The recent edition of the Dallas Art Fair offered an overwhelming abundance of artists and galleries to absorb. Having only one day in my schedule, it felt like drinking water from a firehose. We all know that walking, scanning, and digesting artworks at a rapid clip is not ideal for any art experience, but for all the faults inherent to the art fair experience, it is still invigorating. Saturday was crowded, and I waded through the throng on a mission to find pieces that slowed me down and drew me into a deep look. The booth-to-booth retinal overload challenged comprehension, but I was impressed by many works that stood out amongst the splashy fireworks calling for our attention.
Joan Snyder’s Fairytale at Franklin Parrasch Gallery was fantastically visceral and sensitive to surface and touch. Matthew Craven’s intricate patterned ink drawings at Asya Geisberg Gallery were worth every second of examination, as were her other artists on display at one of the most exciting booths. Bradley Kerl’s shadow self-portraits at Ivester Contemporary were confident with their tip-of-the-hat reference to Alex Katz and Jasper Johns. From the newcomer on the Dallas block, the gallery Nature of Things, showed notable ceramic/painting/sculpture mashups from Sam Linguist. I also enjoyed Kazuma Koike’s nubby mask sculptures at Osaka-based Tezukayama Gallery and Marti Cormand’s lovingly portrayed soap portrait on a worn book cover, shyly standing its ground at Bienvenu Steinberg & C.