It’s also a great opportunity for locals to familiarize themselves with creations from all over the globe at a reasonable general admission ticket price. Last week we published a guide to the best events at this year's Dallas Art Fair.
Just as the fair has grown substantially since 2009, so have all the non-official Art Fair-related happenings, parties and special programs put on by local galleries and institutions, priding themselves in challenging the collector status quo.
So, if you’re looking to dig a little deeper into the world of North Texas art, here are the four must-see spaces to expand your mind with offbeat shows.
New Media Contemporary
Exposition Park, 830 Exposition Ave., Suite 102, DallasFriday, April 5, and Saturday, April 6, 6 p.m. – midnight
Sunday, April 7, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.
The New Media Contemporary is the latest addition to hip and ever-evolving Exposition Park. The area has been an art hub for generations and gallerist James Talambas remains true to tradition. The gallery is experimental, blending non-traditional new media with performance art. Over the weekend, Talambas is hosting a rigorous schedule for Art Week, including Friday’s Emerging Artists Opening Night with media artists Taylor Cleveland, Jarret Crepeau, Jules Jung and Jiatong Yao, among others.
On Saturday night, the New Media Contemporary hosts Molten Plains with live sound and visuals by James Talambas, Kory Reeder, Sarah Ruth Alexander and Monte Espino. On Sunday, the gallery is throwing a coffee shop pop-up for those who may have had too many glasses of Champagne at the Art Fair.
In Talambas’ eyes, the Dallas Art Fair is a great opportunity for his artists to be seen by interested collectors who may wander into his beautiful space.
“I think the value that we bring to our neighborhoods and communities as working-class artists is really the heart and soul of Dallas,” Talambas says. “The reason we can tout about Dallas artists showing at the Whitney or any other major institution is because we cultivated these artists to begin with. It’s our job as gallerists and promoters to not be gatekeepers but conduits of culture.”
Small Talk, SP/N Gallery
University of Texas at Dallas, 3020 Stewart Drive, RichardsonFriday, April 5, 1–6 p.m.
Saturday, April 6, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
UTD is pushing the envelope again with a fine arts program that’s becoming more experimental every year. SP/N Gallery, located on the university campus, is hosting Small Talk, an exhibition curated by Laura Hyunjhee Kim and SV Randall that runs through April 26. Small Talk is an ongoing work in progress with several multimedia performance art installations inspired by the mechanisms of a Rube Goldberg machine, a device and system that perpetuates motion.
The gallery is open for visitors to enjoy as the artwork is being made, installed or performed before the grand closing reception at the end of the semester. Small Talk offers the work of 19 graduate-level Visual Performing Arts students including Maulin Agrawal, Parul Bhatia, Maureen Okwulogu, Tina Vahed, Vajihe Zamaniderkan and Célia Hay, among others. Hay, a French-born experimental filmmaker, will show a series of five films throughout the exhibition, shot with Super 8 film, with poetry, ritualistic gestures and performance art.
“The Crying Mountain and Other Poems is a piece of expanded cinema dealing with drifting, intimacy, and journaling,” Hay says. “The films and poems will be created in parallel with one another as the exhibition goes on and assembled into an ever-updating dialogue, in the manner of a volume of poetry written across space, a sort of ‘film-poem marathon,’ where one new film is created each week in the gallery and assembled with the previous installments of the piece over the course of the exhibition.”
Soy de Tejas
Arts Fort Worth, 1300 Gendy St., Fort WorthFriday, April 5 – Sunday, June 23, 6–9 p.m.
Soy de Tejas is a multidisciplinary, multidimensional and mixed-media extravaganza focusing on the cutting edge of contemporary Latinx art. The show, curated by Rigoberta Luna, co-owner and director of Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, ambitiously presents over 90 works of art by nearly 40 Texas-based Latinx artists. The show will include sculptures, paintings, drawings, multimedia installations and experimental films easily covering some of the best Latinx art Texas has to offer. Opening to the public April 5, Soy de Tejas shows the work of artists Francisco Moreno, Cande Aguilar, Chris Marin, Natalia Rocafuerte, Christian Cruz, Bella Maria Varela, José Villalobos and Jasmine Zelaya, among many others. This is the show to catch when looking for the latest in young Latinx art in a beautifully curated, pristine space.
“There’s a lot of energy from all over coming into DFW this week,” Luna says. “Many people coming for the fair may not be able to travel to places where some of these artists are from, places like Brownsville. I feel that this is an opportunity to show talent through Latinx artists and hopefully viewers get to experience it, because these artists have a lot to say about what’s going on in their home state.”
Corey Godfrey's "A Woman's Work Is Never Done" is one of the pieces on display this month at Kettle Art.
Corey Godfrey
Femme Visions Closing Reception
Kettle Art Gallery, 2650-B Main St.Saturday, April 6, 2–5 p.m.
Kettle Art Gallery is appreciated beyond the Deep Ellum art scene; its admirers are found all over Texas. Gallery owner Frank Campagna and his wife Paula work hard to show a well-organized and curated program of established and emerging Texas artists — some of whom have gone on to successful careers in coastal cities but come back for opportunities at Kettle.
For visitors to Dallas, this is the art gallery to go to when you’re looking to discover great work from local talent that most likely will be selling at three times the price in just a few years. This weekend marks the closing of Femme Visions, with work from artists Corey Godfrey, Jennifer Wallace and Lauren Fleniken. The show explores femininity through the intersection of these three artists with very different but unique practices and marks the 15th anniversary of Godrey’s first show at the artist incubator of a space.
“Kettle has withstood the test of time and through all of the changes in Deep Ellum,” Godfrey says. “Frank has always been open and had the guts to put unique Dallas art at the forefront when no one else did. For Femme Visions, it was important to show a confluence of different levels of artistic careers in honor of Women’s History Month.”
