Fort Worth Key Magazine

Alex Da Corte: The Whale
2025-03-02 - 2025-09-07 | Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., Fort Worth, TX, 76107, United States
Alex Da Corte
The Anvil, 2023
Neoprene, EPS foam, upholstery foam, staples, thread, polyester fiber, epoxy clay, MDF, plywood
© Alex Da Corte, Courtesy of the Artist
Photo: Natalie Piserchio

March 2, 2025 – September 7, 2025

Alex Da Corte: The Whale, the first museum exhibition to survey the interdisciplinary artist’s long relationship with painting, focuses on the past decade of Da Corte’s career, and includes more than forty paintings, several drawings, and a video that considers painting as a performative act.
Da Corte is globally recognized for his hybrid installations combining painting, performance, video, and sculpture. Immersed in the history of art, design, and pop culture, Da Corte’s combinations evoke mixed feelings, such as fantasy and malice, while crossing hierarchies of high and low culture. His works combine modernist color theory and the spatial experiments of post-minimalist sculpture to consider topics including consumerism, persona, sex, invisible labor, taste, power, and desire.
The exhibition’s title, The Whale, emblematizes the artist’s vast mining of contemporary culture, a process that Da Corte describes as “analogous to the Jungian night sea journey, looking backward and collecting the past as an act of commingling with spirits, either cultural or personal.” Da Corte sees the medium of painting as “a cavity for these ghosts”—much like museums themselves. Painting, forever brimming with the weight of its own history and historically itself an uncanny threshold of consumption, represents “the mouth of the whale” to Da Corte. The artist situates himself here, within a crowded, beautiful trash-scape of contemporary culture, digesting advertisements, animation cels, compact disc graphic design, art history, and more. The ephemeral pop culture source materials referenced in Da Corte’s paintings make evident how the things we identify with, or use to define us, evolve over time.
To realize this reconstructed vision of painting, Da Corte stretches the medium’s traditional boundaries. The exhibition incorporates Puffy Paintings in stuffed, upholstered neoprene, Shampoo Paintings comprised of drugstore hair products, and sculptural Slatboard Paintings, where found objects protrude from the slatted grooves found in everyday commercial displays. The remaining paintings in the exhibition are reverse-glass paintings, in which the artist employs a process often used in animated celluloids and sign-making. Da Corte creates the image in reverse-order, applying the front-most layer of paint to the back side of the glass and building up subsequent layers, with the background added last. In addition, the exhibition encompasses the artist’s source materials and ephemera, providing a fresh perspective on his process. Galleries adjacent to the exhibition will present a selection of works from the Modern’s collection, extending the exhibition’s deep exploration of Da Corte’s catalysts and influences.
Organized by the Modern and Curator Alison Hearst, the exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue with a special contribution from Da Corte and essays by Hearst, poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib, art historian Suzanne Hudson, and Kemi Adeyemi, associate professor of gender, women, and sexuality studies at the University of Washington.

Alex Da Corte: The Whale is made possible in part with support from Matthew Marks Gallery.

Feeling Color: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling
2025-03-15 - 2025-07-27 | Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., Fort Worth, TX, 76107, United States
Feeling Color: Aubrey Williams and Frank Bowling, organized by the Modern and Curator María Elena Ortiz, celebrates the work of these two artists and their contributions to the story of abstract painting in the late twentieth century. Williams (1926–90) and Bowling (b. 1934) migrated from British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America to European and American cities in the 1950s, escaping social upheavals in their native country. Expanding on the international legacies of abstraction that are among the Modern’s central concerns, these artists’ works show that, even in moments of despair, art creates a space for refuge, reckoning, and imagination. This exhibition puts both artists in conversation, illustrating Williams’s powerful commitment to investigating abstract forms and Bowling’s painterly and experimental approach. Williams was Bowling’s elder, and together their works provide an opportunity to reflect on the power of art and abstraction in the twentieth century.
Feeling Color presents Bowling’s influential Map series, 1967–71, and his later poured paintings, which evidence sociopolitical concerns and explore the materiality of paint. Williams’s works include examples from two painting series, Shostakovich, 1969–81, and The Olmec-Maya and Now, 1981–85, alongside other paintings and drawings. These works reflect the artists’ histories by combining modernist abstraction with imagery derived from African diasporic dwellings and the Indigenous cultures of South America, each pointing to the complexity of their postcolonial heritage. These are works that embrace color, movement, experimentation, and abstraction to convey human emotion.
Aubrey Williams, born in British Guiana, is an important figure in British postwar painting, representing an approach toward abstraction that incorporates cross-cultural and transatlantic conversations. Originally trained as Agricultural Field Officer in Guyana, Williams moved to London in the 1950s to study engineering but changed course, earning an art degree from the St. Martin’s School of Art. The artist travelled extensively throughout Europe, created works in Jamaica and Florida in the 1960s and 1970s, and eventually settled in London until his death. Awarded the Commonwealth Prize in Painting by Queen Elizabeth II in 1965, Williams was a founding member of the 1960s Caribbean Artists Movement in London. His works have been exhibited internationally and are included in several prestigious collections in the US and Britain.
Frank Bowling OBE RA was elected to Britain’s Royal Academy in 2005 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2008. He is a pivotal figure in British abstract painting, contributing to the canon for over six decades. Born in British Guiana, Bowling migrated to London in the 1950s to study art. Eventually, he moved to New York City, keeping art studios in both cities. In New York, he cultivated a community that included critic Clement Greenberg and like-minded artists such as Jack Whitten and Al Loving Jr. His work has been exhibited widely and is part of prestigious collections around the world.
Image:
Aubrey Williams
Maya Dynasty, 1980
Oil on canvas, 91 x 182 cm
© Estate of Aubrey Williams.
Courtesy the Estate of Aubrey Williams and October Gallery, London

A Strange Loop
2025-06-19 - 2025-07-12 | Circle Theatre, Circle Theatre, West 4th Street, Fort Worth, TX, USA
JUNE 19‭ ‬‮–‬‭ ‬JULY 12‭, ‬2025
Book‭, ‬Music‭, ‬and Lyrics by Michael R‭. ‬Jackson‭ | ‬Regional Premiere
The New York Times called it‭ ‬“a thrillingly original and provocative masterpiece‭.‬”‭ ‬Variety lauded it as‭ ‬“a groundbreaking work that challenges and delights‭.‬”‭ ‬The Guardian described it as‭ ‬“a daring exploration of self and society that resonates with powerful authenticity and humor‭.‬”‭ ‬What will Dallas-Fort Worth audiences have to say‭? ‬You’ll find out soon as Circle Theatre proudly announces its first Mainstage Musical of the Season‭: ‬the regional premiere of the highly acclaimed‭ ‬A Strange Loop‭ ‬by Michael R‭. ‬Jackson‭.‬
This Pulitzer Prize-winning musical reshaped American Theater during its celebrated Broadway run and took home the 2022‭ ‬Tony Award for Best Musical‭. ‬A Strange Loop‭ ‬offers a bold and exhilarating dive into the life of Usher‭, ‬a Black queer musical theater writer navigating his identity‭, ‬creativity‭, ‬and personal challenges as he crafts a show about his own complex journey‭.‬
More than just a production‭, A Strange Loop‭ ‬promises to leave audiences both exhilarated and introspective long after the final curtain‭. ‬With its raw‭, ‬adult themes and vital exploration of the queer Black experience‭, ‬this musical offers a unique blend of song and storytelling that is intensely relevant‭, ‬and vitally important‭. ‬Buckle up for a nonstop ride with an electric score that will keep you on the edge of your seat‭.‬‭*‬contains adult language and situations‭*‬
