controversy, not only because he has been ..read more

Los Angeles-based street artist Shepard Fairey is best known in art circles as the man who created the instantly recognizable Andre the Giant “Obey” graphic, and to the wider public as the artist who faced-off with the Associated Press over copyright laws for his use of a photo in this Barak Obama poster.

This week, Fairey’s in Dallas as part of the latest project by the Dallas Contemporary, which has commissioned five new murals from the artist that will be put up on walls around ..read more

I visited two shows last week that, by total coincidence, were each composite self-portraits of the respective artists: Michael Bise at Fort Worth Contemporary Arts in a show called Epilogues, and Michelle Rawlings at Oliver Francis Gallery in one called Empathicalism. The first was a wry, deeply thoughtful and searing look at a private life lived with the constant threat of death; the second was a self-dissecting, self-deprecating mash-up by someone who’s maybe never had anything to be afraid of ..read more

Antonio Murado’s lush, subtle paintings at Holly Johnson Gallery are made with oil on Belgian linen. Their range of pictorial effects is calibrated with a sensitivity almost painful to behold, and it’s possible to spend some time happily getting lost in the details. All seventeen works are from last year. There are three untitled works that depict bursts of floral color—part petal, part stain—scattered over broad swaths of hide-colored background; one transitional work, Black Bear, in which an inky pelt ..read more