GALLERI URBANE

Gallery 1

‘Done Being Cool‘
a solo exhibition of works by Benjamin Terry

November 16, 2024 – December 28th, 2024

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 16th // 5-7pm

Galleri Urbane is pleased to present ‘Done Being Cool’, a solo exhibition of new work by painter Benjamin Terry. As the title suggests, the exhibition centers around a rift, a shift, an evolution. What has come before provides a foundation, but the approach has shifted. This is, according to the artist, “not a midlife crisis show, but an anti-midlife crisis show.” Its subtle repositioning represents, Terry says, “me meditating on getting older.”

For more than a decade, the artist has worked with plywood surfaces, but the language of construction has altered. What he may have built as “haphazard, clunky constructions”—raw expressions of material, rough-hewn and almost clumsy—have become more refined and polished. “There’s a lot of construction going on, but it’s buttoned up,” Terry says. Jagged edges have become smooth undulations and undergone an attitude adjustment. Craftsmanship has come to the fore. “It’s about me resisting the urge to revert to things that I used to do when I was younger. Embracing my age and knowledge, rather than longing for some notion of what was once cool.”

“Before I was really into [the surface] getting messed up along the way. I would clamp painted wood while it was still wet,” Terry says. “I was into distressing [the work] while I was making it. Now I’m trying to preserve. There’s this process of keeping everything clean and tidy.”

Alongside runs a love for the godfathers and godmothers of Abstract Expressionism, Terry says, and a relish for “pushing wet paint into wet paint.” While previously, the work’s “soul” would develop through surfaces that bore the mark of the clamp, the scars from the jigsaw, now the artist revels in a new painterly abstraction, a traditional, gestural handling of the medium to better “maintain the integrity of the initial moment of a painting”—more soigné and finessed—albeit filtered through the language of construction.

As a result, a new temporality emerges, along with the outlines of a new stewardship. What happens on the other side of “cool”? As the artist offers, “I have to be more patient.”

Benjamin Terry lives and works in Dallas, TX. He received an MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas in 2013. He has exhibited work in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally including Atlanta, Brooklyn, London, Mexico City, San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston. Terry was an artist-in-resident at The Maple Terrace in Brooklyn in the spring of 2018 and 100 West Corsicana in 2020. Curatorial work has become an integral part of his practice with exhibitions curated at Kirk Hopper Fine Arts, Circuit12 Contemporary, Galleri Urbane, and Texas Woman’s University. He was featured in volumes 96 and 132 of New American Paintings, and has received both the Clare Hart Degoyler and the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough awards from the Dallas Museum of Art. He is currently a Distinguished Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas Arlington.

Gallery 2:

Pop-up Exhibition:
John Miranda

November 16, 2024 – December 28th, 2024

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 16th // 5-7pm

Galleri Urbane is pleased to present ‘Viajero’, a pop-up exhibition of work by painter and sculptor John Miranda. This marks Miranda’s first exhibition with the gallery. The title refers to the traveler, a character that wanders through time – collecting mementos of culture and ephemera.

Following a trip to the Philippines, recent works by Miranda constitute a shift in compositional structure – swirling vines, hanging lamps, resting cats and dogs frame the snapshot-based works. “I view objects with human qualities – I believe they have a story to tell and have lived a life just like the rest of us,” says Miranda. These objects come from his wandering; cellphone pictures taken in an instant inform the sketches for his encaustic panels. “I romanticize the images and hide the real world; most cats I photographed were without a home,” says Miranda. “I see they struggle to find food – they live from scraps to survive – but in my paintings they have a certain beauty to them.”

Although previously Miranda has worked from creating stencils, transferring those to the encaustic medium, his process now transitions sketches directly into melted wax. Along with this shift in process has been an evolution in display. “The multiple panels came from being resourceful. I didn’t have a wooden panel that was big enough for a large painting, so I combined two panels together and felt that it would be a shame to hide the division between the two panels.” says Miranda. “I exposed it and the line became a symbol of resourcefulness and adaptability.”

These relief works create a sense of the Viajero; one who travels the world – holding onto fragments of what they see as a passive observer, preserving the cultural ephemera of the present.

John Miranda (b. 1979, Del Rio, TX) is a Dallas-based, Chicano painter. He received his BFA in Painting from the University of Texas at Arlington (2016) and his MFA in Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Tyler (2020). Miranda’s artistic practice draws on his experience growing up on the Texas-Mexico border, referencing Chicano vernacular aesthetics from Barrio art, Mexican folk art and the surrounding environment. In 2021, Miranda staged his first solo exhibition, Movidas: New Work, at Cluley Projects in Dallas, Texas. His work has been presented at the Dallas Art Fair, Untitled Art Fair in Miami, and UT Southwestern Medical Center private collection. The artist has been featured in D Magazine, Dallas Morning News, Glasstire, KERA’s Art and Seek and other online publications.

Galleri Urbane in Dallas
2277 Monitor St
Dallas, Tx  75206
432 386 0590
galleriurbane.com