Outside of the Dallas Art Fair, be sure to save time in your schedule for visiting these not-to-miss exhibitions in the city’s top museums, galleries, and collections.
Francesco Clemente
Dallas Contemporary Design District
April 13–August 25
Unfurling over 1,100 square meters, Francesco Clemente’s exhibition will focus on the Trinity River, a waterway that once neighbored the 1850s French utopian settlement La Réunion. Inspired by the settlement’s interests in natural synergies, craft, religion, and social change, Clemente explores these elements through large-scale site-specific works, such as wall paintings and sculptures. The sculptures, cast from aluminum, will serve as “found objects,” seemingly fished from the river itself, building on motifs from his exhibition “Tide of the Ocean Stories” (2016) at Springs Center of Art in Beijing. The exhibition connects to his broader oeuvre, which plays with historical materials, public role-playing, space, and architecture.
“The Self Service Stories: Twenty-five Years of Fashion, People, and Ideas Reconsidered.”
Dallas Contemporary Design District
April 13–August 25
In conjunction with its 2019 inaugural gala, Dallas Contemporary presents a retrospective of Self Service magazine, “The Self Service Stories: Twenty-five Years of Fashion, People, and Ideas Reconsidered.” As Dallas Contemporary celebrates its 40th anniversary, Self Service observes its 25th—a quarter-century of cutting-edge content creation and original editorial. The magazine’s passionate, multi-hyphenate co-founder, Ezra Petronio, will be in attendance as one of the gala’s Honorary Chairs, alongside Mario Sorrenti and Dennis Freedman.
Mario Sorrenti: Kate
Dallas Contemporary Design District
April 13–August 25
Alongside the “Self Service” retrospective, “Kate,” an exhibition of the work of Mario Sorrenti, will mark Dallas Contemporary’s inaugural gala. Best known for his striking photos of Kate Moss, the storied Italian-born photographer has powerfully experimented in photography and painting since the 1990s. His confident compositions, articulated through light and careful framing, have appeared in numerous publications, such as W, The New York Times, Vogue, and Self Service, and, recently, in his book Kate.
Sterling Ruby: Sculpture
Nasher Sculpture Center Downtown
Now–April 21
Sterling Ruby considers and critiques American culture via a practice in ceramics, textiles, installation, painting, collage, photography, and video. The multifaceted artist—irreverently, honestly—expresses our human inclination toward amassing objects. SCALES, for example, counters Calder’s cheerful abstractions through mobiles supporting the random flotsam of contemporary existence. “Sterling Ruby: Sculpture” will be the first museum survey dedicated to the American artist’s sculptural output and will feature nearly thirty moderate-and large-scale works spanning Ruby’s career.
Analia Saban: Focus
The Modern Fort Worth
Now—May 12
From March 30 to May 12, 2019, The Modern presents the work of the Los Angeles–based artist Analia Saban. In paint, marble, and canvas, Saban stretches the bounds of tradition, pushing scientific experimentation into artmaking, challenging viewers’ perceptions of the very materials with which she works. In Draped Marble, for example, Saban bends and fractures marble, referencing the miraculous drapery of, say, Michelangelo’s Pietà. Simultaneously delicate and malleable, her multifaceted work layers and challenges long-held ideas about our approach to creation itself.
“Topologies”
The Warehouse Farmers Branch
Now—April 13
Gathering more than 100 works created between 1952 and 2016 by 61 artists, “Topologies” looks at how the geometric concept of topology (“logic of place”) influenced and inspired postwar artists to explore themes including permutation and distortion in space, inversions and other shifts in the body’s phenomenological relationship to space, material transition based on gravity and entropy, the politics of displacement, and reconceiving abject encounters between the synthetic and organic. “Topologies” draws works from The Rachofsky Collection, the Dallas Museum of Art, Deedie Rose, and Jennifer and John Eagle. Open by appointment only.
Rochelle Goldberg: born in a beam of light
The Power Station Deep Ellum
Now—April 14
From January 19 to April 14, 2019, The Power Station features “Rochelle Goldberg: born in a beam of light,” a harrowing, philosophic installation featuring light, sculpture, and overturned topography. The New York–based Goldberg often works in hybrid forms that shift, molt, and transform over the course of their existence. Part commentary on the nature of the artwork, part fixation with our contemporary psychological landscape, Goldberg’s display provocatively ruminates on morality and human life. The Power Station will host a special performance relating to “born in a beam of light” on April 10, 6–9 p.m.
Leigh Merrill
Liliana Bloch Gallery Design District
Now—May 5
“Some of the images have some veracity, but more often they suggest a visual hyperbole—an embellished scene circulating around a small detail or object that fascinated me,” says Leigh Merrill on her photo collages, which are composed of (sometimes even hundreds of) different photos and videos she takes in a single location. Her elegant compositions reveal their makeup only with observation, tracing an illusive space that hovers between what is real and what is manufactured. Within the in-between, Merrill evocatively documents our post-truth landscape and, in the absence of authenticity, a deep sense of longing.
Sarah Ball: Bertillon
Conduit Gallery Design District
Now—May 18
Conduit Gallery’s “Bertillon” is a solo exhibition of new paintings by the British artist Sarah Ball. Featuring both small- and large-scale works, “Bertillon” explores prejudice, appearance, and assumption, inspired by the eponymous French police officer and biometrics researcher, Alphonse Bertillon. In a manner reminiscent of contemporary profiling, Bertillon believed that outward appearance was a reflection of inward morality—he sought to define “the relation between the exterior and interior—between the visible surface and the invisible spirit it covers . . .” Ball’s portraits reflect her research on archival mug shots from 19th-century French anarchists and 1960s American Freedom Riders, reframed in a refreshing, piercing light. In conjunction with “Bertillon,” Conduit Gallery will open an exhibition of J. C. Fontanive’s painting and sculptures, “The Ones After the Physical Ones,” and an exhibition in The Project Room of Saraï Delfendahl’s work, “The Models.”
“Accrochage”
galerie frank elbaz Design District
Now—May 29
The gallery will present a group show of work by artists including Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Ja’Tovia Gary, Sheila Hicks, and Mungo Thomson. The exhibition coincides with site-specific installations by Sheila Hicks at the Nasher Sculpture Center, a solo show of Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili taking place at the gallery’s space in April, and Ja’Tovia Gary’s recent show in Paris at galerie frank elbaz. On view will be work that blurs the boundaries of art and craft by Hicks, video art by Gary, an exploration of everyday objects by Thomson, and photography by Alexi-Meskhishvili.
MTV RE:DEFINE
The Goss-Michael Foundation Design District
March 29
During the Dallas Art Fair, past and present will merge at The Goss-Michael Foundation. The Foundation will present an exhibition curated by internationally recognized art consultant Aphrodite Gonou, focused on midcentury Color Field painting. With roots in Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting emerged in the 1940s and ’50s and prioritized large swaths of oscillating color, centralizing color as the painting’s subject.
MTV RE:DEFINE similarly emerges from one tradition, to establish a new one. This year’s March 29 gala at The Statler Hotel marks the eighth annual charity art exhibition and auction, celebrating artist and longtime MTV RE:DEFINE supporter Marc Quinn. Proceeds from MTV RE:DEFINE benefit HIV prevention and education through MTV Staying Alive Foundation and The Goss-Michael Foundation’s commitment to arts education and awareness.
This year, The Goss-Michael Foundation also announced the first annual MTV RE:DEFINE Award, which has been established to recognize excellence in contemporary art by a postgraduate fine arts student.
Erin Stafford: Lovesick
Kirk Hopper Fine Art Deep Ellum
April 13—May 18
Two visceral demands—a desire to be remembered and a fear of being forgotten—underpin Erin Stafford’s “Lovesick.” Stafford, in an effort to revisit the past, manifests her time-travel and this unflinching desire to be known in a series of tableaux within Kirk Hopper Fine Art. Sculptures and installations create a textured atmosphere, draped with mementos, detritus, and the idleness of this yearning. The dreamlike effect will encourage viewers to escape their reality, into a wonderland of mystery and absurdity.
Jonas Wood
Dallas Museum of Art Downtown
Now—July 14
The first major solo museum exhibition of work by the Los Angeles–based painter, “Jonas Wood” comprises over thirty works that grapple with psychology, memory, and the self. Wood’s technique merges photographic preparation with painterly modernism and his subject matter, observed familial dynamics with artful fictions. Taking form in works such as Face Painting, in which an iPhone captures Wood’s daughter applying face-paint before a mirror, Wood’s innovative and thoughtful autobiographical approach makes for an intensely playful—and relevant—commentary on the shifting definitions of public, private, and personal in the digital age.
