Trey Burns’s ‘Prairie Piece’ draws from his research into the landscape and ecology of North Texas to focus on the seemingly incongruent subjects of the 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.
A native of Atlanta, Burns settled in Dallas in 2018, when his interest in understanding the history and environment of his adopted home began. 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 reverence and criticality toward his given subject. At the core of his interests is the boundary separating the human-made and natural worlds and all of 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. Burns’s most recent discoveries reveal a complex web of connections between and among the area’s ecologies, culture, and politics that are explored in Prairie Piece.
In a brochure available for takeaway in the custom-built display case installed just inside the gallery, Burns’s essay elucidates the obscured connections between his chosen subjects. A monitor on the floor features Burns’s 2019 documentary-style video of Dallas-based artist Tino Ward collecting trash in the riverbed of the Trinity River, while a second monitor installed at the top of a ramp contains 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.
LEARN MORE: https://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/art/nasher-public/exhibition/id/336
About Trey Burns:
Trey Burns is an artist, writer, 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 nonprofit 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), Ecole Nationale d’Architecture Paris, Malaquais Gallery (Paris, France), Wassaic Projects (Wassaic, NY), Tarleton State University (Stephenville, TX), Wells College (Aurora, NY), et al Projects (Brooklyn, NY), and upcoming at the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, TX). His writing has recently been published in Southwest Contemporary, the Holt/Smithson Foundation, Nasher Magazine, and Burnaway.
Hello I’m Trey Burns this is my exhibition called Prairie piece here at The Nasher Sculpture Center and when you come in don’t forget to grab a publication here that I made for the show so what is Prairie piece the installation showcases a vibrant green LED light display along the front
Windows of the gallery similar to things you might find in storefronts across Dallas there are custom video screens and powdercoated steel casings a ramp and several video pieces one is an animation made with a friend and collaborator Taylor Shields that is inspired by Robert smithson’s unrealized Dallas Fort Worth airport proposal there
Is also a short documentary style video about local artist Tina Ward collecting material in the Dallas floodway after a heavy rain what do you think this is a bicycle seat or something nothing good the essay accompanying the exhibition navigates a Confluence of expanded Notions of the landscape in the north Texas Prairie it
Takes us across several terrains here in Dallas by weaving together metaphor and artifice the essay and the larger show seek to approach an understanding of place within the Metroplex vast and hollowed out Prairie landscape it also talks about how Robert Smithson famously consulted on the design of the Dallas Fort Worth Regional
Airport DFW between 1966 and 1967 during that period he met with engineers and Architects planning the world’s largest airport at the time while the firm he worked with would eventually lose the bid for the project leaving smithson’s proposals unrealized the artist’s ideas here would ultimately lead him toward his most famous work Spiral
Jetty I Incorporated these animations about smithson’s airport proposal because they represent a fascinating piece of art history these were large and speculative sculptures that realistically had no place at an airport yet for a moment in time they could have existed in Dallas they are particularly captivating due to their deep engagement
With the concept of meaning making smithson’s clear dialogue with ancient geoglyphs like Peru’s nascal lines or England’s C abbis giant creates Beauty by placing the alien and Monumental within the mundane his writings from this time delve into the essence of the Prairie and the disorienting endless Horizon of North Texas which draws
Parallels to to an international airport with its coming and going this Smithson sought to craft something that could ground us momentarily to a place that is in essence nowhere
1 Comment
Trey is a gentleman and a scholar