In its latest move toward global domination, Google is venturing into the world of street art. The Google Cultural Institute, which collaborates with museums here and abroad to put artwork online, launched the Street Art Project on June 10. Of the 30 collections included, only a handful are in the United States, and only one — Dallas Contemporary — is in Texas.
As its name suggests, the Street Art Project highlights works of street artists, including those who have been featured in galleries and ones whose work literally resides on the streets.
Dallas Contemporary's contribution to the project includes two recent exhibitions: JR: Inside Out, which ran January 11-March 9, 2014, and FAILE: Where Wild Won't Break, which ran September 21-December 22, 2013.
JR: Inside Out was a participatory art project featuring a series of large-scale photographs that lined the walls and floor at the gallery. Those photos, a method of exploring personal identity, have been pasted on buildings, walls, streets and other unconventional surfaces around the world by the artist.
The exhibit by FAILE, a collaboration between Brooklyn-based artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, featured a large-scale outdoor mural and a 14-foot-tall tower inside Dallas Contemporary, among other works. FAILE's works blend low and high culture using iconography and visual imagery.
The Street Art Project launched with just 30 partners, but organizers expect that to grow exponentially in the months and years to come.
This is the second time in recent months that Google has partnered with area institutions, as several Dallas-Fort Worth museums joined the Google Art Project back in February.
JR: Inside Out was a popular recent exhibit at Dallas Contemporary.
