Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1510301
Art NOTES By Catherine D. Anspon N asher Prize News: Our lead story involves the future, when incoming N a s h e r L a u r e a t e O t o b o n g N k a n g a accepts her Renzo Piano-designed prize on a big gala night Friday, April 5, 2025, at Nasher Sculpture Center. She's the eighth anointed artist to garner one of the most prestigious awards in the global art world, which comes with a hefty $100,000 honorarium. Nkanga's installation- and performance-based practice addresses complex contemporary issues spun around the land, migration, movement, and belonging; her nuanced, poetic works speak with conviction. Born in 1974, in Kano, Nigeria, and residing in Antwerp, the mid- career Renaissance talent is a veteran of many biennials including Venice Biennale, where she won the Special Mention Award (2019), as well as Documenta 14, Athens (2017). She truly exemplifies the ambitious, inclusive, and international scope of the Nasher Prize. Nkanga is also the first laureate in the Nasher's new biennial prize format, allowing time for the preparation of an expansive exhibition at the museum and an in-depth monograph. Arts writer Ericka Schiche explores Otobong Nkanga's immersive, research-driven practice at papercitymag.com. Texas-Japan Express: Gallerist Peter Augustus Owen shutters his eponymous three-year-old brick-and-mortar space, Peter Augustus, while continuing to deal art on a smaller scale. Augustus Owen's next big venture will be establishing the Augustus Owen Foundation. The dealer's creds include serving as contributing editor and associate publisher of Hong Kong-based ArtAsiaPacific magazine and heading up PR and marketing for gallery powerhouse Perrotin in Asia. With a background in contemporary Asian art, honed from a decade living there, including two years in Tokyo, Augustus Owen's initial focus will be a Dallas-based residency for Japanese artists. The foundation's first residency is set for spring 2024 to align with Dallas Art Fair, while its advisory board encompasses figures from the Asian art world and local intelligentsia including Emily Edwards, Dallas Contemporary associate curator, and Thomas Feulmer, curator of The Warehouse, Dallas. Augustus Owen also contributes his insights as Dallas digital arts correspondent for papercitymag. com. Stay tuned for his byline coming soon. Portraiture Trifecta: Identity, the figure, and portraiture are timeless topics throughout art history. Pencil on Paper Gallery's Dr. Valerie Gillespie curates three shows spun around contemporary talents with diverse practices, from painting to performative photography, who all have something to say. The solos in Pencil on Paper's expansive Dallas Design District digs feature Dallas artists Rapheal Crump's "Moves the Soul" and Emmanuel Gillespie's "I Am," and L.A.-based artist/ actor Charles Michael Davis' "Wild at Heart" series. Crump, a grad of NYC's respected School of Visual Arts, brings a graphic design and branding sensibility to his portraiture and image making, while the gallerist's painter husband, Emmanuel Gillespie, explores old-school subjects such as Nina Simone, rendered in an Ab Ex improvisational technique. Davis' photo- based practice owes a debt to Robert Longo's figurative subjects, paired with hermetic cubistic animal masks that each subject wears (opening Saturday November 18, 5 to 7 pm; through January 6, 2024). Bask in Beauty: We could all use a soupçon of the sublime, and PDNB Gallery has you covered. Dallas photographic talent Marcy Palmer's botanicals, edged in gold leaf and printed on vellum, have their roots in her upbringing in Saratoga Springs, New York, surrounded by the Adirondacks; she graduated from the School of Visuals Arts, NYC, with an MFA in photography, and her work is influenced by the Bauhaus and Surrealism movements. At PDNB, she presents "That Luscious Day," which includes contemplative prints as well as stills from her performative series "Unearthing," which are imbued with haunting movement and autumnal beauty. Paired with Palmer is a deep dive into the past: "Daguerreotypes: Up Close," conceptually curated by artist and early photograph collector Thomas Kennaugh, who enlarges his antique "dags" to dialogue across time (both exhibits through November 25). MARKUS TRETTER Otobong Nkanga is the Nasher Prize Laureate 2025. Above: The artist's Unearthed–Sunlight, at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria, 2021. 74