Dallas art-lovers should be appropriately jealous of Fort Worth this weekend. While both visual arts communities slip out of their respective Summer dormancies on Saturday, stretching out their creative limbs with exciting new exhibitions, those galleries in Fort Worth have unified in a Fall Gallery Night. There are printed guides for the thing resting in coffee shops all over Dallas, with write-ups and maps luring patrons to explore all of the city's fresh exhibitions. They're having extended hours, too. If you go check it out, you'll have from noon to 9 p.m. to take it all in.
Here in Dallas, that is not the case. Yes, every gallery in town is showing something new that you want to see, but they're cramming it all into to that standard, three-hour window. I've had to bootleg Klonopin just to devise a strategy of attack. It's a real kicker.
Turn the situation into a positive. View Saturday's Super Moon of Art Openings as a challenge of your resolve, curiosity and sprinter's endurance. Here's a list of most, and yet still not all, gallery openings happening in Dallas on Saturday, September 8. Oh, and to add an extra obstacle to your evening, the openings occur in both the Design District and in Deep Ellum.
Design District
Jim Public's Truck (3 to 8 p.m.) "A Dry Heat: Paintings by Jim Public and the Mohave Desert" Our favorite gallery with four-wheel drive will set up shop on Dragon Street, "quite possibly on the 1001 block between Payne and Howell." Here you'll find nine new paintings, co-created by Public and the desert itself. Two years in the making, the series is a beautiful experiement in evaporation. Public built a Plexiglas paneled contraption and flooded his canvases with panels of pigment. He abandoned them for two years, allowing nature to strip them as it saw fit. Now, they are complete. Public would say, if you asked him, that many try to inflict too much personal power on their art. He'd also say "The world is bigger and lovelier when you relax." Check out the collection. It's in his truck.
Galleri Urbane (Meet the artist, from 4 to 7 p.m.) "Aggregates: Ordinary Objects, Unusual Sculptures" Galleri Urbane is a favorite because it curates consistently interesting and enticing exhibitions, and on Saturday you'll learn the backstory of its newest offering "Aggregates: Ordinary Objects, Unusual Sculptures" by artist Jessica Drenk. She'll be on hand for a chat from 4 to 7 p.m., explaining her gorgeous sculptures summoned from natural sources, like lathed wooden ribbons. You could get quite lost in them, and that's by design. Drenk is drawn towards the repeating themes of infinity that exist inherently within her muses. Expect a visual addiction. Conduit (6 to 8 p.m.) Man, Conduit is bringing it this Saturday. I want to spend time with all three of the collections showing. There's work by sleep researcher and photographer Susan Kae Grant; the extremely exciting visual worlds of Mimi Kato (seriously, you'll wish you could move into a two-dimensional image); and a show in the project space by Kris Pierce (of Fort Worth's art collective, HOMECOMING!) called "Final Boss Of The Internet."
Cohn Drennan (6 to 8 p.m.) "4austin4rtists" We've already pointed out Debra Broz' freaky fanged bunnies on this blog, which combines her love of found items and dark humor, anthropomorphism and genetic experimentation. Still, I want to see what else that gal has up her porcelain-loving sleeve. Broz is joined by three other Austin artists for this show, so you'll get a look at the 2D and 3D work of Jerry DeFrese; the light boxes and video-meets-sculpture installation of Brooke Gassiot; and modernist paintings by Chris White.
Holly Johnson Gallery (6 to 8 p.m.) Tommy Fitzpatrick "Electric Labyrinth" This Dallas-born Arlington-based artist will take you down the rabbit hole with his 3D renderings of images. Scaffold-like and highly architectural in nature, his paintings are pushed forward with richly flushed backgrounds. It's going to have your mind all messed up, and in a really good way.
Red Arrow Gallery (6 to 9 p.m.) Print Industry Shop It's a collaborative show, featuring work by eight different contemporary artists with a street-inspired, print-screening bend. FAILURE, who you might have seen in the back space of Dallas Contemporary at the beginning of the year, will show work, but so will a whole mess of others.
Circuit 12 Contemporary (6 to 10 p.m.) "New Future" Still a new gallery, Circuit 12 has become the spot on Dragon Street to explore work by emerging young talent. Its new show carries that same theme, inviting six artists to show you their take on space, symmetry, deconstruction, fluidity and more. It will be a place of creative exploration, where the methods you've come to know as standard-issue visual fare will be smashed up and reexamined.
Cris Worley Fine Arts (6 to 8 p.m.) Howard Sherman "List of Demands" We had the luxury of simply pivoting into Cris Worley when it was attached to Galleri Urbane -- man, those were good times. Now it's moved into its own space at 1415 Slocum St #104. Be a good neighbor and visit its new digs, while you're there check out its new show, a solo joint by Houston-based painter Howard Sherman. A former comic strip artist, Sherman tugs at Basquiat's dready pigtails in his current work, which mixes brightly humorous, neo-expressionist goods with more classical painting techniques and a strong overlay of permanent marker. Bring it on, Sherman. I want to taste what you're dishing out.
Photographs Do Not Bend (5 to 8 p.m.) Jesús Moroles, "Rings of Granite" Of course this show is mandatory viewing: it's one of the first branching out exhibitions for this gallery, which until now, has been where we've gone to see the best photography in Dallas. PDNB wants you to know that its got more mediums to honor than simply its namesake, so it's getting frisky and experimental. I like a frisky gallery. This show celebrates Texas sculptor Jesús Moroles, who's work can be viewed all over the damn place, from China to Egypt and even a 64 ton sucker at the MoMA. Here we'll see a selection of his smaller pieces, as well as some hanging granite rings that run a little larger -- one has a diameter of 45 inches.
Deep Ellum and Expo Park
500X Gallery (7 to 10 p.m.)
For any gallery to exist for 35 years is an astounding feat, but for 500X to do it is even more impressive. At its core this space is a collective, meaning that new talent must step in and replace members as they move on to other projects or cities. And still, it's done it since 1978. Damn, girl. You're lookin' good at 35.
The exhibition on Saturday is a celebration of those artful humans who compose the webbing of 500X -- sixteen of them, in fact. It should be a huge night at this Expo Park joint (drinks tend to thin out towards the end of these shows, so go early). Make a point to swing by.
Kirk Hopper Fine Art (6:30 to 8:30 p.m.) Roger Winter "Between Heaven and Earth" It's a coming home party of sorts for the work of Roger Winter. The former SMU professor now lives and creates in flux, popping between Santa Fe and New York -- a luxury earned through five decades of proven success. I'm excited about this collection, which blends dreamy snapshot scenes of daily life with poppy punches of color. Warning: you might want to spend some time with this one.
