Call them artist-run, DIY or underground, unconventional galleries aren't new to North Texas. But over the past year, a wave of independent venues has emerged.
Because these spaces typically depend on precarious venues and funding, many disintegrate just as quickly as they appear.
In 2024, for example, artists transformed the historic Belmont Hotel into temporary studios and exhibition spaces ahead of its renovation and then moved on after legal ambiguities created problems.
A few spaces have endured, notably, 500X, an artist-run exhibition space established in 1978.
One gallery, PRP, has operated for a decade and many of the new spaces cite it as inspiration. Here’s what’s on view in the scene today.
PRP
508 Fabrication St., Dallas
Recent exhibition: “Use Value” closed May 17
Next show: No title or date, but the next exhibition should open late June.
PRP, or Permanent Research Project, pronounced “perp,” lives in a little white house on an unassuming block in the Trinity Groves neighborhood. Its paint is chipped, its plumbing fickle. A chain-link fence sags around the yard. Sometimes, an affectionate tortoiseshell cat named Oscar curls up on the porch.
The most recent exhibition, “Use Value,” took place in the gallery and in a former carpet warehouse down the street. PRP founder Michael Mazurek and Greg Meza, the founder of the nomadic gallery Jessamine, curated the exhibition. Both are artists themselves.
The last exhibition was a meditation on how bodies are treated in visual culture. One work by the Dallas artist Krissy Bodge depicts bunching fabric draped over crossed arms, offering a foil to the exhibition’s many portrayals of the female nude.
“The curation part is an extension of our practice as artists. We collect things, filter those things. It's the same if you look at one of my works,” said Mazurek.
Nature of Things
3002A Commerce St. , Dallas
Current exhibition: “Minor Regional Novelist” closes May 23. .
Coming up: “Earthlicker,” June 27- August 15.
Visit: Thursday - Saturday, 12–5pm
After a series of moves due to zoning issues, Nature of Things put down roots in a Deep Ellum loft apartment, complete with brick interiors and an elaborate bathtub.
Founder Tessa Granowski goes above and beyond to attract patrons. At a previous gallery in Montana, she roasted a pig to serve at every opening.
Their most recent show featured only Texas artists. Granowski hopes to bring attention to artists who Dallas museums and commercial galleries – which often highlight works from outside the state – have missed.
“I'm trying to appreciate the soil right beneath our feet,” she said. “If you're seeing how beautiful your own backyard is, you'll want to take care of it more.”
2 BED 1 BATH
609 North Lancaster Avenue, Apt. 209, Dallas
Upcoming exhibition: “Peggy in Introspection,” through May 24.
Visit: By appointment via Instagram DM
Ryan Semegran and Kassidy Stines occasionally turn their Oak Cliff apartment into a gallery. They call it 2 BED 1 BATH.
String lights frame the front door. One painting is slightly obscured by a pink cat tree. Another work is hidden when the fridge door is open.
Despite the humor and whimsy of the setting, the previous exhibition, titled “Institutional Critique” was an ambitious act of political commentary.
After the University of North Texas shut down an exhibition critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this year, Semegran, who is an alum, decided to exhibit work by the school’s art students as protest.
Against a broader climate of censorship, anti-DEI policy shifts and right-wing extremism, the project asserts a simple premise: it is more important now than ever that voices critical of the political situation shouldn’t be suppressed; that universities and other institutions should not bend the knee in advance.
“All this work deserves to be shown,” Stines said. “If an institution isn’t going to do it, then we’re going to do it ourselves.”
Cheerleader
2500 Mansfield Street
Dallas
Upcoming exhibition: “The Left Handed Moon,” May 30-June 20.
Visit: Open Saturdays,1-4 pm and by appointment.
Cheerleader is a gallery in a corrugated metal shack surrounded by steel manufacturing plants. During the day, there’s quite a bit of hammering and sawing going on outside. Cheerleader does not have a bathroom, though curator Brent Birnbaum points out a gas station nearby. Inside the gallery, there are metal barn doors and exposed rods on the ceiling. It’s hard not to be charmed by the whole operation.
“I didn’t want to change too much,” he said. “Perfect museum walls seem really boring.”
The most recent exhibition paired John DeSousa’s textiles with Rebecca Potts’s playful ceramics, all of which seemed to benefit from the rawness of the setting.
Birnbaum established two other galleries in New York before deciding to set up shop at Cheerleader.
“I saw opportunity here,” he said.“In New York, there's 75 spaces like this and here I knew of two. So I thought I can make a bigger impact here for the community.”
Birnbaum believes galleries like these open the door to new ways of engaging with art since they allow for independent curatorial decisions. He is particularly enthusiastic about working with artists who rarely show.
“I can take risks with artists because I don't have to sell to get by,” he said.
The Shed Show
810 W Congress St., Denton
Upcoming exhibition: “VerMen,” May 23-June 14.
Visit: Opening reception 11 a.m.-4 p.m. May 23. Appointments via Instagram DM.
The Shed Show operates out of a plywood–paneled shed in Jillian Wendel’s backyard. During its most recent show, the plywood was covered in pinstripe wallpaper. Artists Kaylyn Beam and Joseph Schuler constructed an uncanny living space inside the shed using furniture from their childhoods. They installed a wall outlet with no electrical connection, and other utilitarian but non-functioning objects, rendering them decorative.
“It feels like a dollhouse to me,” Wendel said of the installation. She founded The Shed Show and organizes its rotating exhibitions.
“When I was really young, I would ask my dad to buy me a shed and turn it into a dollhouse, and he never did. So I guess this is me doing it now.”
Wendel encourages artists to modify the shed as much as they want. The only rule is that any changes must be temporary.
“I don’t think that we could have done this anywhere else,” Beam said.
That freedom has led to increasingly immersive transformations. For an earlier show titled “Public Sex,” Wendel and artist Nailah Otunba wrapped the entire shed in plastic.
The Shed "is focused on helping artists realize what they want to do, rather than trying to conform to this prescribed notion of contemporary art,” said Wendel.
