Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1517954
As I write these words, edition 16 of the Dallas Art Fair is less than three weeks away, and my inbox is pinging with fair updates; museum, gallery, and foundation openings; as well as an enviable roster of parties and coveted VIP invites. If you're not at Fashion Industry Gallery for the fair, Thursday through Sunday, April 4 through 7, you're not a player. Co-founded by visionary developer John Sughrue and led by longtime director Kelly Cornell, this influential boutique fair in the heart of the Dallas Arts District has come a long way since its arrival in 2009 during precarious financial times. Along with Dallas Arts Month, a spinoff of the fair staged each April, Dallas has become the preeminent Texas city for art collecting — both investigating and acquiring visual culture — in our time. Without the Dallas Art Fair, it's doubtful that designation would have happened. Talk about major art action: 91 international, national, and Texas galleries from 49 cities in 17 countries, including global powerhouses Perrotin and Marlborough and unique internationals such as Mexico City dealer Proyectos Monclova; London gallerists Hales Gallery, Josh Lilley, and TAFETA (with its topical focus on 20th-century and contemporary African art); Italian export SECCI; and, in from Dublin, the elevated Kerlin Gallery. Among the U.S. delegation are iconic-to-cool NYC dealers including Derek Eller Gallery, Fredericks & Freiser, Franklin Parrasch (home to West Coast pioneers such as Peter Alexander, Billy Al Bengston, and John Altoon, as well as mythic Texan Forrest Bess), Yossi Milo, and DIMIN; buzzy Southerners SOCO Gallery of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Wolfgang Gallery of Atlanta; plentiful L.A. action (always one of the fair's calling cards), especially Shulamit Nazarian, Anat Ebgi, Louis Stern Fine Arts, Charlie James Gallery, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Marc Selwyn Fine Art (ask for work by Jay DeFeo of The Rose fame), and Rusha & Co.; as well as important bicoastal Fair Thee Well decorative arts source Hostler B u r r o w s (NYC, L.A.). These dealers join 15 Texas- founded galleries, including Martha's from Austin. Turn to page 54 for our insider guide to what to see beyond the fair. Peruse papercitymag.com for updates. Dallas Art Fair, April 4 – 7, at Fashion Industry Gallery; Dallas Art Fair Foundation Preview Benefit, Thursday, April 4, 5 to 9 pm, supporting Dallas Contemporary, Dallas Museum of Art, and Nasher Sculpture Center; tickets, dealer lineup, info dallasartfair.com. Catherine D. Anspon OBSESSIONS. DECORATION. SALIENT FACTS. Dallas Art Fair Ménage à Trois: Ambreen + Max + Grange Matsumi Kanemitsu's Untitled (C), circa 1969, at Louis Stern Fine Arts As part of a permanent residency at Grange Hall, Eve & Max unveils Namaloon, its third collection of women's luxe ready-to-wear. Eve & Max was launched in 2021 by entrepreneur Maxine Trowbridge (a graduate of the London College of Fashion who later worked at British women's ready-to-wear luxury brand Mansfield) with Paris-based co-creative director Samudra Hartanto (former senior womenswear designer at Jean Paul Gaultier, Hermès, and Louis Vuitton). The cornerstone of Eve & Max — which is named for Trowbridge and two grandmothers who shared the name Eve — is sustainability. Seasonless collections are presented annually, driven by a simple mantra: Style should be consciously ethical, effortlessly beautiful, and endlessly artful. Each Eve & Max collection is a collaboration with a leading artist. For 2024, they chose Dallas- based Ambreen Butt, a Pakistani- American visionary whose work has been seen in solo exhibitions at museums around the U.S. Her work combines feminist views with global politics and the experiences of a Muslim living in the U.S. The work that inspired the Eve & Max collection, Namaloom (Untitled #4), 2020, means "unknown" in Urdu and is from the series "Say My Name" (2017 – 2020). Indiscernible black text painted on tea-stained paper represents the dichotomy of lightness and darkness, beautiful and broken, negative and positive, and the evolution of the unknown to the known. The spark for the Grange Hall residency ignited last summer when Rajan Patel, co-founder of Grange Hall, was sitting with Trowbridge at my birthday party at Zoe Bonnette's house. Trowbridge shared the vision of her next collection; the rest is history in the making. ufgrangehall.com, eveandmax.com. Billy Fong Rajan Patel Max Trowbridge JACOB CARROLL 28