2013 Retrospective

Looking back at 2013 is a representation of what I saw or experienced that I thought was worthy of another mention.  Of course this is not intended to be a top 10 list or even representative of all the great exhibitions that took place in North Texas during the year.  Met lots of wonderful people and had a chance to help work on an important exhibition for one of my best friends.  I still found myself focusing on a few galleries where I have found, in most cases, consistency in quality and friendly people.   As a gallery owner, if you want people to visit your gallery you have to offer challenging, fun, thought-provoking art without being cute and most importantly you have to be able to communicate with those that show an interest and taking valuable time to visit your gallery.  It does no good if you can't even say hello.

Finally started going back to the DMA on a regular basis and they have not disappointed either.  Stupid - in the early 1990's I visited the museum at least 50 times a year and I was a paying member too.   When they started charging admission I bet I didn't average one visit a year until they dropped the admission fee.

Congratulations to the Dallas Museum of Art for three great exhibitions!
 

Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take  Photograph: DMA

Concentrations 56: Stephen Lapthisophon                                                  

Cindy Sherman: Untitled Film Still #21 (1978). Photograph: MoMA, NY

 

A trip to Houston to see the Forrest Bess Retrospective at The Menil Collection.  Visited lots of galleries during this trip and for the first time Hiram Butler Gallery where Mark Fox (I think I have that correct) and Tony Fehr had solo exhibitions.

Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible

It was nice to catch-up with Robyn O'Neil at Talley Dunn Gallery for her solo exhibition We Spoke Mirage.  Wonderful new work  that was somewhat reminiscent of the Forrest Bess exhibition at The Menil

 

 

To kickoff the fall exhibitions Oliver Francis Gallery started the year on a high note

Anthony Keith Giannini Crossing The Line

 

Absolutely one of my favorite artists and has been since the mid 90's is John Wilcox.  When I was at VAL doing exhibitions and artist's talks John showed up and made my year...I think that was around 2008.  The much anticipated exhibition of John's work since his passing at his former home/studio hosted by Barry Whistler Gallery

 

Michael Bise exhibition Life or Death at The MAC blew me away.  I want to see more! and more! and more!  Michael Bise - Can I please visit next time I am in Houston?

My good friend Brad Tucker was everywhere in 2013.  I think I saw every exhibition in North Texas.
   

Circuit 12

El Centro College

Old Jail Art Center

Congratulations to Michael Wynne on his "Life's Short Play Naked" retrospective exhibition at Ware:Wolf Haus.   Thanks Michael for being a great friend and allowing me to help on this exhibition.  Thank God 2013 is almost over.  My friend 2014 will be a BIG year!  Looking forward to seeing exhibitions from NYC to Houston with you!

 

Stephen Lapthisophon continued his positive influence on North Texas...

MyMyMisfire 

 Deep Ellum

Richland College

 

Conduit Gallery

Dallas Museum of Art

 

Some individual works that I saw in 2013 that will definitely keep you wondering and then some are just wonderful.  They all resonated one way or another.

Lana Paninchul at Oliver Francis Gallery

David Aylesworth at Holly Johnson Gallery 

Vincent Falsetta at The MAC  -  Vincent!!! 

Celia Eberle at CentralTrak - so nice to see some older work by one of the most important Texas artists working today.

 

 Suzan Frecon at the Birmingham Museum of Art.  I have fallen for Suzan Frecon works on paper.  I want want want to live with her work!
 

Waddy Armstrong at Liliana Bloch Gallery - Absolutely stunning!  Congratulations Liliana on your new adventure.  I am looking forward to seeing what you bring to the gallery scene.

 

Congratulations to a fairly new friend to me

Pedro Vélez for being selected to the 2014 Whitney Biennial.  Pedro, I will be at the Whitney to celebrate this important event with you!  I can't wait to visit and see the studio too. 

Courtesy of Pedro Velez.

 

Congratulations everyone! Happy New Year! Looking forward to a great 2014!



Life's Short Play Naked

I had an opportunity to work with my friend and exceptional artist, Michael Wynne, on his exhibition at Ware:Wolf:Haus in west Dallas.  This is the first exhibition I've had an opportunity to work on since leaving VAL in 2010 and it was exhausting hard very satisfying work.   

 

WARE:WOLF:HAUS is hosting Michael Wynne’s first US Retrospective, Life's Short - Play Naked.  The show will include several works from the last two decades of Wynne’s expansive oeuvre.

 

 

In Wynne’s Pissin’ Calvin Series he has produced a body of work in which the excesses of action painting are parodied by mixing the ridiculous color and scale of abstract expressionism with imagery culled from rear view window decals, comic strips, children’s television programs and rock-and-roll. The work clashes the history of abstraction with kitsch culture in a no non sense move.

 

 

Wynne has maintained an interest in responding to Minimalism by way of work that is freed of the burden of academic, philosophical concerns and of the superficial spirituality that is used to market work that could truly be made by all. In his Rubber Stamp Paintings Wynne uses language as a way to contaminate the pure surface of Minimalist painting.  

 

In the most recent works, Wynne takes a workman like approach to create modest paintings which are relatively small in scale using supplies from local hardware stores and hobby shops. Wynne’s banner pieces, neon works and tombstones will also be presented in this historic exhibition.

Michael Wynne

 

Ware:Wolf:Haus is a warehouse space located in Trinity Groves area just west of downtown Dallas.  It is a incubator for experimentation and collaborative effort to show rad things that may or may not be perceived as art.

 

Michael Wynne was raised on a farm in the country town of Kirvin, Texas (population 64) where he maintains a studio. Wynne has been a part of the Dallas art scene since the mid 1980’s and has had solo exhibitions at Foster Goldstrom Gallery in New York, University Club of Chicago, Plush Gallery in Dallas and CSAW in Houston. He is currently represented by Oliver Francis Gallery in Dallas.

Opening held on October 19 with a performance by Inferno Texino
Half-Time event: October 26 from 6 to 9pm
Closing event:      November 2 from 6 to 9pm

 

Ware:Wolf:Haus

425 Bedford Street

Dallas, TX 75212

 

Michael Wynne studio visit - April 27.

Spent a couple of hours visiting Michael Wynne's studio on the way back from Houston on Saturday. 

Found this nice little gem in a stack of small paintings, Coke #1, 2008 

 

Also, got a chance to see Michael's new 11 foot long "White" painting that is at or near completion.

My My Misfire

Spent some time at Deep Ellum Windows for the one-day pop up exhibition curated by Stephen Lapthisophon on Saturday. 

Michael Mazurek -  "House Plant" 

Lana Paninchui - "Foie Gras"

 

Sharon Turner -  "Established"  

Hayley Fowler -  "I'd rather be sleeping" performance
 

Pierre Krause - "Ritual", detail

 

Pierre Krause, a student at University of Texas at Dallas, work was a pleasant surprise.  A small unlit room with an arrangement of found objects.  Raw, very much like the space.

 

 Pierre Krause -   "Ritual", detail

 

Stephen Lapthisophon - "untitled", Hannah Hudson - "Non Meaning" 

 Michael Wynne - "All My Scars Are on the Inside"

 

 Michael Wynne's first peformance piece  - "Sweeping Up"

 

I showed up at Deep Ellum Windows at noon and happy I did.  Michael Wynne had his first peformance piece and I was able to record most of it.  See the link for Sweeping Up above to read about the peformance piece.  See this link for the recording.

Sweeping up: Essay by Michael Wynne

Broom with Red Painted Handle.
Mason Jars with Dust from “My My Misfire” exhibition site.
Framed Dollar Bill signed, dated and inscribed “Beer Boner”

On May 1st 1970 Joseph Beuys with two of his students swept the Karl-Marx-Platz following the annual May Day Parade. After the Germans celebrated their Labour Day holiday they left the “guest workers” from other countries to do the clean-up. Beuys joined in and, after making his point, sold the rubbish to Rene Block who deposited his collection in the Neues Museum in Nurmberg.

This brings to mind another artist who a few decades earlier did janitor duty at his gallery. When Robert Rauschenberg finished sweeping the floor at The Stable Gallery he stood in front of his painting and was paid for one thing and not the other. Just like everyone I’ve ever known he took his money, bought some beer, went home and tried to relax.

When I dream of my grandfather (and I do quite often) I dream of him in his feed store. As a small boy my job as part of the family was to put the coke bottles in the wood racks and to sweep the concrete floor. I would take a handful of red cleaning powder, throw it on the floor and then sweep it back up. I thought it was a strange thing to do making the floor dirty in order to clean it.

As a younger man during the depression my grandfather would jump a train to the oil fields and roughneck to feed his wife and child. When I knew my grandfather he was the age I am now. He was happy to stand in his feed store. I was happy to sweep the floor.

In my dream, after I’ve done my chores, I go behind the sacks of feed and climb down the stairs into the world under the floor. I’ve often dreamed of this place which never existed. It is a room made of concrete with a channel of running water cutting through. I jump the channel and go into a large gymnasium type shower room. There is never anyone there but I can tell that soldiers have recently showered and left. In the floor is a trap door that I lift and climb down a ladder into a world under that world. It is full of dull metallic walls and machines. In it are generators and water heaters for the worlds above. There is no color except for a red sign whose white letters I read but can never remember. I go through a narrow passage to the left into a large room that contains art I made but forgot about. I’ve been away a long time so it is dusty and needs sweeping which I do. It’s my room and I’m happy to be there.

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Thanks to Vicki Fowler and Randall Garrett who swept Dallas floors before me. Also check out Larry Leichliter’s “Davey” (Adventure Time episode 56a)

Matter of Fact Minimalism

recent paintings by Michael Wynne


Tender Trap


Drunk Tank


Nick Lowe


Kenneth Mars

Wynne is interested in making minimalist paintings with a non-spiritual, mystical or of religious interest.  He has been doing matter of fact minimalist paintings since his college days in the late 70’s.  In the most recent works, Wynne is taking a workman like approach to the most democratic of all art forms to create modest paintings which are relatively small in scale using supplies from local hardware stores and hobby shops.

Best of 2012 - individual works of art

Best Works of Art from 2012
My 2nd installment of the Best of...I did not include anything I added to my collection, however I would love to have everyone of them.  I primarily stuck with Texas artists.  Of course the order could change depending on how I feel at any given time.   What do I know.  

 1. The Circled Square, by Margaret Meehan, cast aluminum, vintage glitter glass, glue, glue stick at Conduit Gallery. 

 

2. a page from a sketchbook (about 70 works) by Michael Wynne that I first saw during the year.  He is not 1st because he would not let it go.   

 

3. this work on paper by Stephen Lapthisophon at his studio

 

 

4. Wolf with Red Eyes by Zoe Leonard at the Dallas Museum of Art

 
 

5. Parisian Woman, by Akio Takamori, porcelain figure with underglazes, framed archival pigmented ink print on hahnemuhle sugar cane paper. Part of a group show at Ft. Worth Contemporary Arts.

 

6. This painting by David Aylesworth entitled "Nightingale Without" at Inman Gallery

7. Francisco Moreno portrait, by Francisco Moreno at Oliver Francis Gallery 

8. Bagdad Bass Club installation by Brad Tucker at UTD.

9. These 2 works by Jeff Zilm at Oliver Francis Gallery

 

10. this piece "Twins" by Chris Powell