Artist’s Statement (detail), 2013, urethane resin, approx 120 x 120 x 18 inches
Simeen Farhat – Word Play
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 29th, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition Dates: June 29th – August 3rd, 2013
Cris Worley Fine Arts is thrilled to announce Simeen Farhat’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, Word Play, opening June 29th, from 6pm-8pm and continuing through August 3, 2013. Pakistani-born Farhat received her MFA from Texas Christian University in 2000, and currently lives and works in Texas. Farhat uses the characters of various texts to invent calligraphy-like abstract forms out of cast resin. She then entwines the resin pieces to create her amorphous sculptures.
For Word Play, Farhat has created several sculptures, including a large wall-based installation. This installation uses the words of her artist statement, which discusses her interest in “represent[ing] women’s inherent right to be expressive” and her process and intent as an artist. Other works incorporate text from email and text communication, a subject Farhat is intrigued by as the sender’s intention can be masked by the cold format of the phone or computer screen. Farhat’s multiculturalism is also highlighted by sculptures whose form is derived from the poetry of Rumi, Ghalib, Khyaam, and Fitzgerald (written in Farsi, Urdu, and English) chosen by Farhat because they “speak eloquently about life, death, love, freedom of thoughts, and philosophy.”
Simeen Farhat has exhibited frequently oversees including in Pakistan, London, the UAE, India, Finland and Germany. In the United States, she has shown throughout Texas and in California, Chicago, Louisiana, and Philadelphia, among others. Farhat has also received many awards and honors including several artist residencies both domestically and abroad. Recently, she was asked to participate in the BT ArtBox project where artists from across the globe created sculptures based on the British telephone booth, to be displayed through the 2012 London Olympics and auctioned off for charity.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our contact information is – Telephone: 214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours are Wednesday – Saturday from 11am – 5pm and by appointment.
Shadow #4, 2013, oil on canvas, 36×48 inches
Ruben Nieto – Shadow Paintings
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 18th, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition Dates: May 18th – June 22nd, 2013
Cris Worley Fine Arts is excited to announce Dallas-based artist Ruben Nieto’s latest solo exhibition, ‘Ruben Nieto – Shadow Paintings’. The exhibition will open Saturday, May 18th from 6pm – 8pm with an artist’s reception and will continue through June 22nd, 2013. Comic books, Abstract Expressionism, the Pictures Generation, Pop Art and technology all converge in the work of Ruben Nieto. Since being exposed to American comics at an early age in Veracruz, Mexico, Nieto has been fascinated with popular imagery and culture. While earning his BFA from the Universidad de Guanajuato and his MFA in Arts and Technology from The University of Texas Dallas, Nieto was exposed to the masters of Modern art who have shaped both his aesthetic and process such as Jackson Pollock’s controlled drip technique, Robert Motherwell’s graphic cubist collage, and Willem de Kooning’s bold sense of color, among others.
Nieto uses Photoshop to digitally deconstruct comic book pages down to basic shapes and forms and uses those shapes to compose his canvases. Once completed, he sends the digital images overseas to be transformed into oil paintings by assistants, carrying on a longstanding tradition in the history of art of utilizing a workshop. He then, personally, adds the finishing touches to his canvases in his studio. Ruben Nieto’s Shadow series expands upon his theme of deconstruction and reconfiguring, creating an intriguing new narrative from seemingly unrelated imagery. He no longer integrates comic book characters or figurative forms into his visual lexicon, but the explosive use of color, graphic use of black, and animated motion all refer back to Nieto’s creative catalyst, the comic book.
Ruben Nieto has exhibited extensively throughout Texas as well as Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, Canada, Mexico and the United States. He lives and works in Dallas, Texas and is currently a PhD candidate in Arts and Technology from the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Richard Brettell, professor of Art History at UTD, Impressionism scholar, and former McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, will be writing a forward to an accompanying brochure on the exhibition.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our contact information is – Telephone: 214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours are Wednesday – Saturday from 11am – 5pm and by appointment.
Surrogacy (detail), 2013, oil on canvas, 30×40 inches
Isabelle du Toit – New Paintings
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 6th, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition Dates: April 6th – May 11th, 2013
Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to announce Isabelle du Toit – New Paintings opening on April 6th, 2013 with a reception from 6pm – 8pm and continuing through May 11th. While this will be du Toit’s first solo exhibition with Cris Worley Fine Arts, she has been a prominent part of the gallery and has shown with Worley since 2000.
Du Toit’s photorealistic portraits of animals (birds, mammals, insects, fish) and babies visualize the plight of man versus nature using wit, empathy and respect. The smaller canvases portray animals alone in clean, dark voids very different from their natural habitats. Du Toit’s detail is so fine that you can see each individual feather on the birds or the fine hairs of an animal’s coat. In her larger works, life sized babies are juxtaposed next to her animals and the two connect through their isolation and vulnerability. The artist heightens the effect by using chiaroscuro, which is the perfect vehicle to show illustrate her technical prowess. Du Toit is greatly interested in wildlife conservation and frequently paints endangered species because of her concern regarding the destruction of wildlife by mankind.
Isabelle du Toit was born in Strasbourg, France and studied printmaking at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. She lived in Texas for many years and now lives and works in Fort Myers, Florida. Du Toit’s work has exhibited nationally in Texas, California, Chicago, New York, Colorado, Seattle, and Florida, among others. Internationally, her work has been shown in London and Panama City, Panama.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our contact information is – Telephone: 214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours are Wednesday – Saturday from 11am – 5pm and by appointment.
Fetus, 2012, Italian alabaster and marble, 3x12x8 inches
Celia Eberle – motherf
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 6th, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition Dates: April 6th – May 11th, 2013
Cris Worley Fine Arts is excited to announce Celia Eberle’s motherf opening with an artist reception Saturday, April 6th from 6pm – 8pm and continuing through May 11th, 2013. Eberle is a well-known Dallas-based multimedia artist who describes her artistic pursuit as both “inexorable” (that which cannot be changed) and “inevitable” (that which always happens). She employs natural materials such as bone, wood, coral, and stone into her works that frequently examine the relationship between man and nature.
In motherf, Eberle created a body of work that explores the idea of Mother Nature as an abused woman. Aesthetically, Eberle’s work almost feels like something out of Grimm’s classic fairy tales, combining a mixture of the fantastical, whimsical, and sinister. From castle turrets carved from bone, to a massive sculpture shaped like a human foot and made of newsprint, Eberle is interested in mankind’s need to control the natural order and for disposability, both of which negatively affect the world we live in. There is another underpinning that can be found throughout the exhibition; the great equalizers, death and decay, are represented through many of the natural and fragile materials used in Eberle’s work.
Celia Eberle has exhibited extensively throughout Texas as well as in Chicago, New York and Oregon. Her work is currently in the collections of: The Dallas Museum of Art, the J.Wayne Stark University Gallery at Texas A&M, and the Longview Museum of Fine Arts in Longview, Texas.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our contact information is – Telephone: 214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours are Wednesday – Saturday from 11am – 5pm and by appointment.
Paul Booker – Meander
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 23rd, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition Dates: February 23rd – March 30th, 2013
Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to present Paul Booker’s latest solo exhibition ‘Meander’ opening with an artist
reception on February 23rd from 6pm – 8pm. Dallas-native, Paul Booker, continues to delve into the depths of
transparency, an apt subject for our time, with his lexan plastic and pin sculptures as well as his layered polyurethane,
ink, and enamel paintings. Booker is known for his jagged yet delicate lines, usually created in ink, that construct
curving rectangles, cloudforms, or arrows that swarm in various winding pathways. Some of Booker’s visual inspirations
include fluid dynamics, animal flocking behavior, insect swarm intelligence and jet streams. All of these natural
formations are both imperfect yet ordered creating a fascinating and beautiful visual dichotomy.
Booker’s paintings are made by laying down pigmented oil enamel, followed by drawing in ink, and then covering the
surface in layers of polyurethane before beginning the process again. This technique particularly calls to mind flowing
water as the colors begin to change as they are submerged deeper and deeper in layers of polyurethane. Booker’s
sculptures, however, are more reminiscent of the jet streams and insect swarms that he is so inspired by. These are
built using collector’s pins to stack small pieces of lexan, previously drawn and printed on by the artist, that are cut
into the rectangle and arrow shapes he is known for. His sculptural forms float above the wall in elegant arrays or
crowd around a central mass. The transparent depth created by light moving through the colored plastic casts ethereal
shadows on the wall which are intrinsically part of the sculpture.
Paul Booker received his BFA from the University of Texas in 1995 and his MFA from the University of North Texas in
2000. His work has been shown throughout Texas as well as in New York and California. In 2011, he was part of the
Art Museum of Southeast Texas’s Obsessive Worlds exhibition and, in the same year, was included in New American
Paintings for the third time in his career.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our contact information is – Telephone:
214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours are Wednesday –
Saturday from 11am – 5pm and by appointment.
Edward Setina – Concentrations
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 23rd, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition Dates: February 23rd – March 30th, 2013
Cris Worley Fine Arts is excited to announce, multimedia artist, Edward Setina’s first solo exhibition with the gallery
titled ‘Concentrations’. The exhibition will be made up of performance-based videos, sculptures, and video stills.
Many of the sculptures that will be featured in the exhibition are objects created for Setina’s Concentrations video
series.
In Setina’s videos, an astronaut-like character or dimensional traveler is shown in various situations and conditions.
The aesthetic of the work seems to be a mix of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus with a sense
of dimensional travel permeating through each scene. In one video, the protagonist is crouched down on all fours
over a flat white platform. On the ground beneath his face and upper torso is a pool of an inky black liquid of
unknown origins. He seems to be under some form of physical stress and, as time progresses, his body has
to fight to stay up. In the next video, Concentrations #3, he moves down the hallway, away from his hunched
over self, towards a human centrifuge. Without any encouragement, he subjects himself to the pressures of the
centrifuge as the audience watches the clash between technology and human perseverance and stamina.
Edward Setina currently attends the California College of the Arts where he is a candidate for an MFA in 2014.
Setina received his BFA from the University of North Texas in 2003 and went on to participate in UTD’s CentralTrak
Artist Residency Program from 2008-2009. In 2011, Setina also received the Dallas Museum of Art Kimbrough
Fund award.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our contact information is -
Telephone: 214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours are
Wednesday – Saturday from 11am – 5pm and by appointment.
Migration, 2012, oil on canvas, 66 x 93 inches
Trey Egan – Be Still with Me
MFA Thesis Exhibition
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 12th, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition Dates: January 12 – February 16, 2013
Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to host Trey Egan’s MFA thesis exhibition, Be Still with Me, opening January 12th with an artist reception from 6pm – 8pm. Be Still with Me is Egan’s second solo exhibition (and first in North Texas) following a brilliant debut during ArtHouston 2012. In Egan’s paintings, channels of rich color intermingle with indefinite organic forms. His lush and abstract canvases exemplify the beauty of pure paint and are made through the artist tapping into his subconscious without the purpose of depicting specific visual imagery. In this way, Egan’s visual language deals with the relationship between the subconscious and physical space and allows the viewer to navigate each composition through his or her own memories and experiences.
Trey Egan is a candidate for a Masters of Fine Art in the spring of 2013 at the University of North Texas College of Visual Art and Design. He has been part of many juried group exhibitions including some juried by: Peter Doroshenko (Executive Director of the Dallas Contemporary), Toby Kamps (Curator at the Menil Collection), Clint Willour (curator at the Galveston Arts Center) and artists Annette Lawrence, Vincent Falsetta, and Erick Swenson among others.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our contact information is – Telephone: 214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours are Wednesday – Saturday from 11am – 5pm and by appointment.
Cairn, 2012, inflated steel, automotive paint, abalone flake, 46 x 36 x 30 inches
WILLIAM CANNINGS – Soft Cell
Opening Celebration: Saturday, December 1, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition Dates: Dec 1, 2012 – Jan 5th, 2013
Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to announce William Cannings’ triumphant return to Dallas with Soft Cell, his first solo exhibition in North Texas since his 2008 show with PanAmerican Art Projects. English-born Cannings has taken America by storm with his vibrant yet sleek inflated steel sculptures that he coats with glossy automotive paint. The British Invasion begins with an opening celebration on Saturday, December 1st from 6pm – 8pm and will continue through January 5th, 2013.
Those familiar with Cannings’ work recognize his more figurative phase of sculpture that evoked an ironic sense of humor by using hard steel to create inner tubes, beach balls, and even inflatable chairs that looked like they were made of malleable plastic. Now, Cannings’ sculpture has taken a turn toward the conceptual and abstract with slithering serpentine forms that seem to rise out of the ground and voluptuous wall mounted pieces that are coated with decadent color. Due to Cannings’ process of literally heating and inflating metal, each piece still looks weightless despite its medium, creating a dichotomy of hard and soft. The seductive forms and visual trickery in Cannings’ work makes it provocative, demanding to be touched.
William Cannings is originally from Manchester, England and currently lives and works in Lubbock as a professor of sculpture at Texas Tech University. He exhibits frequently across the United States including in New York, Miami, New Mexico and Texas, among others. This year alone, Cannings began a public sculpture in Lubbock for a TXDOT public art project, was included in Espoused, a curated exhibition at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, and was chosen for 100 Southwest Artists, a book to be published as part of a fine art series by Schiffer Publishing.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our contact information is – Telephone: 214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours are Wednesday – Saturday from 11am – 5pm and by appointment.
David Fokos – Gradations
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, October 13th, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition dates: October 13 – November 24, 2012
David Fokos was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1960 and went on to receive his Bachelors in engineering from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Fokos creates photographs of land and seascapes that evoke tranquility and emanate light with a concentration on capturing the feeling and emotion of a location, rather than documenting precise imagery. At Cornell, Fokos studied Japanese art history, film, and poetry, and, while he does not specifically set out to render traditional haiku concepts in photographic form, there is a noticeable tie-in of Japanese aesthetic tradition evident in the grace, stillness, and simplicity of each piece.
Fokos’ multistep process is compulsory for his product. While many people consider photography a swift medium, Fokos labors over each image and adds only three to four new photographs to his portfolio each year. Fokos solely works with a large-format Korona View camera from the 1920’s and uses long exposures lasting from 20 seconds to 60 minutes. After developing the film and selecting the best photographs, Fokos then scans the images into his computer and often spends over 100 hours fine-tuning each element. Then, the final selection of works for his portfolio is made.
David Fokos regularly exhibits across the United States and abroad. Recently, Wolfgang Puck Group acquired Fokos’ work for their high-end Las Vegas steakhouse, CUT. His work is frequently published and is also included in the collections of: Banana Republic, Microsoft, Texaco Corporation, McGraw-Hill, the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, the Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego, and the Boise Art Museum, among others.
Cris Worley Fine Arts moved to a new space September 7th located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our new contact information is as follows – Telephone: 214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours are also extended to Wednesday – Saturday from 11am – 5pm.
Howard Sherman: List of demands
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, September 8, 6 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition dates: September 8 – October 6, 2012
Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to announce Houston-based painter, Howard Sherman’s, List of demands will open Saturday, September 8th with an artist’s reception from 6pm-8pm. The exhibition opening will coincide with the Grand Opening of our new exhibition space located at 1415 Slocum Street, Suite 104. Sherman is known for his large-scale acrylic and marker canvases as well as his smaller works on paper, all of which have a cartoon and graffiti-like theme reminiscent of neo-expressionist work from the 1980s. While, in fact, Basquiat is one of his influences, Sherman’s bright and chaotic paintings employ painterly techniques such as trompe l’oeil to detach themselves from the purposeful crudeness found in his predecessor’s work. Sherman’s work is concurrently disturbing and funny, both dark and light as he creates a commentary on today’s chaotic world.
The monstrous yet comic figures that dominate many of Sherman’s canvases spawn from his past as a syndicated and award winning comic strip artist. While acrylic is his main medium, Sherman has said that the use of marker, the medium of comic strips, is extremely important to the success of each work. With marker, he is able to go back and flesh out any areas in his compositions that need it and this, again, lends to the comic feel of each piece. This latest body of work breaks from earlier compositions by honing in on an object or character instead of focusing on creating all-over abstraction.
Howard Sherman received is BFA from the University of Texas in 1993 and went on to receive an MFA in Painting and Drawing in 2006 from the University of North Texas. He participates regularly in artist in residency programs, most recently, at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Thrice, Sherman has been chosen for publication in New American Paintings and he is also included in Catherine Anspon’s Texas Artists Today published in 2010. Sherman has received many awards and accolades and, in 2011, was a Hunting Art Prize finalist.
Cris Worley Fine Arts is located at: 1415 Slocum St, # 104, Dallas, TX 75207. Our new contact information is as follows – Telephone: 214.745.1415, Email: inquiries@crisworley.com, Website: www.crisworley.com. Gallery Hours have also been extended to Wednesday – Saturday from 11am – 5pm.