Dallas Art Fair and New Online Marketplace Innovate with In-Person/Virtual Fair Combo

A Small-Batch Fair and Culture Place

BY Catherine D. Anspon // 10.28.20

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Mexican artist Gabriel Rico brings his latest embroidered and neon wall works to Dallas, a highly anticipated showing at Perrotin's booth at Four x Five.

Gabriel Rico's 2019 Aspen Art Museum installation: "The Discipline of the Cave." The internationally exhibited Rice follows the tradition of Arte Povera, recontextualizing fragments from the natural and man-made worlds, and will be presented in a special solo at Perrotin's booth at the Dallas Art Fair's inaugural Four x Five.

Gabriel Rico's canvas featuring embroidered hand-painted yarn, "The second cause is meant to be an explanation of the first (Sahuaro I)," 2020, at Perrotin, at Dallas Art Fair's Four x Five.

International talent based in Mexico, Gabriel Rico's "The second cause is meant to be an explanation of the first (Yardstick)," 2020, will be the subject of a focused presentation by Perrotin, for Dallas Art Fair's Four x Five, November 11 - 25, 2020, at Dallas Art Fair Projects.

Baltimore-based Cynthia Daignault's "Elegy (House on Fire)," 2019, at Night Gallery, is featured in the virtual component of Four x Five, offered at cultureplace.com. Daignault's haunting image seems eerily in step with our time.

Nathaniel Robinson's "Untitled," 2016, at Magenta Plains, during Four x Five. The artist debuts his new series of nuanced expressionist canvases that consider the contemporary landscape.

How topical is this: Nebojsa Shoba Seric's " State of the Union," 2020, at Keijsers Koning, during Four x Five, at the physical fair exhibition, at Dallas Art Fair Projects.

William Burton Binnie's "Untitled (Smiley)," 2020, at Keijsers Koning, is a memorable image from the former Dallas artist/SMU MFA grad (now residing in the Northeast). Encounter Binnie's oddly compelling paintings at Keijsers Koning's booth at Four x Five.

Jimmy Baker's "Double Walker," 2019, at Keijsers Koning wins us over with its lush imagery, a find at Four x Five's physical fair at Dallas Art Fair Projects November 11-25, 2020.

Iconic American painter Sean Scully is in the notable roster of Dublin dealer Kerlin Gallery. Shown: Scully's "Wall Red Red," 2020. Check the Culture Place website during Four x Five to see if Kerlin will feature any Scully canvases.

Adrian Esparza's "Optical Option," 2017, at Taubert Contemporary. The El Paso-based artist is known for his serape series of thread paintings. While Taubert is still finalizing its Four x Five artworks for Culture Place we hope that Esparza is among the artists featured.

Mario Arroyave's "Pool-Helsinki," 2020, at Beatriz Esguerra Art, during Four x Five, via Culture Place. The Colombian-born photographer's work prophetically anticipates this moment when we are acutely aware of our space in regard to other human beings.

Ismael Rivera's "Fresh Start," 2020, dialogues with the past via contemporary painting upon a vintage wooden artist’s case, at Beatriz Esguerra Art, during Four x Five, via Culture Place.

Lydia Maria Pfeffer's "She-Wolves in Training (isle of giantesses)," 2019, combines abstraction and Surrealist figuration, in a powerful, image-laden canvas bearing a feminist stance. The Los Angeles-based artist is featured at Galerie Droste on Culture Place during Four x Five.

Willehad Eilers' "All Will Be Good," 2020, presents heroic, distorted figures on an ambitiously scaled canvas, measuring 66.92 x 78.74 inches. Find this dystopian painting at Galerie Droste on Culture Place during Four x Five.

Thomas Gleaner's "Serenity (Variation 7)," 2019, at SOCO Gallery on Culture Place during Four x Five. The painting's surface is activated by enamel, acrylic, interference pigment, collage, book pages, twine, glitter, handcut canvas, and nails on canvas over panel.

William Burton Binnie’s installation at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska. Known in Texas art circles for his role as a co-founder of the Beefhaus collective, Binnie bears watching in the booth of Keijsers Koning, during Four x Five at Dallas Art Fair Projects.

Mexican artist Gabriel Rico brings his latest embroidered and neon wall works to Dallas, a highly anticipated showing at Perrotin's booth at Four x Five.

Gabriel Rico's 2019 Aspen Art Museum installation: "The Discipline of the Cave." The internationally exhibited Rice follows the tradition of Arte Povera, recontextualizing fragments from the natural and man-made worlds, and will be presented in a special solo at Perrotin's booth at the Dallas Art Fair's inaugural Four x Five.

Dateline Dallas: An end-of-day email from Dallas Art Fair and Culture Place director Kelly Cornell caught our attention and brought innovative news about a fresh, promising platform whose launch is just weeks away.

Best of all, it’s a new way to acquire art — and Texas-founded Dallas Art Fair/Culture Place is ahead of the game. It is combining an in-person, small-batch art fair with a highly curated boutique ecommerce experience.

Four x Five arrives Wednesday, November 11, and runs through November 25, with four galleries coming to the physical space of Dallas Art Fair Projects with a focused presentation spun around solo shows.

But there’s more. The Five component involves a virtual edition rolled out by Culture Place, Dallas Art Fair’s ecommerce pendant.

First, a little background. Culture Place came into being this past April when Dallas Art Fair wisely pivoted from an in-person fair to an online selling site to great success, generating hundreds of art-sales transactions (including a $700,ooo Alice Neel work), with the bottom line an incredible $3 million in a manner of days.

Fair co-founder John Sughrue and Fair director Kelly Cornell paid attention. Three months later, Culture Place officially launched, with an emphasis on giving a “bear hug” — in the words of Sughrue — to Texas art galleries. To date, 20 Texas dealers from Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio are part of the inaugural year of cultureplace.com. Participating galleries curate exhibitions that change out monthly.

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Who’s Participating: A Noteworthy Nine

For Four x Five, Dallas Art Fair and Culture Place broaden their view to fold in national and international dealers — the calling card of the Fair (as well as its Texas roster of gallerists) — to serve additional platforms for commerce and art acquisitions.

Kelly Cornell, via email, tells PaperCity:

The hybrid model of using our physical space, Dallas Art Fair Projects, and digital space, Culture Place, to interact with out audience seemed like a winning opportunity. We are so excited to produce a physical show and safely interact with the community and galleries.

The physical component, which opens at Dallas Art Fair Projects, 150 Manufacturing Street, Suite 214, on Wednesday, November 11 (Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm, with all social-distancing and mask protocols in place), presents four important gallerists, all Dallas Art Fair veterans.

Drum roll, please: Keijsers Koning (New York), home gallery to former Dallas talent William Burton Binnie, co-founder of Beefhaus collective; Magenta Plains (New York), helmed by SMU alum Olivia Smith; crowd fave Night Gallery (Los Angeles); and global powerhouse Perrotin (Paris, New York, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Shanghai).

William Burton Binnie’s installation at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska, 2019, represented by Keijsers Koning. Known in Texas art circles for his role as a co-founder of the Beefhaus collective, Binnie bears watching in the booth of Keijsers Koning, during Four x Five at Dallas Art Fair Projects. — William Burton Binnie’s installation at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska, 2019. Known in Texas art circles for his role as a co-founder of the Beefhaus collective, Binnie bears watching in the booth of Keijsers Koning during Four x Five at Dallas Art Fair Projects.

Cornell tells PaperCity the four dealers that will travel to Dallas to present art fare may also be offering works via cultureplace.com. Stay tuned.

Those exclusively curating works for Culture Place lean to the international — Beatriz Esguerra Art (Bogotá, Miami), Galerie Droste (Wuppertal and Paris), Kerlin Gallery (Dublin), and Taubert Contemporary (Berlin) — with one Southerner, SOCO Gallery (Charlotte, North Carolina), owned and directed by Chandra Johnson, who has a NASCAR-champion spouse, Jimmie Johnson, alongside impressive art-world credentials (the couple have been DAF regular fair-goers for years).

For the future, Cornell reveals Dallas Art Fair hopes to roll out more iterations of the Four x Five concept. Meanwhile, edition one encompasses a broad swath of dealers, Bogotá to Berlin, who serve up diverse media and messages, and refreshingly represent artists worthy of investigation working in conceptual, installation, representation/figuration, and abstraction, arrayed across a variety of collecting price points.

For those hungry for a real-life viewing experience, that’s available as well, via the virtual component selected specially for the Culture Place audience. And, due to the concise, focused size, visitors have time to thoughtfully engage with each artist and his or her practice.

Dallas Art Fair + Culture Place Present Four x Five

Wednesday, November 11, through Wednesday, November 25. Physical fair on view at Dallas Art Fair Projects, 150 Manufacturing Street, Suite 214, Dallas.

Tuesday through Saturday hours: 11 am to 6 pm. Virtual exhibition 24/7 from November 11 to 25 at cultureplace.com.

Scroll through the photo slideshow above and below this story to see Four x Five gallerists and artworks. All images courtesy the artists and their respective galleries: