Currently on view at Link & Pin in South Austin is Synchronicity, a collection of recent portraits by painter Cheryl Finfrock and photographs by Eva Weiss dating back to 1972. On a crusade for universality, the exhibition ties the artists’ breadths together through their common subjects, which focus on the inelegance of being human. This candid exploration of people before and between performances or seminal moments combines incredibly similar but independently created works — a meaningful coincidence.
Mark di Suvero: Metal Like Paper
Mark di Suvero: Steel Like Paper is an exhibition at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas featuring work from the monumental sculptor’s more than sixty-year career. Remaining tethered to poetic themes of humanity are 30 sculptures and over 40 drawings and paintings. Color erupts in his images, which constantly change with perspective. The largest exhibition of di Suvero’s work since his solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975, here his abstract futurist gestures continue to lean towards optimism and joy — a contained, frenetic energy.
Gabriel Dawe’s “Ode to Futility” at Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas
A myth and biblical narrative, The Tower of Babel follows the endeavor of society to build a structure so glorious it could bring them in touch with the heavens. However, when understood as a threat toward God, the single language of humankind was divided, shattering efforts to finish the construction. The myth tells us that unearned glory was the Babylonian’s demise. Artist Gabriel Dawe says their pursuit was an “epic exercise in futility.”
In his solo exhibition Ode to Futility, Dawe washes this ancient story with a modern interpretation, veering away from the long-established understanding of the people as arrogant in their pursuit to raise themselves to a heavenly existence on Earth. He displays gossamer-thin sheets of gold leaf upon numerous jigsaw puzzles, both hanging and built into megalithic towers, and meandering throughout the space is one of the artist’s signature Plexus installations of colored string. The plane of glinting towers at Talley Dunn Gallery is situated within the prismatic illusions of light created by the fibers.
Choreographed to the space so that its perceived structure changes with every step, Dawe beguiles the viewer with the woven site-specific installation. Thin, colored strands of embroidery threaded uniformly stretch between wooden supports on the floor, ceiling, and walls across one-hundred feet in the gallery. Materializing light, he connects individuals to that which is unseen, transitioning everything in the gallery into one ethereal experience. The towers, fraught with their narrative of uncertainty, are swaddled in moments of blissful clarity.
Further stepping away from the dialogue of observable reality in Ode to Futility, Dawe invites exhibit-goers into a golden cosmos contained in two black arches. The portal-like displays pull us into a version of the myth where perhaps the builders were not condemned. Missing No. 30 and several similar circular jigsaw puzzles covered in gold leaf are hung, glimmering on a black surface.
Scintillating throughout the gallery are sculptural towers of precisely stacked cardboard puzzle pieces. The forms are made from layers of jigsaw puzzle pieces produced in the same die cut, and sit upon stylized wooden pedestals with arched doorways and windows. Study no. 7 (with gold leafing), a tower built of golden puzzle pieces, seemingly rises and falls simultaneously. Dawe exhibits several variations of The Tower of Babel in the gallery: walls are tall and short, paths ascend and descend, and stairs cascade steeply and gradually. In a moment, the viewer sees the demise of the society which built the tower, but Dawe ruminates on their pursuit of building, distancing them from being victims of illusions of grandeur. To touch something higher is to see the beauty in fragments, which he reminds us still remain pristine.
Hanging on opposite walls are puzzles of more than four by six feet of The Tower of Babel by painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Golden Path No. 10, hung at the front of the gallery, is complete, fully locked together by the tabs of the puzzle pieces. Upon the works, Dawe lays a gold labyrinth meant to be followed by the eyes, while the puzzle on the far wall remains untouched — only a handful of puzzle pieces missing from the image.
Arranged on a gallery wall, Dawe further reinterprets the ill-fated utopia through various expressions of coveted artworks, such as Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, René Magritte’s The Son of Man, and Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Incomplete puzzles of these as well as master paintings by other artists are hung on a wall, calling into question the meaning of the lost pieces. Without every puzzle piece present, the viewer still knows these images. Dawe continues to pay homage to incomplete work, juxtaposing revered paintings with puzzles he designed, manufactured, and gilded in gold. Ironically written on a small scrap of paper and pinned to the wall, nestled between the gallery of artworks, are the words “all here,” perhaps referencing complete understanding even in futile moments.
Dawe intertwines opulence with corruption and mystery with myth in this exhibition. His modern understanding of the story of The Tower of Babel leads him to a profoundly personal place, saying, “In my life’s journey, I’ve tirelessly searched inside and outside of myself for answers. I’m not sure I’ve found any, but I’ve come to realize that the most insightful journeys are inwards.” The anthropological towers glinting in the darkness of their demise, incomplete puzzles, and illusions of light illustrate the significance of immateriality. This exhibition is a meditation on the creation of art and exalts the artist, who is considering the value of creation in both existence and absence.
“Natalie Wadlington: Places that Grow” at the Dallas Contemporary
Far from her roots nestled in the central California valley, Natalie Wadlington makes her institutional debut at Dallas Contemporary with the solo exhibition Places that Grow. The show displays precise narrative paintings of childhood excursions on enormous, vibrant canvases. Set in highly domesticated spaces, the scenes lean heavily on the atmosphere of youthful wonder and innate care for the Earth, all set upon backdrops of dramatic Texas skies.
The show features a new series of paintings that utilize various elements of the outdoors that are often overlooked and under examined in adulthood. From dusk to dawn, characters crouch to inspect and save insects, such as bees clung to the water’s surface in Pool in Fall (2022), asserting the environmental undertones of the show. Wadlington underscores the importance of curiosity, which innately fosters protection for Mother Earth.
With a consoling human presence and themes of rejuvenation, Wadlington’s paintings soften the harsh realities of environmental destruction and encourage nourishment. Repeated depictions of water are found throughout the exhibit, most notably in End of Summer (2022)and Front Yard in Sunset (2022). The artist paints saturated, striated hues reflecting setting suns into water puddles and pools, contrasting drab, often man-made foregrounds of pavement, mowed grass, and in one case, a sprawling white plastic chair.
In Front Yard in Sunset (2022), Wadlington fills two 84 x 84-inch panels, balancing the end of day and the edge of night. She captures resistance to the tiredness and exhaustion at a day’s end in vibrant hues. Fiery evening sunshine soon turns to cool moonlight as pinks and purples glow upon skin and through sprawling tree limbs. A particularly active painting of girls capturing a spider for inspection and playing with a dog, the artist lures viewer into the scene, which plays out underneath a mystical evening sky.
Swimming at Night (2022) feels as though the viewer is let in on a secret: it’s an exciting excursion into the night, beneath a veil of stars cloaking the land. Aglow in a full moon’s silvery-blue light, the life of animals and swaying trees and cold grass come alive. Patterns created by nature fill the painting, including the texture of stones, a turtle’s back, and a sprig of pine needles creating ripples in water. Wadlington repeatedly exhibits the simple beauty of the outdoors in the vastness of her skies, and in the mundane details her characters carefully examine.
Elusive twilight and evening skies guide the exhibit, urging viewers to feel childlike wonder through the paintings. In her dramatically stylized depictions, Wadlington draws much from her new home in College Station, Texas to reflect the vivacity of her stories during distinctly different times of day. Digging in the Rain (2021) employs darker tones than other works in the show — it encapsulates the fight between rain clouds and fading sunlight in an intense storm, while drops pelt the scene’s desperate characters. The painting shows the frantic mission of a helpless, blue figure clawing at the muddied ground, alongside a dog squirming under a chain link fence. Unlike her other paintings, this dreary work holds delicate despair that mirrors the grim ecological narrative Wadlington attempts to combat.
Places that Grow is composed of scenes capturing seemingly solitary moments. Paling moonlight envelopes Early Morning (2022), a sleepy snapshot of a child stooping to feed a stray cat. Completely immersed in their mission to save the bees or excavate fossil-filled flowerbeds or find wildlife in the night, Wadlington’s characters exude a comforting sense of home found in nature throughout the show.
This is an exhibit of stolen time, which captures the spirit and movements of youth in their exploration of natural curiosities. Using her adolescence to guide the show, Wadlington creates semi-autobiographical vignettes of memories in the great outdoors that resist simple, whimsical narratives.
Places That Grow is on view through August 21 at the Dallas Contemporary.
Nothing Goes to Waste
On view at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, until May 7 was, Nothing Goes to Waste, an exhibit complete with works of reused materials. Existing vinyl was collaged for the title at the opening of the gallery, setting precedent for the pieces in the exhibit. Commenting less on the need for sustainability, reused materials are the mere impetus for the show’s focus on the curiosity of past lives of various mediums used in artworks.
Some pieces are playful, like Susie Ganch’s 2019 Have a Nice Day from the Please Recycle this Bag series. Created with countless plastic shopping bags, Ganch tufted rug-like pieces adorn the gallery walls at both entrances to the showroom.
Olaniyi R. Akindiya’s Til Death Do Us Part #2, 2020, overcomes the space but was made with what could be condensed to a small stack of media slides. The sculptural patchwork of time depicts a couple on their wedding day: mannequins stand beneath an umbrella that is a complete collage of image slides from presumedly the history of the individuals and between the couple. The chainmail photo slide costumes show the movement of memories and the physical movement of the outfits on the models. The corset, crown, dress, and flowing tuxedo-tailedjacket of combined images faintly project upon the walls into distorted memories.
Displacement and Proximity, Matt Manalo’s 2021 work, is composed of zip ties, rubber bands, wool, raw cotton, laser jet prints on transparencies, and found woven trays. Immediately upon seeing the piece, the viewer can sense an oceanic feeling. It resembles water relentlessly lapping the shore with seaweed, debris, and memories of time. Strings of rubber bands, wool, and cotton sway gently in the gallery space, emulating a sea breeze, bringing life to the piece. On transparent circles are layers of memories, beaten and textured by the harshness of the ocean and time. The images of smiling people in hula skirts absorb the viewers into memories they never experienced. The piece is a time capsule, weathered and displaced.
Near Manalo’s work is Bing, A Connecticut Yankee Has Red Rash by Bennie Flores Ansell, which looks much like washed-up kelp hanging from the ceiling. The piece overcomes the gallery and is a grand, tangled mess of memories made from crocheted strips of film negatives. The reddish-brown film casts light onto the wall, crossing the sculpture into a changeable dimension.
With transparency film, concave mirrors, and light to cement ephemeral moments, Bennie Flores Ansell created Find the Sky 2022. With cut images of skyscapes pinned to the wall, you can see images more clearly through circular mirrors laying on the flat surface. Ansell captured fleeting moments of sky light in a playful and complaintive way.
Plastic Panel Stag, Calder Kamin, with plastic bags, steel, foam, wood, and a pair of glass eyes, produced a stag head to hang on the wall. Twisted brown bags fashion into twine for the shag rug-like texture of fur. The artist does not hesitate to force the viewer to think of waste, dressing the stag’s antlers with ornamental plastic shopping bags. The animal is majestic and exists quietly within its habitat, disrupted by non-ecofriendly items.
Jeff Forster’s works, including Objects of Lithification and Glaze Scape Conglomerate, resemble fossils and artfully crafted petrified wood. The artist’s experimentation goes right using recycled and reclaimed clay and glazes. Forster’s chaotic ceramics mimic geologic processes and bespeak its beauty.
Postal Quilt, Leigh Suggs, 2020, is a quilt of thousands of security envelopes from people all over the country. The precisely woven and stitched blanket combines various patterns and tessellations, connecting the individual lives across the country. During a solitary period, mail through the post kept people involved in society.
For the artists, doing work with post-consumed materials is more a birthplace of their creativity. The tangibility of memory is questioned by many of the works in the gallery, exploring the use of light, shadows, and reflections as mediums. The artists are able to capture ephemeral moments for the viewers in the physical world. Many of the pieces in the exhibit are studies of previously used materials, working to discern their viability to exist as something new.
Sustainable Reuse: Robert Jackson Harrington at St. Edward’s University Fine Arts Gallery, Austin
The exhibit’s artworks cataclysmically combine color, shape, texture, and form to create visually disconcerting pieces that compel viewers to stoop and investigate.
Held in Suspension
The beauty, though imposed, is “held in suspension,” showing the delicate tension between fashioning one’s self into what society wants a woman to look like versus self-expression free of these expectations.