Art Talk: Olaniyi R. Akindiya AKIRASH: ADITTU / Puzzle at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary — June 12, 5:30-7 p.m. 3120 McKinney Ave. Dallas, TX 75204.
If you missed the opening, here’s your chance to check out the last exhibition ever mounted in the MAC’s Uptown location. Olaniyi R. Akindiya is an Austin-based artist who works largely in textiles. The work straddles a line between large-scale abstract painting and immersive installation, while using traditional weaving techniques – from the Southwest Nigerian Aso Oke to the Kenyan Kente cloths – to infer and reference various cultural histories and allusions.
Zeke Williams: Heat Check at Erin Cluley Gallery — June 13, 6-8 p.m. 414 Fabrication St. Dallas, TX 75212.
Williams’ white hot neon-color abstractions look like Photoshop mock-ups for a chillwave album cover, and they feel similarly steeped in 2008’s nostalgic peons to the 1980s. But the content is actually derived from magazine images of of female models, potentially lending the work a resonance that transcends candy corn zombie formalism.
Will You Come Back? at The Reading Room — June 13, 6-9 p.m. 3715 Parry Ave. Dallas, TX 75226.
For his show at The Reading Room, New York-based film critic, artist, writer, and journalist Aaron Krach has produced an 8-page broadsheet newspaper that consists primarily of reproductions of Paul Gauguin’s work Nafea faa ipoipo (When will you marry?), 1892 taken from catalogs, coloring books, and other such reproductions. The paper’s back page offers a clue into the thinking behind the project, a timeline that tracks the painting’s provenance from its original production in Tahiti in 1892 to its recent sale for $300 million to a Qatar-based collector.
The open-ended content of the newspaper smacks with a palpable wryness, offering a sardonic take on nature and history of a work of art that is itself caught up in Gauguin’s complicated, culturally voyeuristic project. Krach’s paper presents a counter art history, one that traces-out the work’s story purely as commodity, both as an art historical or pedagogical touchstone or talisman, and as an object of financial exchange. The implicit suggestion is that if the market has reduced art to pure commodity, then Krach’s paper – which will be accompanied by laser cut woodblock prints in The Reading Room exhibition – is arguably the more accurate documentation of Gauguin’s painting’s history and value.
Cinema 16 at El Sibil — June 13, 7 p.m. 122 E. 5th St. Dallas, TX 75203.
One of the weekend’s big events is the Oak Cliff Film Festival, which always dollops art-leaning flicks into their often adventurous and sometimes fringe programming. The Cinema 16 shorts slate packs in a few interesting offerings, including Michael Morris’ latest, Blue Movie, an ode to Dallas dancer Candy Barr who starred in the stag film “Smart Alec,” and Paintings 2009-11, a documentary about Nick Zedd’s painting process.
Here are all of the openings:
FRIDAY
Art Talk: Olaniyi R. Akindiya AKIRASH: ADITTU / Puzzle at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary — June 12, 5:30-7 p.m. 3120 McKinney Ave. Dallas, TX 75204.
SATURDAY
My Fort Worth at Moudy Gallery at TCU — June 13, 6-8 p.m. 2805 S. University Dr. Fort Worth, TX 76129.
Zeke Williams: Heat Check at Erin Cluley Gallery — June 13, 6-8 p.m. 414 Fabrication St. Dallas, TX 75212.
Will You Come Back? at The Reading Room — June 13, 6-9 p.m. 3715 Parry Ave. Dallas, TX 75226.
Cinema 16 at El Sibil — June 13, 7 p.m. 122 E. 5th St. Dallas, TX 75203.
Hyperfocus by Jesse J. Griffith at CentralTrak — June 13, 8 p.m. 800 Exposition Blvd Dallas, TX 75226.
