Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1172264
ART TOPICS A s h a l f - m i l l i o n - dollar townhomes pop up throughout The Cedars — a neighborhood once considered the other side of the tracks — few arts organizations better remind us of the art pioneers who homesteaded there decades ago than The MAC, whose blue exterior proclaims its presence loudly on South Ervay Street. Currently on view is "Cosmic to Corporeal: QUEER LIVE TOP LEFT IMAGE COURTESY OFTHE ARTISTS. BOTTOM RIGHT PHOTO BY ELISABET DAVIDS. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK AND I8 GALLERY, REYKJAVIK 34 Contemporary Queer Performance Practices," an exhibition organized via an international open call for artists by curator Liss LaFleur. Look for an avant-garde roster of talent, including Christian Cruz, Chuck & George, Zackary Drucker, fierce pussy, and ATOM-r (Anatomical Theaters of Mixed Reality). Performance pieces complement time-based, photographic, and sculptural works that redefine popular and often provincial views of performance art. Jer'Lisa Devezin incorporates heavy, loud, delicate, strong, precious, and sharp materials in her performances and videos, which reference her physical body and common stereotypes of black women. Her work exemplifies the thought-provoking nature of the exhibition, which reflects greater dialogues occurring in our cultural and social zeitgeist. "Cosmic to Corporeal: Contemporary Queer Performance Practices," through November 9, at The MAC, the-mac.org. Billy Fong I f you were born in Reykjavík, the son of an actress and a director/playwright, chances are you'd end up working in a creative field, too. Such was the case for Ragnar Kjartansson, a multimedia artist known for his video installations, performances, drawings, and paintings that have footnotes in culture and history. This month, the Dallas Museum of Art presents "Focus On: Ragnar Kjartansson," an exhibition of work culled from the collection of Marguerite Hoffman. On view is The Visitors, 2012, a wildly enveloping nine-channel video installation filmed in a nearly 200-year-old farmhouse in the Hudson Valley; the work features eight musicians, each singing the same line from the poem Feminine Ways by artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir. Also, making its museum debut is Postcards to Marguerite, 2010 – 2011. Over 14 months, Kjartansson mailed postcards POSTCARDS FROM ABROAD to Hoffman sharing personal life events, both the mundane (meals, the weather) and the profound (the birth of his first child) by way of watercolor, drawing, and text. "Focus On: Ragnar Kjartansson," through March 22, 2020, at the Dallas Museum of Art, dma.org. Billy Fong T h e c o l l a b o r a t i v e practice of Fort Worth artists Linda and Ed Blackburn is in the limelight at cerebral project space The Reading Room, with "Eddie Leon Returns." Founder/owner Karen Weiner tapped Tyler Museum of Art's Caleb Bell as guest curator for a deep vintage dive into narrative works from the '90s by the Blackburns, who penned a cartoon strip under the fictive moniker Ray Madison. The Adventures of Eddie Leon — represented at The Reading Room by a selection of drawings, paintings, ephemera, and videos — portrays the hero in a perilous situation surrounded by villains, a scenario eerily in goose step with today. The text-based works owe a debt to Lichtenstein, as well as to World War II-era comics that depicted the battle of the axis of good and evil. Artists/curator conversation, Saturday, November 2, 4 pm; through December 7; thereadingroom-dallas. blogspot.com. Catherine D. Anspon COMIC BOOK HERO Ray Madison's Have a Compact?, 1998, at The Reading Room COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND THE READING ROOM Ragnar Kjartansson's The Visitors, 2012, at the Dallas Museum of Art Cori-Olinghouse & Shona Masarin, film still from Ghostline, 2013