News & Press

Dallas Museum of Art Acquires Marcelyn McNeil painting

Mar 8, 2023  

Conduit Gallery is pleased to announce an acquisition by the Dallas Museum of Art of a large painting by Dallas based artist Marcelyn McNeil. First exhibited in McNeil’s solo exhibition at Conduit Gallery in April 2022, this is the first artwork of the artist’s included in the Dallas Museum of Art collection.

States McNeil about the painting: "I’m looking for a place or a sensibility in painting that is at once vulnerable, nuanced and definitive. Dbl X, two is an example of this. Having evolved primarily through pouring methods - multiple layers, stains, and bleeds of thinned pigment fade into one another creating soft space. Bands of color are added to compliment and reiterate what has occurred organically. The linear elements are both suggestive and formative. Quietly subversive, the work experiments with illusion, perspective and color to create a space for unmediated introspection."

Through her experimental approach to painting and process, McNeil challenges traditional assumptions about abstraction to produce works that remind us of the lyrical power of painting in an ever-challenging contemporary moment. The tension in her work enables the chance to engage slowly with the macro-view of the composition and the micro-view of the palimpsest layers. Spare and deliberate forms celebrate the evocative power of color interfolded with soft pours to invite contemplation. Each thin layer on the raw canvas becomes a luminous veil providing a deeply sensuous effect.

Born in Kansas, Marcelyn McNeil earned an MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago. McNeil’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas and the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas. A monograph, Marcelyn McNeil Works, was published by Radius Books in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2022. Included in the book are writings by Hesse McGraw, Executive Director at CAM Houston in Texas, and Alison Hearst, a curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas. McNeil currently lives and works in Dallas, Texas.

Ted Larsen exhibition at the Esbjerg Kunstmuseum, Denmark

Feb 28, 2023  

https://www.eskum.dk/portfolio-items/match-2023/

April 1 – September 3, 2023

From the Esbjerg Kunstmuseum website:

With MATCH 2023, we present the result of the artist Troels Aagaard and his American colleague Ted Larsen's intense collaboration.

It is the first time that the renowned American artist Ted Larsen is being presented at a Danish art institution on a large scale. What the two artists in this project have in common is that they create works in continuation of, among other things, constructivism and pop art. This means that, for example, they work with strong colours, spatial lines and geometric constructions. In doing so, they both experiment with some of the most fundamental aspects of both art and human perception – our sensory experience and cognition of the world. And precisely this dimension is highlighted in the current collaboration, because when the two artists' works meet in Esbjerg Art Museum's exhibition hall, they will intervene in the architecture itself and move beyond the floor and walls.

The idea behind the MATCH series, which has existed since 2001, is relatively simple: A Danish artist appointed by the museum invites a foreign colleague, of their choice, to transform the museum's large exhibition hall into a joint statement. It is thus not an exhibition collaboration in the usual sense. The two artists usually work so hard on each other that they have a direct influence on each other's works. At the same time, they act as curators both for each other and together. They identify and debate what they are each fascinated by in their colleague's work, and thus the project gives the artists maximum freedom in a process that, according to our experience, is experienced as very joyful.


Heyd Fontenot exhibition at Cloud Tree Studios and Gallery, Austin, TX (part of Outsider Fest)

Feb 2, 2023  

http://www.cloudtreestudiosandgallery.com/

February 10 - February 26, 2023
Opening Reception: February 10, 2023 3-5pm
part of the OutSider Fest
Austin's annual celebration of LGBTQ+ originality and creative nonconformity
Artist Talk: February 26, 3-5pm

With “I C U”, Fontenot continues to explore the human form in addition to experimenting with immersive installations. While the artist was based in Austin from 1989-2011 he contributed to the local arts scene as a muralist, a designer for theater and film, an experimental filmmaker and music video director and of course as a visual artist.

Dr. Fahamu Pecou awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2022 Grant

Jan 27, 2023  

https://www.louiscomforttiffanyfoundation.org/2022

Established in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of the founder of Tiffany & Company, the Foundation remains one of the largest single sources of monetary grants to artists working in America today. Since 1980, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation’s biennial competition has awarded artists working in painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, video, and craft media with grants to produce new work and push the boundaries of their creativity. Since 1980, more than $10,000,000 in awards has been distributed to more than 500 artists nationwide.

Sightlines review of Marcelyn McNeil: Works monograph

Sightlines Magazine   |   Dec 7, 2022   |   by Caleb Bell

https://sightlinesmag.org/flipping-through-marcelyn-mcneil-works

Caleb Bell reviews Marcelyn McNeil: Works, published by Radius Books, July 2022

Margaret Meehan on view at The Bunker Art Space, Palm Beach

Dec 2, 2022  

https://www.thebunkerartspace.com/

Meehan's work is included in the exhibition 2022 Installation of The Bunker Artspace: Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody

Nasher Public: Jeff Gibbons and Gregory Ruppe

Nov 26, 2022  

https://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/art/nasher-public/exhibition/id/302

at Katy Trail, 2620 Katy Trail @ N. Houston St – Katy Trail @ Harvard Ave. through March 23, 2023

Artists Jeff Gibbons and Gregory Ruppe have created an installation that runs the length of the Katy Trail, from the Thomsen Overlook to just south of where the trail intersects Knox Street. Entitled Borest Forest, Grunting Grasses, the installation comprises a series of vignettes featuring sculptures of squirrels that appear at intervals along the trail. The works may blend naturally into the environment of the trail, distinguished from the real animals only by their fixity, as well as their uncanny human faces, which resemble those of the artists themselves. The various placements of the sculptures along the trail suggest a narrative, a slightly surrealist story, like a fairy tale, that reflects the vaguely otherworldly experience of the trail itself—a thin thread of nature strung along an industrial rail line that runs through the urban environs of Uptown.

The whimsical, surrealist quality of Borest Forest, Grunting Grasses typifies the work of Gibbons and Ruppe, who often experiment with environmental psychology and sound in their installations. The artists have exhibited and performed at the Nasher Sculpture Center on three occasions over the past seven years: in 2015 for the announcement of Nasher Prize, Gibbons, Ruppe, and Danny Skinner performed Dry Again? with their water tank instruments/sculptures; in 2017 for the Nasher Prize gala celebration of Laureate Pierre Huyghe, the trio performed Jane Magnolia Jane, which featured modular synthesis instruments invented by the artists and a Ficus whose biorhythms were translated into musical tones; and in 2018 for the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family SOLUNA International Music and Arts Festival, Gibbons and Ruppe created Grubnik and Suzanne, an immersive installation in the Nasher Garden which featured installation, video, and sound, including a duet with the buried digital head of Liz Tonne and the biofeedback of a live oak tree translated into English phonetics in an attempt to let the tree learn how to speak. Borest Forest, Grunting Grasses, with the artist’s faces transposed on sculptures of squirrels, continues the artists’ deep consideration of our proximity to nature, both beautiful and unsettling.

For the realization of the project, Gibbons and Ruppe worked with Nick Bontrager to digitally render and 3D-print their faces and Geoffrey Broderick at the Abilene Christian University Foundry for the final castings.


Margaret Meehan at Visarts Residency - Visual Arts Center of Richmond

Nov 16, 2022  

https://www.visarts.org/artist-residencies/current-studio-access-residents/

Margaret Meehan will be included in a six month studio residency at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. The Visual Arts Center of Richmond’s Studio Access Residency is designed to support emerging and established visual artists as they develop new ideas and to foster artistic exploration by providing free access to VisArts’ 17 communal studio spaces.

Anthony Sonnenberg Feature in Mod Citi

Mod Citi   |   Nov 10, 2022   |   by Kendall Morgan

https://issuu.com/modciti/docs/modciti_dallas_issue_38_october_22

Mod Citi October 2022 issue. Pages 15-27.

Desireé Vaniecia review in Glasstire

Glasstire   |   Nov 4, 2022   |   by Jessica Fuentes

https://glasstire.com/2022/11/03/desiree-vaniecia-explores-the-seven-deadly-sins-at-conduit-gallery/