The recent edition of the Dallas Art Fair offered an overwhelming abundance of artists and galleries to absorb. Having only one day in my schedule, it felt like drinking water from a firehose. We all know that walking, scanning, and digesting artworks at a rapid clip is not ideal for any art experience, but for all the faults inherent to the art fair experience, it is still invigorating. Saturday was crowded, and I waded through the throng on a mission to find pieces that slowed me down and drew me into a deep look. The booth-to-booth retinal overload challenged comprehension, but I was impressed by many works that stood out amongst the splashy fireworks calling for our attention.
Joan Snyder’s Fairytale at Franklin Parrasch Gallery was fantastically visceral and sensitive to surface and touch. Matthew Craven’s intricate patterned ink drawings at Asya Geisberg Gallery were worth every second of examination, as were her other artists on display at one of the most exciting booths. Bradley Kerl’s shadow self-portraits at Ivester Contemporary were confident with their tip-of-the-hat reference to Alex Katz and Jasper Johns. From the newcomer on the Dallas block, the gallery Nature of Things, showed notable ceramic/painting/sculpture mashups from Sam Linguist. I also enjoyed Kazuma Koike’s nubby mask sculptures at Osaka-based Tezukayama Gallery and Marti Cormand’s lovingly portrayed soap portrait on a worn book cover, shyly standing its ground at Bienvenu Steinberg & C.
Haroun Hayward, “Too Nice, Play it Twice (Walton Wood Cottage),” 2024, oil paint, oil stick, oil pastel, and gesso on panel, 49 x 36 x 2 5/8 inches
But as this is One Work/Short Take, I must resign myself to a single artwork. I don’t need much resignation given how much I was pulled in by London artist Haroun Hayward. Too Nice, Play it Twice (Walton Wood Cottage), 2024 quietly trapped me in a careful inspection of all its nuances. This easel-sized painting is darkly painted with three quadrants interacting yet determined to remain distinct miniature worlds of their own. Oval shapes at the top are scumbled over with oil stick and pastels, such that they feel like repeated flags or fragments of fabric patterns.
Haroun Hayward, “Too Nice, Play it Twice (Walton Wood Cottage),” detail, 2024, oil paint, oil stick, oil pastel, and gesso on panel, 49 x 36 x 2 5/8 inches
Haroun Hayward, “Too Nice, Play it Twice (Walton Wood Cottage),” detail, 2024, oil paint, oil stick, oil pastel, and gesso on panel, 49 x 36 x 2 5/8 inches
Below on the right, overlapping eye shapes appear like a modernist puzzle conjoining colored shapes, while depositing a texture that suggests combed shorthair fur. On the bottom left of the painting, one finds an exceptionally seductive abstracted landscape where every touch of the materials feels simultaneously elegant and casual. Apple trees and a bird beak emerge from the rubbed pigment. This section, in particular, is a master class in a “just enough” painting philosophy that hides a deep knowing about surface, form, and syncopation. I spent a long while enjoying the traces of different voices working in harmony. I chose this single, perhaps less obvious work, because Hayward’s adroit use of shifting styles also mirrors how we consume images, one after the other, ad nauseam. But ultimately what is so satisfying about this painting is how the artist shrewdly turns our usual speed of consumption on its head and shows that with a slower looking we can find gold held within the rock, or within the glittering disco ball that is the modern art fair.
