If you do only one thing on Sunday, visit the Dallas Museum of Art. You may very well need all day. Currently, in addition to its large permanent collection, the DMA has not one, not three, but five killer exhibitions.
Michaël Borremans: As sweet as it gets The most powerful painting show by a contemporary artist I have ever seen opens at the Dallas Museum of Art Sunday. Belgian artist, Michaël Borremans, creates mystery on the canvas through figurative painting, filing inanimate objects with a sense of humanity, and obscuring the life from any human forms. There's a tension in his paintings, drawings and films that make them impossible to derive clear narrative of meaning from, yet the work seems burdened with significance. At once surreal yet straightforward, and simple yet complicated. This exhibition is beautiful. See it through July 5. Admission to this special exhibition is $16.
Between Action and the Unknown: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Sadamasa Motonaga Before you go, if you, like me, need to read up on Gutai, an important group in Japanese art history, there are lots of resources at a Google search's length. But if you want to hear an informed perspective that compacts the significance of exhibiting the paintings of just two of the group's members, Kazuo Shiraga and Sadamasa Motonaga, and which works stand out, over on Glasstire, Christina Rees maps out her experience with Between Action and the Unknown. The exhibition follows the artists from their formative performance-based paintings (they would hang from ropes or paint with their feet) into their later years after a move to New York. You'll see influences from comics in the work of Motonaga. The paintings are completely engrossing. On display through July 19. Admission is free.
Concentrations 58: Chosil Kil This is the little show that can't be ignored. London-based artist Chosil Kil was inspired by a road trip across Texas to create a landscape littered with pennies and playfully filled with statues of dogs, flesh-colored, floppy slightlyphallic objects, balloons that brush an aluminum plate along the ground as visitors walk through them. She's managed the space that you have navigate through these balloons and large box structures to explore the installation, which creates this state of childlike wonder, rapturously lost in this fabricated world. On display through August 2. Admission is free.
Frank Bowling Map Paintings To highlight the recent acquisition of Bowling's, "Marcia H Travels," which is part of Bowling's map paintings series. These immense and gorgeous works are colorful abstracts for which Bowling used maps to organize paintings. This exhibition includes four other paintings in the series on loan from private collections to recreate a 1971 exhibition at the Whitney. "Marcia H Travels" is the fiery red and purple map of the world. On display through August 2. Admission is free.
Bold Abstractions: Selections from the DMA Collection 1966-1976 Gavin Delahunty must spend most days digging through the Dallas Museum of Art's stock of paintings. This is the second exhibition he's curated with works from the permanent collection and it's a fascinating range of art that serves to connect the Bowling map paintings to the Chosil Kil with paintings by artists the likes of Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella and Julian Stanczak. In the press visit, Delahunty mentioned that at least one of the display has never been exhibited in the DMA before. On display through August 2. Admission is free.
