6 World-Class Booths to See at the Dallas Art Fair

Mary Hull Webster, Lucia Film Still (2018). Courtesy of Bivins Gallery.

Over a hundred galleries are down in East Texas this week for the 10th edition of the Dallas Art Fair. Earlier this week, we took a look at a bevy of recommended sites and bites around the city. Now we turn to the art. Should you find yourself wandering the halls of the fair’s Fashion Industry Gallery this week, here are six standout booths from artnet member galleries to keep an eye out for.

 

Bivins Gallery, Dallas

Mary Hull Webster, Constellations (2008-18). Courtesy of Bivins Gallery.

Hometown establishment Bivins Gallery presents a solo exhibition of lightbox works by Mary Hull Webster titled “Illuminations.” Roughly half of Webster’s works are mounted on the wall. Made with Kodak photographic film on which the artist has printed or painted, this series of glowing collages alternates between recognizable imagery and pure abstraction. The other body of works—also lightbox-based—are carefully arranged on the ground, operating more as sculptural assemblages. They consist of modular, backlit acrylic cubes with a variety of found everyday objects resting atop—a rock, a marble, or an old tennis ball.

 

Nicelle Beauchene, New York

New York gallerist Nicelle Beauchene brings the work of four roster artists down to Dallas this year, each of whom works quite differently than the last. The large, zig-zagging paintings of Ryan Nord Kitchen are likely to grab viewers’ attention first, if only because they are much bigger than the intimately scaled work of his booth-mates. Eleanor Ray’s quant paintings, which don’t exceed nine inches on any one side, evoke the hazy graphic sensibility and empty imagery of Edward Hopper. San Antonio painter Daniel Rios Rodriguez is represented via one smallish painted work, but unlike Ray, his employs a variety of materials—rope, nails, foam—that come together to form a much busier composition. Finally, dentist-cum-artist Bruce M. Sherman contributes a group of ceramic sculptures in which colorful geometric shapes come together at certain angles to form faces.

 

Susan Inglett Gallery, New York

Hope Gangloff, #don’tjudge (2017). Courtesy of Susan Inglett Gallery.

Susan Inglett’s booth has many strong offerings, including a series of fractured, multimedia paintings by Ryan Wallace and a handful of acrylic-on-velvet works by William Villalongo. But it’s Hope Gangloff’s two vibrant paintings—a portrait and a still life—that steal the show. A number of touchstones come to mind when looking at Gangloff’s work, from Alice Neel to Elizabeth Peyton to David Hockney. Yet her style, with its expressionistic brush strokes and neon-tinged pallet, is unmistakably her own.

 

Taubert Contemporary, Berlin

Jia, The Road Series 2 (No.59) (2010). Courtesy of Taubert Contemporary.

Gallerist Thomas Taubert returns to Dallas for the fifth consecutive year with a group of colorful abstract works in tow. Highlights include streaked paintings by Markus Linnenbrink and a series of minimal wall works from American artist Adrian Esparza in which strings of cotton sarape are wound around a wood base to create complex, seemingly three-dimensional geometric forms. And look out for Jia, a photo, text, and video artist based in Berlin, who makes her Dallas debut with a collection of blurry, Uta Barth-esque photographs taken from a car on the highway.

 

Rachel Uffner, New York

 

Pam Lins, Crying Eyes (2017-18). Courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery.

Clusters of glazed stoneware eyes hover in the corners of Uffner’s booth as if watching wandering fair-goers. They are new works by Pam Lins, who also has an exhibition on view at the gallery’s brick and mortar space in New York now. On the whole, there’s plenty to like at the booth, which features work by nearly half of the gallery’s artists. But the highlights include paintings by Gianna Commito, Shara Hughes, and newcomer Arcmanoro Niles, who joined Uffner’s roster last year.

 

Tim Van Laere, Antwerp

Rinus van de Velde, Drowning in the sea of logic… (2018). Courtesy of Tim Van Laere.

Two dark charcoal-on-canvas portraits by Rinus van de Velde greet visitors to the Tim Van Laere booth. Each features a mysterious, Pettibon-like phrase at the bottom, such as “Drowning in the sea of logic, the monstrous state of palsy.” Other standout works include a pair of heavily impastoed paintings by Armen Eloyan, and a couple of chaotic canvases by Jonathan Meese that recall Judith Burnstein and Bjarne Melgaard with their wordplay and big, messy brush strokes.