For its final showing in its Design District gallery before moving to a yet-to-be-revealed location, Keijsers Koning presents a bold pairing of two different takes on the human figure as filtered through art history, spanning painting and sculpture, the U.S. and Europe.
The Belgian sculptor Johan Tahon shows three stoneware figures, partially coated with a glaze that drips down the side, and a single, life-size figure of plaster and wood. Their distortions and fragmentations, similar to those in the modernist works of Giacometti and Rodin, suggest a sense of heroic struggle, as the artist wrestles with his materials. It is difficult to repress the urge to touch their gorgeously rough surfaces.
In her three acrylic paintings, the Louisville-born painter Natalie Westbrook superimposes designs at multiple scales, and in multiple styles, on top of one another. While voluptuous, Rubenesque Baroque-style figures whirl around each other in the middle ground, they are encompassed by both larger-scale shapes that spread across the canvas (eyes, snakes, paws and other primal motifs), as well as smaller-scale geometric patterns (leopard-print and otherwise) that fill the rest of the space.
“Assumptions Abide: Johan Tahon and Natalie Westbrook” continues through Oct. 24 at Keijsers Koning, 150 Manufacturing St., Suite 201, Dallas. Free. Open Thursday through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. keijserskoning.com. 469-961-5391.