Cowboys and Christmas

The Myth of the Wild West and Chainsaws Have an Art Moment

By Catherine D. Anspon // Dec 17, 2015

Mathew Zefeldt’s Sensations, 2015, at Circuit 12 Contemporary

Begin your end-of-year gallery dash at Talley Dunn Gallery, where Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s former Core Fellow Francesco Fuchs — a Hunting Prize winner — presents the ghost of Christmas past. Catch the artist’s vaporous paintings of Christmas trees, captured in an understated palette, in which the image seems to dissolve in a perfect metaphor for time and memory (through December 19) …

Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery mounts a show and debuts the accompanying volume of photo essays by Jeremy Enlow documenting “Cowboys of the Waggoner Ranch” (through December 19). Fort Worth-based lensman Enlow immersed himself in cowboy culture at the nation’s largest working ranch, whose fate lies in the balance as it awaits a new buyer. The resulting images tell of a vanishing way of life that defined manifest destiny and the myth of the American West.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: It’s okay to muck around, especially when it’s at Circuit 12 Contemporary, as owners Gina and Dustin Orlando curate a lineup of 11 national talents who mine the chaos and detritus of our time to create works reflective of today. “Mysterious Muck” pairs artists such as Matthew Craven and Mathew Zefeldt, who both raid the icebox of art history, alongside sculptor Taylor Baldwin, who employs a chainsaw, amplifier, urethane resin, bloodwood and lignum vitae among other components in an epic creation whose title is unprintable (through January 30).

Kehinde + Caillebotte: Your holiday won’t be complete without a trip to Fort Worth for retrospectives of two painters who define the 19th and 21st centuries: Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte at the Kimbell Art Museum (through February 14) and new Baroque master Kehinde Wiley at The Modern (through January 10). See you in 2016.