DALLAS, APRIL 6, 2017 – The Dallas Art Fair and the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) are pleased to announce the second annual Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program with purchases by artists Justin Adian, Katherine Bradford, Derek Fordjour, Andrea Galvani, Summer Wheat and Matthew Wong.
This year marks the second edition of the program – an annual initiative designed to enhance the relationship between the Museum, the Fair, and its international roster of exhibiting galleries and artists. The Acquisition Program provides the Dallas Museum of Art with the funds to acquire a selection of artwork from the Fair for its permanent collection. The initiative is designed to both strengthen the city’s institutional partnerships as well as its thriving international presence.
Doubling in size from 2016, this year’s program is generously funded with $100,000. The founding and returning donors include Tricia and Gil Besing, Linda and David Rogers, Susan and Shawn Bonsell, Gowri and Alex N.K. Sharma, Marlene and John Sughrue, and The Dallas Art Fair Foundation. Among the donors new to 2017 are Cliff Risman, David and Zoe Bonnette, Fraser and Rhonda Marcus, Shannon and Dallas Sonnier, Steven and Anne Stodghill.
“The Dallas Museum of Art is honored to be the recipient of this generous gift for the second year in a row,” stated Agustín Arteaga, The Eugene McDermott Director of the DMA. “The Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program helps the DMA continue to add to the Museum’s acclaimed contemporary art collection and we look forward to sharing these exciting new works with our visitors.”
In 2017, the Dallas Art Fair welcomes nearly 100 exhibitors – over 30 of which are first time participants. Representing over 16 different countries, the roster is the Fair’s strongest and most international to date, lending a diverse array of artworks to the Acquisition Program.
“We are thrilled to be joining forces with the Dallas Museum of Art once again,” says Dallas Art Fair co-founder John Sughrue, “The growth of this year’s initiative reinforces the dynamism of our partnership, and serves as a testament to the strength of the surging Dallas arts community.”
For the second year in a row, Gavin Delahunty, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, led the group who selected the artworks set to be acquired by the institution from the Fair.
“In what was a exciting afternoon with DMA colleagues and our generous donors, we acquired seven works by six outstanding artists. A sculpture that makes reference to Levelland, a city in North-West Texas; a refined canvas by a 75 year-old abstract painter; an autobiographical work that speaks to a Memphis-born artist’s Ghanaian heritage; a surreal photograph that blurs the boundary between art and science; a large expressive painting that puzzles with its fiber-like surface; and a beautifully rendered offbeat picture by an artist based in Hong Kong. The selection reflects the outstanding quality of work at the fair this year and its increasingly global attitude.”
The works selected as part of the 2017 acquisition include Justin Adian’s sculptural painting, Levelland (2017) from Skarstedt, New York/London; Katherine Bradford’s painting, Prom Swim (2016) from CANADA, New York; Llevando una pepita de oro a la velocidad del sonido #10 (2015), a photographic work by Andrea Galvani from Eduardo Secci Gallery, Florence; Summer Wheat’s acrylic and mesh composition, Bread Winners (2017) from Fridman Gallery, New York; and The West, a painting by Matthew Wong from Karma, New York/Amagansett; and No. 73 (2017) and What will you do to help us Win? (2017), paintings by Derek Fordjour from Luce Gallery, Turin.
With this selection, the Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program further bolsters the offerings the Dallas Museum of Art, the Dallas Art Fair, and the larger Dallas community provide for arts patrons across the globe.
GAVIN DELAHUNTY
Gavin Delahunty is the Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art. Recent exhibitions include Carey Young: The New Architecture (2017), Rebecca Warren: The Main Feeling (2016), Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots (2015) and Frank Bowling: Map Paintings (2015). In fall 2017 Delahunty will organize a major exhibition exploring 50 years of film and video titled Truth: 24 frames per second. Delahunty has acquired works for the DMA by significant artists including Stephen Antonakos, Frank Bowling, Walter de Maria, Sam Gilliam, Giorgio Griffa, Sarah Lucas, William McKeown, Julie Mehretu, Jackson Pollock, Joan Semmel, Keith Sonnier, Haim Steinbach, and Rebecca Warren.
DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART
Established in 1903, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is among the 10 largest art museums in the country and is distinguished by its commitment to research, innovation, and public engagement. At the heart of the Museum and its programs is its global collection, which encompasses more than 23,000 works and spans 5,000 years of history, representing a full range of world cultures. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Members and donors, the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
DALLAS ART FAIR
Co-founded by John Sughrue and Chris Byrne, the Dallas Art Fair enters its ninth edition this spring. Located at the Fashion Industry Gallery – adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the Dallas’ dynamic downtown Arts District – the 2017 Dallas Art Fair will feature over 90 (nearly 100) prominent national and international art dealers and galleries exhibiting painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, video, and installation by modern and contemporary artists.
SELECTED ARTISTS
Justin Adian was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1976. He graduated with a BFA from the University of North Texas in 2000, and an MFA from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of Art in 2003. His core process involves stretching oil, enamel or spray painted canvas around foam cushions, often combining two or more shapes to form composite wall-mounted sculptures. Adian’s work comfortably straddles the theoretical divide between painting and sculpture with wry assertiveness. Adian’s practice gives depth and color to three-dimensional forms without having them part from the mounting wall and becoming freestanding objects. His paintings embody a pioneering, if not punk rock, spirit: demonstrating an effervescence, looseness and playfulness in their rebellious composition and unexpected colors. Selected exhibitions include Skarstedt, London, 2014; Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, NY, 2014; Blackston, New York, NY, 2012; Martos Gallery, New York, NY, 2012; Bryant Park, New York, NY, 2010-11: Blackston, New York, NY, 2010; Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York, NY, 2010; Jack the Pelican Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, DepARTment Gallery, Toronto Ontario, HBC Gallery, Berlin, Germany, all in 2009; North Hall Gallery, New York, NY, 2008; and at UNT Artspace, Fort Worth, TX, 2007.
Katherine Bradford (b. 1942, New York) lives and works in New York City, attended Bryn Mawr College and holds an MFA from SUNY Purchase. Her work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, Maine, and the Farnsworth Museum, Maine. She has had recent exhibitions at CANADA, LLC, New York and Adams and Ollman, Portland, Oregon. Broadly recognized for her achievements, she has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, Pollock-Krasner grant, and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. Bradford is a senior critic Yale University.
Derek Fordjour (b. 1974, Memphis) was born in Memphis, TN to parents of Ghanaian heritage. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta Georgia, earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and an MFA in painting at Hunter College. His work has appeared in exhibitions at Roberts & Tilton Gallery in Los Angeles, Sotheby's S2 Gallery in New York and Luce Gallery in Turin, Italy. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post and Brooklyn Rail. His work appears in several collections throughout the US and Europe. He is currently Artist-in-Residence at Sugar Hill Museum in New York City.
Andrea Galvani (b. 1973, Italy) lives and works in New York and Mexico City. Drawing from other disciplines and often assuming scientific methodologies, his conceptual research informs his use of photography, video, drawing, and installation. Galvani’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum, New York, NY; 4th Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art; the Mediations Biennale, Poznan, Poland; 9th Bienal of Contemporary Art of Nicaragua; Aperture Foundation, New York, NY; The Calder Foundation, New York, NY; Mart Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Trento, Italy; Macro Museum, Rome, Italy; GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy; De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam; Oslo Plads, Copenhagen, Denmark, among others. In 2011, he received the New York Exposure Prize and was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Galvani earned a BFA in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna in 1999, and his MFA in Visual Art from Bilbao University in 2002. He has been a visiting artist at NYU (2009/2010) and has completed artist residencies at the Location One International Artist Residency Program New York (2008), LMCC Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2009), M.I.A. Artist Space Program/Columbia University School of the Arts Brooklyn, NY, (2010). From 2006 to 2009, he was a professor of Photographic Language and the History of Contemporary Photography at the University of Carrara for Fine Arts in Bergamo, Italy.
Summer Wheat (b. 1977, Oklahoma City) received an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design and a BA from University of Central Oklahoma. Wheat will participate in her first museum solo exhibition presented by the Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City, OK (2016). Her work has been included in recent museum exhibitions, including ICA Collection: Expanding the Field of Painting (2013–14), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Paint Things: Beyond the Stretcher (2013), deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park; and Paradox Maintenance Technicians: A Comprehensive Manual to Contemporary Painting from Los Angeles and Beyond (2013), Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include Everything Under the Sun at Pocket Utopia, New York City, and Walk-In Pantry (2015), Fridman Gallery, New York City. Summer Wheat lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens.
Matthew Wong (b. 1984, Toronto) currently lives and works in Hong Kong and Zhongshan, China. He received a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and MFA in Creative Media (Photography) from City University of Hong Kong. With an underlying focus on landscapes, Wong’s work derives inspiration from various art historical precedents, ranging from classical Chinese painting, brushstrokes like that of Chaim Soutine and Vincent Van Gogh, and abstract expressionism.