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KEVIN TODORA L ured by the Dallas Art Fair each April, collectors, curators, and artists converge for the vibrant spring art season. As a sign of the city's cultural robustness, the pendant fair Dallas Invitational returns Thursday - Saturday, April 16 - 18, at Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek. Founded in 2023 by indie- minded Dallas gallerist James Cope, this boutique fair unfolds throughout the hotel's guest rooms, which are transformed into temporary gallery spaces for an impressive roster of international and hometown exhibitors. Now in its fourth (and largest) edition, the Invitational has established itself as one of the most distinctive events on the Dallas cultural calendar, encouraging intimate conversations and visual dialogues that evoke the atmosphere of a private salon. This year's curation includes a record 22 exhibiting galleries. We look forward to presentations by Europa (New York), Galerie Lelong (New York), Good Weather (Chicago, Little Rock), Galería Mascota (Mexico City), Nina Johnson (Miami), and Dallas' own 12.26 and James Cope Gallery. Recommended: Europa showcases Sophie Stone's intricate braided textile work, drawings and sculptures by video artist Aki Goto, and moody paintings of street scenes and film stills by Nick Farhi. Galerie Lelong brings Ficre Ghebreyesus, Jaume Plensa, and Ursula von Rydingsvard, joined by Kate Shepherd and Tariku Shiferaw, demonstrating the gallery's multigenerational and international program. Good Weather's strong booth includes emerging artists Raque Ford, Amy Garofano, Ron Ewert, Hartmut Austen, and Nancy Lupo. Thursday – Saturday, April 16 – 18; tickets $25, dallasinvitational.com. Peter Augustus Owen Allegory + Myth: Francisco Moreno at Dallas Contemporary M exican-American artist Francisco Moreno — a hometown hero — gets his well-deserved flowers at the Dallas Contemporary with his first museum solo, organized by guest curator Thomas Feulmer of The Warehouse. "Historia Sintética" highlights monumental creations spanning two decades of Moreno's promising career. The survey grounds itself in three signature works, beginning with the WCD Project, 2012- 2015, a souped-up 1975 Datsun paired with black-and-white camouflage canvas; this performative artwork was originally constructed for the fondly recalled Soluna Festival. WCD demonstrates Moreno's brilliant, iconoclastic interweaving of history and myth, taking as its point of departure Emanuel Leutze's grand 1851 painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. In that direction, the artist's magnum opus, The Chapel, 2016-2018 (in the permanent collection of the Dallas Museum of Art and loaned by the DMA for this exhibition), conflates the architecture of a Spanish Romanesque chapel with a personal archive of imagery including art-historical asides. "Historia Sintética" wraps with a debut of the artist's latest, The Mural Cycle, 2024-2026; showcasing Moreno's particular brand of sci-fi surrealism, the five eye-popping oversized paintings will float over the walls of the Contemporary. Moreno is a self-professed fan of Peter Paul Rubens' Medici Cycle. Pride in his Mexican heritage has inspired him to add a new direction to mural-making by imagining a world in which the Incas conquered the Europeans. "I'm not just referring to European masters but also the Mexican masters," Moreno says of the murals, which examine the cycles of an artist's life, from an uncertain youth to the triumph of creativity. "I'm fascinated by Mexican symbolism and precolonial art. To me, it's the same as looking at Rubens and Botticelli." April 17 – October 11, dallascontemporary.org. Kendall Morgan with Catherine D. Anspon Francisco Moreno, A City in a House in a Room, 2024, at Dallas Contemporary Two Fairs Are Better Than One Top: Rob Davis, Candles, 2025, at Nina Johnson. Above: Theodora Allen, Struck V, 2025, at 12.26. Elda Cerrato, Despolarización mutua de dos entes. (ó Comunicaciones del Ser Beta). Etapa preparatoria (Serie: Entes Extraños. Epopeya del Ser Beta), 1970, at Galerie Lelong DIEGO FLORES 66