(Courtesy of the Dallas Museum of Art)
With Gaultier’s exhibition closing on Sunday, the Dallas arts community, in addition to curious museumgoers, are wondering what the Dallas Museum of Art’s current exhibition, “Mark Manders: Parallel Occurrences/Documented Assignments,” will contribute to the museum.
Gaultier’s exhibition for the Dallas Museum of Art was the first endeavor into assimilating fine art and fashion, allowing the museum to augment its unique program. “Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk” has attracted international exposure in outlets such as Forbes and Harper’s Bazaar magazines. Nonetheless, Manders’ distinctive collection hasn’t stood neglected.
Jeffrey Grove, the Museum’s Hoffman family senior curator of contemporary art, said “evidence already indicates that this exhibition is being received with wild enthusiasm….our visitors want many different experiences, and these exhibitions provide them.”
The exhibition, which has been open since Jan. 15, 2012, will be on display until April 15, 2012. The touring exhibition features 15 new sculptural works in addition to loaned works.
Maxwell L. Anderson, the Eugene McDermott director of the Dallas Museum of Art, said, “Mark Manders provides another example of the DMA’s expanding and provocative contemporary art program, which benefits from the ongoing and enthusiastic commitment of Dallas collectors, including The Pinnell Collection, which loaned three works that we are pleased to highlight.”
As an artist, Manders is known for his inexplicable works and his faith behind “Self-Portrait as a Building.” Manders describes this “Self-Portrait as a Building” to the Dallas Museum of Art that as an ongoing, monumental project that has come to define his overall practice.
“Parallel Occurrences/ Documented Assignments” is the first North American tour featuring Manders’ work.
By compiling ordinary objects, his installations have the ability to form sentences and plots for the viewer to independently conjure up.
“Mark Manders’ sculptural vocabulary is distinct in its ability to traverse many languages — figuratively and metaphorically — in creating emotionally resonant, if seemingly mysterious, tableaux,” Grove said.
According to Grove, Manders’ pieces, “Figure with Three Piles of Sand” and “Room with Chairs and Factory” seem to provoke sustained attention from Dallas Museum of Art visitors.
Using seemingly bizarre resources, Manders creates artwork particularly directed for a contemporary art fiend.
“This conversation with the uncanny is unique, and adds a different layer of texture to our program, which in recent years, has tended to focus on a number of artists who are emphatically non-objective or figural in their approach. Manders is neither and both simultaneously.” Grove said.
