Installation view of toys set up at “Ron English: Texas: Naturally Surreal”
Ron English, “Cathy Cowgirl’s Pink Barn,” 2011, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches
Ron English: Texas: Naturally Surreal at Ro2 Art (Tin District), May 18, 2024 – June 22, 2024
Ron English’s exhibition Texas: Naturally Surreal at Ro2 Art showcases a blend of fine art and street art, illustrating his versatility as a toymaker and painter. The exhibition presents a mixture of paintings, screenprints, plastic toys, and video work, each piece reflecting English’s distinct style.
“Cathy Cowgirl’s Pink Barn,” 2011, predates the work of Emma Stern, a New York painter who depicts similarly garish and cartoonish sights. She had a painting on view at the Dallas Art Fair this year that was strikingly similar to this one: a milkmaid carried jugs of milk, standing in front of a dairy barn. I suspect no relation between these two paintings, but Stern’s dedication to rendering slick, plastic figures and faces is actually outshined by English here. Even the texture of dirt was marvelous to behold.
The Temper Tot prints, with their comic-style cross-hatching, come in various colorways, but lack the creative depth seen in Cathy Cowgirl’s Pink Barn. The plastic toys on display are intriguing in their variety and showcase English’s skill in three dimensions. The accompanying video work in Ro2’s black box gallery provides an extensive overview of English’s career, highlighting his virtuosity in the area of character design. Despite the omission of English’s toys on the checklist, there is indeed more to explore and appreciate in this exhibition.
English’s work can be seen on the streets of Texas, as in his Temper Tot character, which is featured in a mural in Deep Ellum. His work skillfully blends detailed, naturalistic representations with surreal, metaphor-laden scenes that challenge viewers to rethink their perceptions.
Texas: Naturally Surreal offers a diverse array of English’s work, from expertly rendered paintings to prints and toys. This exhibition not only highlights English’s technical skill and creativity but also his ability to merge fine art with street art. The more one looks at this show, the more detail emerges.
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Lorraine Tady, “Superliminal Signal Velocity,” 2023-2024, acrylic and ink on canvas. Courtesy of Barry Whistler Gallery
Installation view of “Lorraine Tady: Inter-Spatial”
Lorraine Tady: Inter-Spatial at Barry Whistler Gallery, May 18 – June 22, 2024
Lorraine Tady’s works in this exhibition, which can take upwards of two years to complete, begin with lines generated on copper plates. These drawings are then digitized and manipulated further in her studio. This process results in pieces that resemble schematic drawings, which often appear as if they have deviated from orderly intent. The complex layers of lines and forms invite viewers to navigate through the depicted physical spaces, engaging them in a mental tracing of intricate paths.
In her own words, Tady reflects on her journey with technology in art, noting that, “For many years, all artists have been working with technology,” and that her experimentation began in the late 1980s with Xerox machines. This evolution continued to her current blend of printmaking with digital alterations; many of the works here are UV printed onto canvas. Tady explains, “This idea of repeating images and altering the image by changing the color, the scale, blocking it out, suddenly I found a way to blend the analog and digital.”
Gavin Morrison, in his exhibition essay, delves deeper into the thematic underpinnings of Tady’s work. He describes how Tady teases at types of representation by quoting diagrammatic illustrations and complicating the representation of schematics. These elements, while initially appearing to be codifications of the world, transform into ambiguous objects within her paintings. Morrison notes, “As our eyes read across the surface of the paintings, we linger on those moments that feel familiar, untangling them from the unknown.” This interaction aligns with Marcel Duchamp’s concept that the creative act involves both the artist and the viewer, with Tady extending this notion further by making the spectator a part of the redrawing process.
Tady’s canvases are a blend of familiar and alien elements, creating a universe governed by unknown conditional interactions. Her use of color fields that fade and burst through one another, coupled with unexpected hard lines that interrupt organic forms, emphasizes the artifice and detachment in her work. Her slight acknowledgement of the canvas’ edges, by terminating colors before they hit them, creates an internal framing that affirms the paintings’ singularity.
The exhibition comprises seven large-scale canvases incorporating elements from her monotypes, drawings, and smaller canvases. This convergence of various mediums underscores a consistency within her constructed universe. Tady’s process involves directly trading and copying elements between her works, allowing passages from her monotypes to be scaled and modified into her paintings. This practice speaks to the dual nature of painting as both artifice and fact.
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William Sarradet is the Assistant Editor for Glasstire.
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