May 14 - June 18, 2022
From Talley Dunn Gallery:
“Joseph Havel’s works of sculpture are visual poems, revelatory in their materiality and form. Taking inspiration from domestic objects such as bedsheets, curtains, and shirts; Havel’s works are modest in subject but resplendent in their presence. Cast in bronze and polyurethane resin, the sculptures exceed the scope of their origins. This most recent body of work is the result of an ongoing collaboration during the pandemic between the artist and Hannah, Havel’s African gray parrot.
In the isolation of the pandemic, Havel collected a plethora of cardboard shipping boxes, which Hannah began to take interest in. The bronze sculptures in the exhibition are cast from molds of boxes Havel stacked in skyscraper forms that Hannah intervened on with her beak and talons—nibbling, tearing, and shredding. Fittingly, the artist refers to these works as “parrot architecture.” Havel’s work with Hannah is a compelling example of scholar Donna Haraway’s conception of “companion species,” which calls for a recognition of the complexity of non-human animals and asks that we take our relationships with them seriously. Havel’s new work carefully attends to the material and social conditions of life in quarantine, tracking the flows of goods across the world in an age of heightened expedience and social isolation alongside the development of new kinds of kin nurtured within the confines of the home. These new works speak to life in the midst of a global pandemic and shifting financial structures, visualizing the new kinds of affective bonds we might foster with the environment, materials, and other beings around us.”
Reception: May 14, 2022 | 12–5 pm
5020 Tracy st.
Dallas, 75205 TX
(214) 521-9898
Get directions