Art Takes Reality by Surprise

This year's annual, juried exhibition at The MAC is a revelation. It seems spare and elegant. Lots of space between works, and nice work all around, much by artists who are not already well known ( which was the founding purpose of DARE, which transmogrified into The MAC.). A marvelous departure for the usually BTAGFOOTS ( big time art guy from out of town syndrome )- soaked space.

Gary Sweeney's Art Must Take collage of old signs reminds this reviewer of the many word-based works in previous MAC shows — a remnant of mixing poets and painters. This one, however, has solid meaning and presence. It's a grand frontispiece for this diverse exhibition.

Connie Connolly's People I Know II, ( 2000, oil on canvas, 80 x 96 inches ) lends a personable display of humanity in this large painting of recognizable Dallas art faces. Thus directly rendering real personalities in a show full of them. Talk about exhibiting local artists, for a change...

Also worthy of note are Paul Booker's tiny, wired drawings installation involving ink, mylar and pins over a 22 x 28 x 2 ( being the depth of the pins stuck in the wall )- inch area, Small Drawings with Corresponding Nomenclature, 2001, which we have seen and throughtoughly appreciated twice now at 500X.

Elegant renderings of type in charcoal graphite on 30 x 22 inche paper, Brave New World, 2000 and The End, 2000 by Benito Huerta are also worthy of study. Doctor Paul Greenberg's beautiful black and white photographs, like Bald Man Varanasi, India, 1999here, always brighten any show they're in, and they're fascinating to look into.

We've seen the three-dimensional originals of a paint on silk screen print drawing, Waterfall Series, 1999, by sculptor Tom Orr on DARts archive pages. Here's it's a fall of black ink lines against a moiré interruption field of fine, parallel black lines. In the DARts archive pages, the fall is fully 3-D. But the effect is always dynamically 3-D, with diffraction grating colors that aren't really there.

Mo Scollan's Sixteen Chairs / From Here to Eternity, 2000, oil on board, 48 x 46 inches, is a straight-forward, direct, monochromatic red grid of chairs on wood squares. Easy on the eyes, I just stared and stared at this pleasing display of architectural forms.

I don't remember ever not liking one of former Dallas resident Ann Stautberg's giant, oil on black and white photographs, but this one, 8.7.00, A.M. Texas Coast, #11, 2000, was formless, shapeless and, sadly, emotionless. Her usual, spatial clarity and joy, seemed absent.

Photographer Marilyn Waligore's Mix, 2000, light jet print has graced these pages before, but small like that I never read it as anything but a melange of concentric, 3-D arcs curving in on themselves. Seeing it in its full, 36 x 36-inch glory, however, the joy of its overall metalic, gleaming blue is even more delightful, as it slowly dawns of the viewer that these spinning, intermeshing blades are of a kitchen ware, hand mixer in action.

Randal Friedman's extensive installation of on and blowing, but not even warm, hair dryers, copper and electrical hardware installtion, The Social, 1999 - 2000, was amusing to see, and it sparked lots of derogatory comments about its art worthiness, which may, after all, justify its existence. - JRC