Review: El Latido Incesant
Bath House Cultural Center, Dallas May 5-June 2, 2012 El Latido Incesante (The Endless Heartbeat) is the current show at the Bath House Cultural Center on the shore of White Rock Lake. The show is a close-up look at old-master quality wood sculpture lovingly created by Mexican [...]
Review: Deborah Ballard
Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Dallas May 20-June 16, 2012 Deborah Ballard: Alter Ego is a exhibition of a large number of Ballard figurative works, both in the gallery and in the gorgeous sculpture garden at Valley House Gallery in North Dallas. Cheryl and Kevin Vogel’s gardens have [...]
The Formative Figure
The human figure remains a persuasive vehicle for the expression of fathomless doubt, hard skepticism, and existential uncertainty about the world. While perhaps something of a straw man argument today, the polemic over the “figurative” and “abstract” in art [...]
Review: George Grosz in Dallas
Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas Dallas Museum of Art May 20–August 19, 2012 A Berlin Dadaist is invited to Dallas by a department store executive.… Sounds like a set up for a joke, no? It happened in 1952. Leon Harris, Jr., the vice president of the Dallas department store A. Harris & [...]
Worth the Trip
Texas Prize at AMOA-Arthouse Only time will tell how November’s merger between the Austin Museum of Art and Arthouse will play out. In the meantime, it’s nice to see that the Texas Prize — a formerly biennial, now triennial $30,000 award Arthouse launched in 2005 for emerging visual artists — has survived the wedding of [...]
Shining a Light on Stephen Knapp
This is the season of glass in Dallas. With Dale Chihuly’s installation at the Dallas Arboretum serving as a catalyst, 12 galleries are featuring the work of both local and nationally known glass artists, many challenging the traditional notions of what it means to work in this versatile medium. One such artist is Massachusetts-based Stephen [...]
Review: Margaret Meehan
Conduit Gallery, Dallas May 12–June 16, 2012 More than the materials they use, some artists are better approached by way of their unique vision. I suspect Margaret Meehan is such an artist, demonstrated by her show at Conduit Gallery, “Hystrionics and the Forgotten Arm.” If I’m right, then it might better serve us to focus [...]
Casting a Wide Net
Ernesto Neto is a contemporary Brazilian artist widely known for spectacularly huge sculptures that invoke adjectives like “seductive” and “glorious” — they’re meant to awaken our primal selves by inviting interaction. “Cuddle on the Tightrope,” currently on view at the Nasher [...]
Review: Adam McEwen
One of the most intriguing things about the Goss-Michael Foundation — and there are many — is their willingness to ruffle feathers. They stir things up. Because they concentrate on British art, their contemporary shows often allude to Western mythological stories and archetypal [...]
Review: Roberta Harris
Eighteen new paintings by Houston artist Roberta Harris find inspiration in geometric forms in her recent show at Kirk Hopper Fine Art in Deep Ellum. Harris paints bold, textured, edgy, and haphazard paintings. She leaves a trail of her work process — drips, splats, impasto elements [...]
