See These Dallas Art Exhibitions Before the Summer Ends

Summer is a time for trips to air-conditioned spaces. When those spaces are filled with incredible art, it’s a win-win. Here are six shows you should see right now.

Nasher Sculpture Center, 2001 Flora St.
Sarah Sze

“Sarah Sze’s studio is an encyclopedic celebration of the human experience.” So begins a recent article that offers a glimpse of the artist at work. For the Guggenheim in New York, the Venice Biennale, the Fondation Cartier in Paris, and numerous other locations, Sze has crafted site-specific installations that defy categorization. Almost impossible to photograph, they meld video projection and object installation. They confound the limits of the natural and human-made universe. They are ever and always deeply human, oddly visionary constellations of bric-a-brac. 

The three site-specific installations Sze created for the Nasher are ambitious. Questions of scale are always paramount in her work. Is that a chocolate wrapper? Is that a tiny bowl of screws? A remote control, a spool of thread, and the first two inches of a wooden ruler? Yes, yes, all of that is here. Meanwhile, her pieces incorporate projected moving images—bison, a flickering fire, a flock of birds in flight, a road, coyotes—and sound. Is that the hum of planes landing? It also sounds like thunder. Her work embodies liminal spaces. We all exist in them because we are all alive. 

The overall effect is hypnotic. One installation graces the door leading out to the sculpture garden. It bathes in light. The other two—upstairs and downstairs—exist in penumbras. Here, in the dark, we float in her world like in a strange, bizarrely comforting amniotic fluid. What is the meaning of this haphazard-seeming assemblage? Well, what is consciousness? What is memory? What is thought? Sensation? Time? This is exactly the question. 

On view until Aug. 18, 2024. See hours and information here.

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., Fort Worth
Rebecca Manson: Barbecue

Thousands of leaves greet you as you enter the “ellipse” on the ground floor of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which previously housed Anselm Kiefer’s “Book of Wings.” Ceramic leaves (more than 45,000 of them) that seem to rustle in Rebecca Manson’s installation, Barbecue. There is no smell of decay, no smoke lingering in the air, and yet they seem to exist in that temporal limbo of seasonal change: the end of a summer barbecue, the advent of fall’s specter. There is a Weber grill, a rake, and a few clubs from a deck of playing cards. There is alchemy—and danger. 

Manson received her BFA in ceramics from RISD in 2011, and this whirling, static maelstrom, this monument to entropy that seems to gust and simultaneously hold still, is her first solo museum exhibition, following close on the heels of a recent exhibition at The Warehouse. The process of glazing and firing yields surprises; Manson wields those to her advantage. Starting from impressions she makes from leaves collected on walks, the artist amasses these fragile stacks, taller than the viewer and startlingly alive—art as more real, almost, than life. 

It is not only because such ceramic work is breathtakingly difficult to make that one should see this show: it is also rare to view such a sculpture. Take it in: a testament to time and transition that a gust of wind might kick up. 

On view until Aug. 25, 2024. See hours and information here. 

Dallas Museum of Art, 1912 N. St. Paul St.
When You See Me: Visibility in Contemporary Art/History

Opening long before this year’s TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art auction (in October) and lasting long after, the show nevertheless indirectly celebrates that event’s 25th anniversary by bringing together numerous works acquired through the fund. 

According to curator Katherine Brodbeck, it represents a multivocal effort to expand the canon and fill in the gaps in the archive (both figuratively and literally). It is a chance for her and for three of her colleagues to raise open-ended questions about who is included, who is excluded, who is seen, who is invisible. 

In considering his section, which centers abstraction and features powerful pieces by Theaster Gates, Mark Bradford, and Senga Nengudi, curator Ade Omotosho cites the words of the latter artist: “I often utilize humble, discarded, castaway materials (tape, plastic, pantyhose, etc.), as well as nature’s own sand and water . . . as a means to express the belief that—as with disenfranchised humans—often-dismissed materials may be transformed into poetic entities.”

The overlap, or lack thereof, between notions of the body and visibility/invisibility is central to the work in curator Vivian Li’s section. Whether the riveting sleep painting “(RETURN, REBORN)” by Ren Light Pan or the cut-out bodies of Susan Weil’s “Color Configurations 2 (Red),” these works challenge the limits of seeing. 

Curator Veronica Myers’s section, featuring art by queer artists, is, in her words, “vibrant, joyful, compassionate, whimsical, bursting with life and community,” yet larded also with “moments of stillness, melancholy, privacy, and vulnerability.” She continues: “Queerness is often understood as an intrinsic, static identity. While this can be a useful framework, I wanted to push beyond that and examine how queerness is inherently communal; not so much who we are as how we create joy and connection with one another. This room is a room of possibilities.” Notice, particularly, “A Sculpture for Trans Women . . .” by Dallas native Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki-Olivo), “a monument,” Myers says, “to her experiences growing up as a mixed-race, closeted trans woman in North Texas.” Speaking of the sculpture, Myers says, “It has been a unique privilege to facilitate Kuriki-Olivo’s ‘homecoming’ by bringing this self-portrait back to the museum of her childhood, which served as a source of inspiration and respite for a young girl who dreamed of making it out.” 

“[It] is my responsibility and hope that these works will continue to open eyes and connect with audiences long after I am gone.”

The Impressionist Revolution from Monet to Matisse

In April, I wrote about a deeply researched exhibition at the Orsay museum in Paris that celebrated the 150th anniversary of the exhibition that launched the Impressionists. Although the Orsay show included a 45-minute VR component and tickets at 36 euros, I’m quite serious in saying that the DMA’s show in light of the anniversary, which draws mostly from the DMA’s own collection (and a few works in private collections, including the gorgeous Suzanne Valadon floral still life that ends the show), is just as satisfying in terms of understanding the trajectory of the movement. Lines are also shorter. 

(While you’re there, check out the Frida Kahlo exhibition, which opens on Sunday, Aug. 18, and which we aren’t including yet, sight unseen.)

When You See Me: Visibility in Contemporary Art/History on view until April 13, 2025. The Impressionist Revolution from Monet to Matisse on view until Nov. 3, 2024. See hours and information here.

Also see:

Tureen, 901 W. Jefferson Blvd.
All4U

Tureen’s co-owner, Cody Fitzsimmons, himself calls All4U a “casual” summer show. For a gallery with a track record of remarkable conceptual rigor, the title itself is more personal, more open-ended. Some of the 11 artists on display (with one work each) have had or will have solo shows with the gallery. Take, for example, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, whose elegantly draped rope is all eloquent subtlety. The roster includes artists from Canada (Sheila Forde), Alaska, but also Houston (Rachel Hecker, with her larger-than-life numbers doodle from a series that mimics hotel notepads, in this case the Fairmont’s) and Dallas (Marilyn Jolly, whose intricate, whimsical dollhouse-like sculpture anchors the room). Like the self-consciously utilitarian list (Hecker’s), the show’s work is personal, intimate, and powerful.

On view until Aug. 16, 2024 (note that the website reflects an old closing date). See hours and information here.

Dallas Contemporary, 161 Glass St.
Patrick Martinez: Histories

How can a practice be about a city? Los Angeles-based Latinx artist Patrick Martinez (Filipino, Mexican, indigenous), in his solo show at Dallas Contemporary, constructs a very particular mythology—a borderland comprising neon signage inspired by ATM and TAX signs that blink along Whittier Boulevard and cake portraits gesturing toward panaderias. Notice the delicate roses he makes out of hardware-supply materials and spray paint. Monumental, his three-dimensional wall works incorporate ceramic tile, stucco, and latex house paint. One feels as though he has raided the iconography of an urban Los Angeles/SoCal inflected by his own, half-personal Mesoamerican vocabulary—the ancient vs. the new—in order to express overlooked stories. Brilliant in the massive bunker that is DC, the show feels deeply engaging and wholly necessary. It’s occurring at a moment when the world is waking up to wanting to diversify the voices that it’s promoting in the art world. It shouldn’t be missed. 

On view until Jan. 5, 2025. See hours and information here.