DALLAS, Texas (February 16, 2024) – The Nasher Sculpture Center announces Prairie Piece, a new installment of Nasher Public by Trey Burns. Prairie Piece connects seemingly incongruent subjects of Texas Blackland Prairie, artist Robert Smithson’s unrealized proposals for the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (ca. 1966-67), and the legacy of the George W. Bush administration. The exhibition will be on view in the Nasher’s Public Gallery from February 17 to April 21, 2024.
In a sparse gallery containing complex contents, Burns mediates his research through design, architecture, and video. A brochure written and designed by the artist humorously elucidates the obscured associations between his chosen subjects and is available for takeaway in a custom-built kiosk. A monitor on the floor, mounted and angled in another custom-build structure, features Burns’s 2019 documentary-style video of Dallas-based artist Tino Ward collecting trash in the riverbed of the Trinity River. To watch a second monitor, viewers ascend a ramp to see animations based on various aspects of Robert Smithson’s unrealized DFW Airport proposals. Framing the windows of the gallery are LED sign lights commonly found on the exterior window frames of businesses across Dallas, paying homage to the Public Gallery’s history as a gift shop and casting an artificial green glow on the space as a way of simulating nature.
The artist’s past works have similarly reflected the investigative nature of his practice through installations that intertwine video, photography, architecture, and sculpture with both jest and criticality toward his given subject. At the core of his interests is the boundary separating the human-made and natural worlds and the idiosyncrasies contained within that ever-fluctuating space: a flock of geese settling into a vast parking lot or extractive industries abutting nature preserves, for example.
In Prairie Piece, Burns beckons us into a more expansive notion of ecology through a looming examination of local history, culture, and politics—a place where the runoff of metaphor and artifice gather into landscape.
About Trey Burns
Trey Burns is an artist, writer, curator, and educator currently working in the New Media department at the University of North Texas. Since 2018, he has been co-director of Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, a non-profit arts organization that provides space and support for experimental and large-scale outdoor works by emerging voices. In 2023, Sweet Pass received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the alternative education and exhibition program Sculpture School, which invites artists to look more deeply at place.
Burns has shown his work both domestically and internationally, including Pavillion Vendôme (Clichy-la-Garenne, France), École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Malaquais, Malaquais Gallery (Paris, France), Wassaic Projects (Wassaic, NY), Tarleton State University (Stephenville, TX), Wells College (Aurora, NY), and et al Projects (Brooklyn, NY). His writing has recently been published in Southwest Contemporary, Holt/Smithson Foundation, The Nasher, and Burnaway.
About Nasher Public:
Nasher Public is an ongoing, two-pronged public art initiative which aims to generate access to public art by North Texas artists at the Nasher and throughout the greater Dallas community. The project launched first at the Nasher in a newly formed gallery, presenting monthly exhibitions, followed by an ongoing series of offsite exhibitions in partnership with area businesses.
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