Tino Ward: The Collector 

September 3, 2022 - January 28, 2023

The gallery announces its new URBANO public art project featuring the work of Dallas-based artist Tino Ward. For his first exhibition with Liliana Bloch, Ward presents The Collector (2022), an assemblage of a one-to-one handmade facsimile of a painting by Richard Prince and Christopher Wool chained to a shopping cart. The original Prince/Wool painting, My Name (1988), belongs to a certain large private collection in Dallas, which Ward had the privilege to encounter during his day job as an art handler. With this sculpture, Ward creates an absurd scenario likening painting worth millions to a piece of scrap metal. The Collector points to the illusory idea of value permanence as assigned to canonized artworks, and imagines what might happen to large hordes of wealth in our “uncertain future.” By situating the piece outdoors, Ward eliminates the privacy screen ultra-valuable art is often hidden behind, thus establishing an unknown dynamic between visibility and recognition.   

Tino Ward (b. Travis Iurato, 1985, Tucson, Arizona) is an interdisciplinary artist engaging in painting, papermaking, printmaking, and sculpture. He received an MFA from Southern Methodist University in 2020 and a BFA from The Cooper Union in New York City in 2009. Ward's recent solo exhibitions include shows at Browder Street and ex ovo projects in Dallas TX, The Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff AZ, and #FFFHEX in Mathews, VA. He will present a solo exhibition at the Hawn Gallery in Hamon Arts Library at Southern Methodist University in Spring 2023. 

Image: Tino Ward, The Collector, 2022.