Exhibitions to See This Week in Dallas

The museum and gallery shows you’ve got to see in Dallas, plus what’s on view at the always-anticipated private collections.

THE GOSS-MICHAEL FOUNDATION
BILLY CHILDISH “mountain view house”
March 22–April 28
The British painter Billy Childish has garnered an international cult status over the last 35 years with a prolific body of work that includes paintings, confessional poetry, novels, LPs, and more. After working the Chatham dockyard, he studied at St. Martin’s School of Art, and now lives and works in Kent, U.K.

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
RICHARD SERRA “PRINTS”
January 28–April 23
Serra, known primarily for his large steel sculptures, is also a printmaker and has been working with Gemini G.E.L. master printers for 45 years. Drawn from the collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation, the exhibition showcases the artist’s experimentation with printmaking techniques and materials like oil stick and silica, pushing the limits of the medium just as he has with sculpture.

THE WAREHOUSE
“THINKING OUT LOUD: NOTES FOR AN EVOLVING COLLECTION”
January 30–April 30
The exhibition looks principally at recent acquisitions of The Rachofsky Collection and also explores significant artworks within the collection that have rarely or never been displayed. In general, each gallery is treated as an independent installation, but included within the exhibition is a “show within a show” entitled Reconsidering Conceptual Art. Also on view is a site-specific installation by the Gutai artist Shuji Mukai. (The Warehouse is open by appointment only: thewarehousedallas.org)

DALLAS CONTEMPORARY
KEER TANCHAK
April 8–August 20
This is the artist’s first museum solo show, and it presents new works consisting of oil paintings on aluminum sheets. Tanchak references Fragonard, Watteau, and Van Gogh in her figurative and abstract work, which plays with ideas of installation, leisure, and luxury.

PIA CAMIL
April 8–August 20
The Mexico City–based artist works in performance, ceramics, and installation, dealing with issues of consumerism, urban ruin, and the failures of capitalism. This rather politically timely show addresses the relationship between Mexico and the United States, and specifically within the context of Texas.

AMBREEN BUTT
April 8–August 20
Texas-based Ambreen Butt works in range of media from collage to installation. She explores themes of feminism, identity, and globalizations in her practice, which stems from her studies of traditional Indian and Persian miniature painting. Her recent works are comprised of resin casts of mundane objects, brought together to create ornamental patterning reminiscent of sacred geometries.

AND NOW
DUSTIN PEVEY
March 18–April 22
Dustin Pevey’s canvases exist between the visual worlds of cartoons, computer windows, Internet imagery, and commercial identities. These bright, bold works are a challenge to unpack, seemingly existing somewhere in the realm of painting and obscured digital print.

THE MODERN 
KATHERINE BERNHARDT
April 8–July 9
Bernhardt’s colorful paintings assemble quotidian objects like toothpaste, cigarettes, or basketballs into a vibrant pattern, inspired by the puzzling and comical combinations of Dutch wax-printed African fabrics. The artist renders her images in a cartoonish, flat style that is ultimately a delight to the eyes.

DONALD SULTAN “THE DISASTER PAINTINGS”
February 19–April 23
Sultan made his series of “Disaster Paintings” from 1984 to 1990, illustrating robust, manmade edifices such as train cars and factories. The artist used construction material like tar and Masonite tiles in these works, a drastic departure from the still lifes of fruits and flowers he became known for in the seventies.

DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART
“MÉXICO 1900–1950: DIEGO RIVERA, FRIDA KAHLO, JOSÉ CLEMENTE OROZCO, AND THE AVANT-GARDE”
March 12–July 16
In collaboration with the Mexican Secretariat of Culture, this survey at the DMA brings together almost 200 works from Mexico’s modern artistic renaissance and is the first at the museum by its new director, Agustín Arteaga. The show includes paintings, sculptures, photography, films, and drawings by artists like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Nahui Olin, and Rosa Rolanda.

THE POWER STATION
STEVEN PARRINO “DANCING ON GRAVES”
April 5–June 9
A keen awareness of painting; its history, meaning, spatial possibilities and limitations led Parrino to an elegant resolution—the disruption of the canvas itself. Engaging in a post-punk abstraction, the physicality of his work highlights iconoclasts and anti-culture, deviants and superheroes alongside the trajectory of Minimalism. These “misshaped” canvases painted in viscous enamel or lacquer, such were in part muscular, performative responses to the refined aesthetics of abstract precedents. Dancing on Graves is Steven Parrino’s first institutional show in the United States. The Power Station will be presenting painting, sculpture, video, and works on paper.

RO2 ART
ANITA KUNZ
March 11–April 15
The Toronto-based artist Anita Kunz is internationally known for her illustration work, which has been published in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, GQ, and Vanity Fair. Her fine art work is full of art-historical references and imagery, as well as strong female protagonists.

YUNI LEE BALANCE
March 11–April 15
Yuni Lee lives and works in Denton, Texas. The Seoul-born artist’s recent abstract work modifies the shapes of flowers, trees, leaves, fruit, and the like into colorful, elegant, and sometimes strange patterns that investigate humanity’s place in the natural world. Lee, as she describes it, aims to translate the familiar and strange alike, describing her own environmental consciousness.

RO2 ART AT THE MAGNOLIA
CARROLL SWENSON-ROBERTS “THE TEMPLE OF SMALL WISHES”
March 16–April 18
As a young artist, Swenson-Roberts was drawn to the symbolism of medieval art. That early inspiration has left traces in her recent work, which uses color and pattern to tell domestic narratives and other stories.

BEEFHAUS
SHELBY DAVID MEIER “THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DUCK”
April 1–April 22
Described as a comedy of objects, this show delves into subjects like metaphysics, food, entropy, cats, and more. The Dallas-based artist and MFA candidate at SMU Meadows School of the Arts works in sculpture, installation, and a variety of other media. Faced with the ever-expanding universe, the artist observes, “Sometimes the only thing I can do is laugh.”

CONDUIT GALLERY
GABRIEL DAWE
April 1–May 13
The Dallas-based artist Gabriel Dawe has become well known for his series of bright installations of gradient-like suspended thread, entitled “Plexus.” Created over the past six years, the series deals with themes of gender, identity, vulnerability, fashion, and architecture.

SARAH BALL “KINDRED”
April 1–May 13
These new paintings drew inspiration from early-20th-century photo archives from Ellis Island. Capturing portraits of immigrants, Ball sheds a new light on today’s contentious immigration issues in the United States and their implications at home and abroad.

VALLEY HOUSE GALLERY
JOHN HARTELL
March 25–April 29
The late Hartell (1902–1995) was both a painter and a professor of architecture and painting at Cornell University. His figurative work has a spirited, lustrous quality that gained him acclaim and gallery representation in the Northeast. This retrospective at Valley House Gallery is the first show of his paintings in the South.

MARK MESSERSMITH “PAY THE THUNDER NO MIND–LISTEN TO THE BIRDS, AND HATE NOBODY”
March 25–April 29
In his third solo show with the gallery, Messersmith presents large-scale oil paintings that vibrantly depict animals, plants, and insects. The artist’s practice explores narratives that deal with our encroachment on the natural world, pulling from a variety of visual references like Folk art sculptures and Renaissance altarpieces.

THE BOX COMPANY
LUKE HARNDEN “BORBORYGMI”
March 18–April 22
The Box Company will be showing work by the Dallas-based artist Luke Harnden in tandem with Barry Whistler Gallery. Harnden’s multimedia conceptual works incorporate algorithmic processes and mediated imagery through a range of techniques. The Box Company can be visited by appointment (214-597-2034) and on the weekend of the fair from 11 am–5 pm.