It’s a mad, mad week for visual art in Dallas, and as someone who writes about movies and art, well, I’ll admit, I’m just a little overwhelmed. Besides the Dallas IFF, something like eight new features opening Friday, the Dallas Art Fair, the Suite Art Fair, the highly-anticipated opening of The Power Station, a slew of openings at The Dallas Contemporary, as well as Centraltrak’s pre-Texas Biennial Texas Biennial opening, Goss-Michael is opening a show by Jim Lambie, the second show since the foundation opened in their new space in the Design District. If you need to catch up on Goss-Michael, Gaile Robbinson has a feature in the Star-Telegram, in which Goss talks about purchasing Damien Hirst’s Saint Sebastian, Exquisite Pain:
The purchase of Saint Sebastian changed his life, he says. Goss, who used to be in cheerleading-supply sales, and Michael, the sex-drugs-and-rock-‘n’-roller with an arrest record to substantiate the first two and sales to attest to the third, had been collecting art for some time when they opened a commercial gallery in Oak Lawn in 2005. Initially it seemed more a vanity project, but the subsequent shows proved otherwise — Tracey Emin’s confessional diary entries written in neon, Damien Hirst’s dead animals, Michael Craig-Martin’s wordplay and computerized moving portraits, and Marc Quinn’s self-portrait made from his own frozen blood. These are the artists who carry the reputation of contemporary British art, and the exhibits in the small Oak Lawn gallery were some of the best gallery shows in Dallas.
