Some Dallas Art Fair End Notes

I stopped by the tail end of the Dallas Art Fair Sunday evening. A few notes and observations:

• The Public Trust owner Brian Gibb was sporting a white apron in keeping with his gallery’s butcher shop theme for the fair. He said his big surprise of the weekend was when he served up a couple of Charley Harper prints to former first lady Laura Bush, who was browsing through his space with an entourage of secret service personnel.
• Close to closing, there was still what I thought was a pretty good crowd milling about in the isles and stales, but when I bumped into Billy Zinser of Marty Walker Gallery, he said the place was actually emptying out, and it had been even more crowded for most of the weekend. Two gallerists I spoke to said they expected Sunday’s crowds to taper off, but attendance seemed to stay very strong throughout the fair, and spirits were high. Now let’s just hope people bought stuff.
• Richard Patterson’s piece, which I mentioned earlier, did make it to the show – next to the Warhol and mounted in a Plexiglas case, which fit over the canvas. I imagine the case was there as a play on the idea of painting as object / canvas as sculpture, thus creating a kind of encased pedestal on the wall, but it also looked like those protective screens they put up around über-paintings like the Mona Lisa. Perhaps Patterson’s playing with both ideas – but who knows, maybe there was some practical explanation. I enjoyed the ambiguity. The actual canvas is dominated by a vibrant yellow and orange cat-man-character who is surrounded by a scattering of various colors, tones, images and textures. And that’s where I’ll stop talking about this thing. I’m taking the “I need more time with the work before I say anything about it” out.