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Jesús Moroles: Rock, Roll, and Play Its confusing to enter a gallery space that invites you to touch the art. It is even more so when the space beckons you to make and destroy pieces as part of the show. The current installation at the Dallas Museum of Art created by the Texan-born and -based artist Jesús Moroles not only asks but requires that you do precisely that. Located on the cusp of the childrens space at the DMA and the large, triumphal corridor leading to adult art, the location of Moroles installation is befitting of its project in that it is somewhere between the two. On one hand, it asks adults to free themselves of the inhibitions that come with wisdom and age and, on the other, children to ponder the subtle beauties of granite and sound as though they were veterans of vast intellectual experience. For young and old alike, Moroles engenders art with a sense of play, designing two areas of the room–a zone on the floor and a cut-out space along the wall where one finds small pieces of granite that look like r-tinker toys–especially for building, destroying and rebuilding. The invitation to become artist for a moment is irresistible. Beyond that, Moroles sparkling wall of pink and gray woven granite, the two rotating cylinders–one diminutive and the other 10 feet high–and fish-shaped xylophones provide a lesson in the innocence and pleasure of guiltless body rubbing and touch. Through January 30, 2005, at the Gateway Gallery in the Dallas Museum of Art, 214-922-1200.
Turner and Venice If you love the city in idea and form, then this exhibition of work by the 19th-century painter J.M.W. Turner is a must. Turners scintillating views of Venice do more than tickle the eye. These urban vistas transport you back in time to an earlier chapter in the history of abstraction within painting. With a total of 33 oil paintings and some 128 works on paper, its a vast showing of one old masters obsession with the miracles of a city built on water. The careful splash and daub of his brushstroke can be mind-boggling, but Turners watercolors might very well steal the show, especially the burnt umber gouache drawings of Venice at night tucked midway through the exhibition. Through May 30 at the Kimbell Art Museum, Metro 817-654-1034. Reviewed this week.
The Genius of the French Rococo: The Drawings of Franois Boucher (1703-1770) and Bouchers Mythological Paintings This collection of Franois Bouchers work–his cartoons, sketches and marginalia coupled with a set of six magnificently scaled mythological paintings–is proof that, far from being timeless and static, beauty by definition must anchor itself in the present. The problem with the current exhibition at the Kimbell is that it is too simple for our own moment. The show relies too heavily on out-of-date terms and ideas–the works beauty, not to mention the genius (another term so bastardized to have become mere euphemism) of the artist. This is not to say that the precious flounce and fluff of Bouchers figures and ftes are not beautiful. Rather, it is to say that their beauty comes as much from their image and figuration as from the context from which they emerge. Culled from some 10,000 extant drawings, the pieces, while luscious in form and generously drafted, seem somewhat random. The viewer is left pondering the shared qualities of the zaftig female body in Recumbent Female Nude (1742-43) and the picturesque vista of Landscape With a Mill-Pond, Mill Bridge and Boy (c. 1750s). Such curiosity devolves into frustration as one is left wondering if there is any significance in Bouchers shift in focus from the typical imagery of the Rococo fete galante in the 1740s to the fragile rawness of peasant scenes in the 1760s. In a similar vein, willfully absent from the show is a definition of the term Rococo. The show would be more meaningful if the images were presented as part of the rich and vast cultural tapestry of the early 18th century of which they were a part–a tapestry that served both as ground and philosophical seedbed for the revolutions, both American and French, that were to follow. Through April 18 at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Metro 817-654-1034.
Jeremy Red: Winter Journal 2003/2004, Pierogi 2000: Selections From the Flat Files, C.J. Davis: New Work A delicious array of drawings and paintings are now showing at Conduit Gallery. Invariably, the three separate rooms of the greater gallery space inscribe a hierarchy that perhaps goes against the intention of organizers, as the best work is to be found in the deepest, most hidden space of the gallery. There one finds five rectangular fiberboard panels painted in 1950s public-school green by Texas artist C.J. Davis. Before entering the room, one sees an opalescent glass mug, half-full of milk and of the same color green. Revealing a roundabout sense of formalist skill and that Davis is keen on the pretty, the link between the paintings and the mug is color–retro color. The panels are shiny, tight and opaque except for a handful of small, almost vertical mounds that Davis has carefully made from drips of the same 1950s hue of green acrylic paint and then carefully dotted with white paint. Their bumpy landscape-like surfaces bring to mind a creature with one too many nipples. Youll also enjoy making your way through the heterogeneous and precious array of drawings shipped in from the Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn in the opening room and the cheerful bombast and juvenile self-indulgence of Jeremy Reds paintings in the next. Through April 3 at the Conduit Gallery, 214-939-0064.
Photographs by Daniel Gordon What look like images of enticingly boring still-life settings and a man flying lithely through the air? The photographs of the talented young artist Daniel Gordon. If youre the type who gets a kick out of the subtle perversity of the utterly banal, then youll enjoy looking at Daniel Gordons still lifes. Gordon makes photographs of photographs, constructing the whatnot everyday objects of his still lifes from photos of the real thing. Less conceptually powerful but more lyrical, Gordons landscapes make real that deep-seated human desire usually relegated to dream space, namely the will to fly. Gordon carefully orchestrates camera, timer and body as he makes images of himself flying through snowy and flower-laden landscapes. These are mind-probing images you should not miss. Through April 3 at the Angstrom Gallery, 214-823-6456. Reviewed March 18.