Media creates a spectacle and a dialogue. To compete with other spectacles, art may have to embrace the spectacular. And social practice is a great way to create a dialogue. Art tries to pursue things that are not yet fully understood, often pushing boundaries. It can certainly help to have…
J.M. Rizzi and his eight-year-old daughter love to look at graffiti together. In the car they will slowdown to take a look at something or watch it go by on a train. But as much as she enjoys the art his daughter is sure that he would never do graffiti…
Dallas artist Jeff Zilm is engaged in a quest to determine the role art can play in a world riddled with images: what meaning can it possibly have to offer a world over-saturated with visual stimuli? Specifically, Zilm has his eye on the technology of film and how the medium…
Joachim West Mother Earth Is a Dirty Whore – In Color and Uncensored Artist Joachim West weaves a tangled web of humanity’s darkest obsessions. His paintings and drawings portray the grotesque underbelly of society, turning metaphor into reality. His work will fuck your mind up and leave you wrestling with…
I didn’t witness the hermit crabs demise, just heard the gruesome rumors. Apparently one of the arrow crabs had been seen snacking on a an eyeball and not long afterwards, that soft-bodied little guy went missing. Pitted against each other by artist Pierre Huyghe, these cute crustaceans aren’t normally arch…
For the Love of Kettle If anyone ever tells you, “No one cares about art in Dallas,” send them straight to For the Love of Kettle. This annual event features the work of hundreds of artists from all over the city at various price points sold off in an energetic…
In his studio, Jeff Parrott has paint in pill bottles. For him, painting is therapeutic, a journey into his mind, an addiction. His imagery is frenetic and crowded. An intensely prolific psychedelic artist, he literally has rooms full of paintings in his home. Parrott is still making final decisions on…
Oil & Gas Show Inspiration comes in any number of places. It seems a handful of artists have found inspiration from the oil and gas industry, exploring the political, financial and cultural implications of the industry. This weekend, Level Gallery (2722 Logan St.) — formerly WAAS — brings together the work…
Beyond the reaches of the art world, the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer is a familiar name. The book about his painting,The Girl with a Pearl Earring, was later made into a movie with Scar-Jo. There was also a documentary called Tim’s Vermeer where a guy tries to figure out how…
Ann Veronica Janssens Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens has long been interested in creating what she describes as “situations of dazzlement.” She uses light, interacting with materials and architecture to explore our eye’s interpretations of reality, hoping to in turn allow the viewer “an experience of excess.” Her exhibition at…
For her latest solo show, Becoming Colette, multimedia artist Colette Copeland has switched alter egos, assuming the identity of French author Colette. As a teen, Copeland naturally gravitated toward the novels of the famous French author who used her first name as a pen name. Over the years, she found…
Black Sheep Feminism, Aura Satz & Jeff Zilm What promises to be another excellent round of programming opens this weekend at the Dallas Contemporary. Dallas-based artist Jeff Zilm fills one of the cavernous galleries with his newest paintings for Lossless Forms for Picture Plane; London-based artist Aura Satz, whose work…
Annette Lawrence As the analog world becomes replaced by the digital, imagine transferring the scribbles in your journals into your laptop, or up into the cloud. Artist Annette Lawrence has long been interested in the written word as object and idea, and for her upcoming exhibition at Conduit Gallery (1626…
Guided by a belief that anything not backed by science or hard math is mythology as always, Dallas multimedia artist Celia Eberle explores love in her latest solo show. The Mythology of Love references music, poetry, movies, animals, and the love goddess herself. Eberle’s work is well known throughout Texas,…
If you’re interested in emerging talent, Dallas is teeming with it. Just stop by a show at 500X Gallery, Kettle Art Gallery, Random Art Gallery or Beefhaus and dig through the names on the walls. It’s amazing how much work is being made in this city at any given time,…
Was 2015 a strange year for anyone else? It seems this year sucked a lot of the city’s mojo dry. Maybe it was all the rainfall that filled the Trinity River. Maybe Mercury never came out of retrograde. Maybe we’re all just overworked and underpaid. Whatever went wrong, the tone…
Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots This one is obvious. Seriously, though, there have been too few exhibitions of this caliber, both in curation and in work on display. Each of these pieces warrant a bout of serious looking at the piece. Particularly in some of the later works in this exhibition,…
If Joan Davidow’s name sounds familiar, it’s likely because of her tenures as the director of the Arlington Museum of Art and Dallas Contemporary. She’s one of the city’s go-to experts about art and she has an eye for up-and-comers. These days she imparts her insight in segments for KERA,…
Owners Missy and Brent Finger are listening to Christmas music while relocating in lieu of having Christmas this year. PDNB is leaving Dragon Street to go be with the Dallas Contemporary on Glass Street. “I’m not having Christmas, I’m moving,” says Missy Finger. “I have to listen to the music…
Site 131 If Joan Davidow’s name sounds familiar, you likely recognize it from her time as the director of either Arlington Museum of Art or Dallas Contemporary. This weekend, she and her son, Seth, open a new non-profit art space on Payne St. Site 131 plans to focus on the…
Gallerist Hahn Ho has created a puzzle. For her latest exhibition at Cydonia Gallery, she’s paired Dallas-based artist Frances Bagley with Portland artist Ryan Burghard for an exhibition she curiously compares to the human drive for marriage. In Where You End and I Begin: Relational Dialetics, Ho places a number…
If everything goes according to plan, this will be Wanda Dye’s last weekend in Dallas. After her closing party on Sunday, the artistic force behind RE Gallery, a progressive space in The Cedars neighborhood, packs her shotgun shack and heads home to Alabama to be closer to her family. Although…
