My intent for Sub Rosa is to provide access to curated information centered on art and activism. Valuing my time as an artist, I’ve been thinking of a way to offer readers the choice to pay for my chronicles. Below is an option to support my project for as little as $1 one time or however you’re comfortable.
A R T
2023 As Saved in My Phone
Dallas Museum of Art
Matthew Wong: The Realm of Appearances on view October 2022 - February 2023
Self-taught artist Matthew Wong worked alongside his challenges with autism and tourettes. He swiftly rose to critical acclaim within a six-year career and tragically passed at 35 in 2019. In the article Matthew Wong’s Life in Light and Shadow by Raffi Khatchadourian, Raffi follows Matthew’s life from childhood to 2019 with conversations and studio visits by his mother, Monita, co-founder of The Matthew Wong Foundation.
‘Monita and I entered an antechamber, where some canvases were stacked, and she paused. She had warned me that she could tolerate only a brief time inside. Wong’s paintings—mostly imagined landscapes—are portals to luminous, vibrant, moody places. Though not surreal, they are the product of reverie: poetic concoctions inspired by memory, stray ideas, or the paint itself as he compulsively worked it. Midnight forests glow, somehow, without light, by a painterly magic. A milky tundra extends across a horizon, looking soft, opulent, ominous. Spectral icebergs—vulnerable, tentative, lost—drift in glasslike seas.’ Matthew Wong’s Life in Light and Shadow by Raffi Khatchadourian for The New Yorker published May 9, 2022.
I only got to zoom through his retrospective, which traveled to the DMA once. I had little to no knowledge of his work and wished I could stay a little longer, a little longer, and more until I was at the museum 10 minutes past closing time (sorry!). At first glance, the works seemed abstract, with glimpses into figuration emerging, and slowly, the struggle between Matthew’s grasping at his emotions, realities, dreams, troubles, and triumphs came to show itself.
More saves from the DMA in 2023 are below.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen on view February 2023 - April 30 2023
I'll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen explored the impact of screens on art from 1969 to the present. The exhibition comprised over sixty works by fifty artists who have used various media such as paintings, sculpture, video games, augmented reality, and video.
The exhibition focuses on the pervasive influence of screens in contemporary life, examining their role in shaping culture, connectivity, surveillance, digital abstraction, and more. The show has nine key themes: liminal space, connectivity, surveillance, the repository, digital abstraction, the posthuman body, automation and the loneliness epidemic, ecology, and turning a mirror on ourselves.
Curated by Alison Hearst, I'll Be Your Mirror: Art and the Digital Screen stands out as one of the past decade's most in-depth explorations of art and digital technology in the Southwest region. It was scheduled way too short for such a comprehensive exhibition and exceptionally groundbreaking to view here in Texas.
The Warehouse
Open Storage: 25 Years of Collecting on view August 2022 - April 2023
Formed by Dallas-based art collectors Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, The Wearhouse is home to their post-war modern and contemporary art collection that feels a little bit classified yet proud to be locally located.
Curated by Allan Schwartzman, Open Storage: 25 Years of Collecting comprises 216 works by 148 artists and is stated to be roughly 20 percent of the collection. The wayfinding of the exhibition worked in chronological order of the works acquired.
Browse the checklist for a good time, linked here.
The Nasher Sculpture Center
2023 Nasher Prize Laureate Senga Nengudi on view February - April 2023
Born in Chicago in 1943, Sengra Nengudi has been a prominent figure in the contemporary art scene since the 1960s. Her work often explores the intersections of identity, race, gender, and the body. Known for her innovation using materials like pantyhose and sand, Nengudi’s interest in art and dance has shaped her practice and ability to push boundaries.
Groundswell: Women of Land Art on view September 2023 - January 7, 2024
Land art, a movement where the Earth finds duality as canvas and medium, has historically been dominated by male artists. However, the comprehensive exhibition Groundswell: Women of Land Art, on view at The Nasher Sculpture Center curated by Leigh A. Arnold, shifts the spotlight toward women who have made significant contributions to the field.
Arnold has been at the Nasher for ten years. Her doctoral thesis covered the unfinished works of Robert Smithson, one of Land art’s most prominent artists, making for a compelling academic case to take on mounting Groundswell, but perhaps an additional and less obvious reason is her experience living in Nebraska and Texas, states that lend to contextualizing how the vast and sprawling land can be a source for ideation. Arnold's curatorial vision clearly aims to move beyond the narrow canon of land art, making it evident that female artists have contributed significantly to this movement and others, having their own nuanced approaches that transcend gender boundaries.
The exhibition encompasses almost the entire museum except for a smaller gallery in the middle of the institution, but even then, this features work from Nasher’s permanent collection that specifically relates to Groundswell. The museum’s sculpture garden, somewhat ironically, displays only two works from the exhibit, including Nancy Holt’s Pipeline, which winds throughout the museum, making its way outside, and Michelle Stuart’s Marici: Light of the Dawn, which is submerged in water. Within the galleries, a commonality that shows when dealing with nature as the subject matter is color and texture. Raw and natural hues of clay red, dusted pink, sky blue, fresh green, wilted yellow, concrete grey, dirt brown, and so on are omnipresent in a special, compelling way.
Nancy Holt, Pipeline, 1986
Nancy Holt, Pipeline, 1986
Described as ‘beyond the gallery walls’ is Patricia Johnson’s Fair Park Lagoon, (1981-86).
Patricia Johnson, Fair Park Lagoon, (1981-86)
Patricia Johnson, Fair Park Lagoon, (1981-86)
As a Dallas native, I can personally attest to the transformative experience of visiting Johnson's sculpture. Her work is an exceptional example of land art that blends seamlessly with the environment and functions as a successful public artwork. Johnson's approach was not about imposing on nature but restoring the ecosystem, showing the power of artists in conversation with the Earth. As a child, the lagoon, shrouded in mystery, once seemed like a living, mythical creature lurking beneath the water's surface to me. It was a symbol of the magic of imagination.
Not-Gallery Shows
Dallas-based artists, curators, and activists who utilize non-traditional art spaces to showcase work provide greater flexibility for experimentation while still adhering to the formative constraints of the given architectural parameters.
Odyssey Studios housed space for the exhibit The Compass Of Our Stuggles, organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, honoring Palestinian prisoners and martyrs by installing text and images of stories directly related to the North Texas community. An interactive aspect was the duaa wall, where visitors could leave written notes of solidarity.
Chateau Chateau, organized by Joel Murray and Clint Bargers, takes place annually inside the Aldredge House on Swiss Avenue, with twenty artists working inside, activating rooms, corners, tubs, walls, and crevices. Exploring the show felt like being inside an artist-made funhouse.
DC EMPTY, Dallas Contemporary’s time-based programming highlights regional artists as a way for the museum to utilize unused space during rotating exhibitions and serve the Dallas creative community. Colton James White’s DC EMPTY iteration, They Love Me, They Love Me Not, was a 5-hour durational piece of pacing, plucking flowers, a moment of pause for lunch, and a cathartic ending in an exhausting game of they love me, they love me not.
Refer to fig. 361 curated by Jillian Wendel featured artists Aliyah Cydonia, Hannah Baskin, and Jose Vasquez Ramirez throughout a space that lent it’s history and constructions conceptually to the work.
L I T E R A T U R E
Saved and Yet to Read
In a way, each book has themes of complexities of individual identity, exploring how personal experiences, mental health, and societal forces shape who we are and ways to transform and escape from those societal norms.
Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv
‘“Strangers to Ourselves” delicately balances two truths that prove remarkably difficult to hold in tandem. We all have our own minds, our own experiences, our own suffering; we are also social creatures who live among others, and social forces have at least some bearing on how we understand who we are. Aviv suggests that we continue to cling to reductive theories about brain chemistry because “the reality — that mental illness is caused by an interplay between biological, genetic, psychological and environmental factors — is more difficult to conceptualize.”’
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
‘According to the author herself, the main themes in her work are "the exhaustion of young Japanese in contemporary Japan" and "the way in which terrible experiences shape a person's life" — additional issues explored in "Kitchen" include transexuality and the loneliness inherent in modern Tokyo life.’
The Sweet Indifference of the World by Peter Stamm
‘Christoph and Magdalena. Chris and Lena. Peter Stamm’s latest novel, The Sweet Indifference of the World, is a short, sophisticated tale for the post-truth era, in which four identities become irreparably intertwined.’
‘Being thoroughly trained in semiology, sociology, phenomenology, psychoanalysis with profound curiosity and humility, Shiff’s writing elevates the dignity of art as a fundamental form of human communication hence our survival. Elegantly designed as intended for broad readership, including art historians, art critics, artists, among other lovers of art, this volume is a must-read experience with pleasure and discovery.’
The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei
‘Taiwanese author Chi Ta-wei’s newly translated novel, “The Membranes,” was originally published in 1995 — and you can tell. This is a future extrapolated from the ‘90s, with books-on-disc and depleted ozone rather than the internet and climate change. And yet, though the book’s hereafter looks backward to us today, there’s something very timely about its play with gender fluidity and the social construction of identity. There’s also something timeless about Chi’s future, because of how it bends and defies time itself. The novel is about how identity is a story we tell ourselves through time — or back through time. And that story, for Chi, is queer.’
Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones
‘As “a woman with a body that could never be mistaken for symmetrical or orderly,” she long believed that the only way to deserve anyone else’s respect, much less desire, was to “be extraordinary in all other aspects,” brilliant and witty and humorous and cool. If the book is any proof, Jones is all these things. But there’s more to this gorgeous, vividly alive memoir.’
The Shop by Magazine B
‘Some might wonder why we chose to highlight brick-and-mortar shops amid our new normal. Since the onset of the pandemic, we’ve experienced firsthand the wonderful world of e-commerce. However, our restricted lifestyles have also helped us realize what kind of person we are, and subsequently, what gives us strength to keep going. For example, some people get energy from the ambience of a restaurant or its bustling environment more than the food. And some people enjoy the process of discovering new things in a brick-and-mortar shop more than the actual products. It doesn’t matter how great e-commerce services or algorithms get—these experiences will be forever nonpareil.’
Coffin Bound by Dan Watters
‘Chased by an unstoppable killer, Izzy Tyburn has decided that if the world won't have her in it, it can have nothing of her at all. She's re-treading her life, leaving nothing but burned rubber, ash, and the sun-scorched bones of those who get in her way.’
M U S I C
Screenshots Throughout the Year
I have a thing for trying to correlate seemingly unrelatable things, and really, this is a playlist of screenshots I took of songs I was listening to throughout the year, none of which I remember why. It’s exceptionally random but a testament to how music can sync to a feeling in a given moment. So if you’re open to a journey through damn near any genre under the sun, welcome?
Image credits Alexandra Hulsey