| Hidden away in the flatlands of north Texas lies the city of Dallas, a large metropolis noteworthy now more than ever for a growing museum network with large holdings of contemporary art in the downtown arts district; it’s a hub flanked on various sides with young commercial gallery spaces. Fueled by a national interest in contemporary art, and no shortage of money, the Dallas arts district thrives with architectural spaces dedicated to art and performance designed by the likes of Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas, and Norman Foster and Partners. This energy has led to a concentration of new gallery spaces in a former warehouse district on one side of town, complemented by the same concentration of spaces in the design district on the other end. | 
|
John Zotos
Hidden away in the flatlands of north Texas lies the city of Dallas, a large metropolis noteworthy now more than ever for a growing museum network with large holdings of contemporary art in the downtown arts district; it’s a hub flanked on various sides with young commercial gallery spaces. Fueled by a national interest in contemporary art, and no shortage of money, the Dallas arts district thrives with architectural spaces dedicated to art and performance designed by the likes of Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas, and Norman Foster and Partners. This energy has led to a concentration of new gallery spaces in a former warehouse district on one side of town, complemented by the same concentration of spaces in the design district on the other end. Together these spaces exhibit local and international talent with the goal of establishing the city as an art center.
On the east side of downtown, in a warehouse district, Angstrom Projects strives to bring ambitious art to its walls. Currently on view for the first time in Texas is the video, photo collage, and installation art of Drew Heitzler, a participant in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Based in Los Angeles, Heitzler draws upon the foundational position this cinema city occupies in the American psyche in order to subvert assumptions about cultural hegemony, while questioning the myths of progress that typically accompany the representation of Hollywood in general, and the U.S. in particular. For example, Heitzler seizes upon the figure of Thomas Pynchon, the rarely photographed fiction writer whose work examines conspiracy and paranoia. The installation includes a copy of a photograph of a young Pynchon as well as a suite of photo-collage laser prints that supplant “sunny California” with the grim consequences of the regions’ geological-based petrol industry.
In the same area of town a young gallery, Road Agent, showcases a wide range of emerging and established artists. From Japan, Takako Tanabe shows in a work entitled The Beginning, elegant abstract watercolors that resemble drops of rain splashing on the surface of a lake. She takes the time to fabricate everything about her work by hand, frame and all, maintaining total control over a body of work as obsessive as it is conceptual. Late last year a local artist, Raychael Stine, had her first solo show at Road Agent. A skilled painter from an early age, she uses her talents to explore a fantastical imaginary realm populated by an assembled iconography of animals arranged in an anxious, compressed space sometimes flat, and other times with a hint of a horizon as in The Boring of Holes, 2007. Her characters range from weasles and dachtsunds, to delicate mice swept out of control, or otherwise trapped in an abstract space. A compelling new talent on the move, Stine shows promise.
In the Dallas design district Holly Johnson Gallery exhibits the work of established artists from Texas and abroad. In the current show titled Delineation, the treatment of line as a reflection of abstract form and states of mind make for an engaging group show. From Morocco, the New York based artist Jacob El Hanani compels the viewer to contemplate place and states of mind through his suite of complex labor-intensive drawings and watercolors. The surface of these pieces present a lax grid—sometimes circles—in an extremely miniature and tight square or rectangular shape. Conversely, Otis Jones’ Ochre and White, both 2006-2007, convey unlike Hanani, a sense of presence and texture on a much larger scale. Where Hanani’s work seems light and transparent, Jones establishes his work through a sanded and pitted surface, alternating from polished and smooth sections to jagged angles that heighten pictorial tension.
In the same area, PDNB Gallery (Photographs Do Not Bend), exhibits the work of some of the most important master photographers of the 20th century, as well as new and significant talent from an international perspective. The gallery often looks toward Latin America. One such artist is Esteban Pastorino who strives to push experimentation to the limit in order to discover new modes of representation in both mechanical and analog technology. He usually fabricates his own image-making machines ranging from complicated mechanical panoramic camera devices to kite-mounted cameras with remote shutter controls that expose random frames only seen by the artist after development. The results usually contain a focal point with a hazy odd perimeter that blurs toward the borders, obtained from atypical oblique angles that make the subjects look like toys or models as in his series of bull fights Las Ventas, 2006. In the aerial pieces, Pastorino’s method confounds direct vision viewfinder photography, which depends on framing and composition. As the antithesis to this tradition, he engages in play, chance, and discovery by removing the photographer’s eye from the equation. His work becomes an almost surrealist, Duchampian anti-retinal gesture that destabilizes conventional perspectives.
With new art spaces opening throughout the city, Dallas looks forward to a larger art community with relish. This year CADD (Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas) mount their second annual contemporary art fair, while the Dallas Museum of Art continues to exhibit and acquire progressive art. With constant expansions and additions to private and public art spaces and collections it’s hard to keep everything straight. All the more interesting then.
