The ever-popular subject of the weather fuels at least one of our essential exhibitions, but we’re also happy to explore why interns are awesome and when — occasionally — two artistic minds are better than one. These are the art gallery shows to put on your calendar this summer.
“Nature in our Backyard: The Trinity River and Great Trinity Forest,” various artists, at Sun to Moon Gallery
Reception: June 27, 5-8 pm
Exhibition dates: June 25-August 27
In a spring that made most Dallasites feel as though they’d accidentally moved to Seattle, the effects of rain on our plain was a consistent Instagram subject. For the city’s photographers, however, examining the effects of Mother Nature has always been an inspiration, and Sun to Moon Gallery is unveiling a body of work inspired by the Trinity River and Great Trinity Forest that ranges over 10 years.
Planned long before the flooding, director Marilyn Miller says that Mother Nature nonetheless had an influence over what ultimately made it to the gallery walls.
“Almost a third of the prints in the exhibition are of the river at various stages of flooding, resulting in a very current show,” she explains. “Thousands and thousands of people flocked to the river to view the flooding. Our hope is they’ll go back to see it again and again after the floodwaters recede.
“Gemini,” Alan and Michael Fleming, at Cydonia
Reception: June 26, 6-8 pm
Performance: June 27 at 11 am, noon and 1 pm, at Klyde Warren Park
Exhibition dates: June 26-July 31
The power of collaboration fuels everything that artists Michael and Alan Fleming do. Accomplished in both visual and performance art, the Brooklyn-based Flemings received their MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago as a duo, and they continue to work together on every idea.
“As brothers, we’re naturally competitive, and we’ll fight about things,” Alan says. “We are very quick to edit each other. We have to prove it to each other. It’s an environment where our minds overlap.”
Their Cydonia show, “Gemini,” features drawings, sculpture, video projections and a DNA-inspired work based on their recent discovery that they were identical — rather than fraternal — twins. The twin artists play with metaphors about connections, a theme that arises most obviously in a sculpture featuring their hands in the same form an acrobat would use to launch another tumbler into the air.
Having brought their interdisciplinary approach to a workshop at New York’s Storm King Art Center, the twins will engage Dallas audiences on the day after their opening with a series of free performances in Klyde Warren Park that will treat the body as both sculpture and a unit of measurement within an architectural setting. Wonder twin powers, indeed.
“Mimesis,” Matt Clark and Jackson Echols, and “Reversing a Thing Does Not Prove its Reverse,” Reinhold Engberding, at Conduit Gallery
Reception: June 27, 6-8 pm
Exhibition dates: June 27-August 1
The sum is also greater than its parts for the work of Matt Clark and Jackson Echols. Currently showing at Conduit Gallery, their “Mimesis” series layers two mediums over one another, with paint over a photographic image (or vice versa) in a process that Clark refers to as “an improvised dance.”
“The biggest challenge regarding our collaboration was how can we fuse our individual creative practices into an image that speaks to both photography and painting … and the surface/support that made the most sense was photo sensitive paper,” Clark says. “As a result, an image that possesses both photographic and painterly elements was constructed, leaving hints to its creation and to shared interests in nature, place and process.”
The work will be joined by thought-provoking sculptures from the Hamburg-based Reinhold Engberding, who created these particular pieces during a CentralTrak residency. Deconstructing local high school band uniforms with glue, pins, embroidery and inflated condoms, he comments on an outsider’s experience of Dallas in a sartorially inspired fashion.
“My Favorite Intern,” various artists, at Holly Johnson Gallery
Reception: June 27, 6-8 pm
Exhibition dates: June 27-August 15
When figuring out which way the pop culture wind blows, it’s always best to “ask an intern.” It’s true the youth of today make the world go ’round, and the art world is no exception to the rule.
Gallerist Holly Johnson is honoring the key contributions 10 years of interns have made to her space with “My Favorite Intern,” a group show infused with color and whimsy. All BFA graduates from the DFW area, Johnson’s interns have gone on to solo shows, professor positions and plum art world gigs.
Says Johnson, “I’ve had about 30 interns, and 22 are going to be in the show. They’re amazing, and of course I can’t pick a favorite!”
Mystery Lights by Robert Collier Beam at Holly Johnson Gallery.
