The Dallas art scene seemed to be flourishing in the early 2010s. Showrooms flocked to the Design District, influential galleries began attending the newly minted Dallas Art Fair, institutions like the Nasher Sculpture Center seemed to be hitting new heights, and there was a crop of young artists making work and opening DIY spaces all over the city. At the center of this young, cool art crowd was Oliver Francis Gallery, which had become the stuff of Dallas art lore.
Even for those who were there, who had seen its left-of-center art exhibits, who had sweated through hot summer nights on the uneven sidewalks out front while sipping Dos Equis — and it was always Dos Equis — even for them, the story of its existence might sound apocryphal.
The story would go something like this: In July 2011, a rebellious college student opened an art space in the arterial edge of East Dallas. The storefront’s immediate neighbors were auto repair shops and an ironworks yard. He showed unknown artists who would go on to exhibit in the Whitney Biennial and other vaunted institutions. He invited a collection of artist friends to live and work in the apartments in and around the building. And for a few years, it became an unlikely beacon for the city’s art scene, drawing attention and visitors from around the world.
And then, the young curator closed the gallery and left to travel the world. In 2015, as quickly as he had injected energy into the city, that energy seemed to evaporate.
For almost six years, it seemed the story would end there. But 10 years after the inaugural exhibition, Kevin Rubén Jacobs reincarnated Oliver Francis Gallery, this time under the moniker Olivier François Galerie, a playful nod to his more sophisticated approach. In early July, he opened “Demons,” an exhibition by Dallas-based artist Francisco Moreno. The gallery is now housed in Exposition Park with an eye on more commercial success.
Trial and error
When Jacobs opened a gallery in 2011, it was merely happenstance. He was looking for a studio space during his senior year at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he was working on a bachelor of fine arts degree in studio art, after earning a degree in philosophy. The cheapest commercial space he could find was part of a small compound on Peak Street just two blocks from Interstate 30. He moved into the apartment above the storefront and decided that instead of using it as a studio, he would curate exhibitions. He reached out to a friend from college, Moreno, who was studying at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Within months, he opened “Seven Days in America,” in which Moreno painted the walls of the gallery and parked a motorcycle in the space. It was the first glimpse of a young painter Dallas art patrons would become familiar with over the next decade. Moreno would go on to be shown for a few years by Erin Cluley Gallery, where he had a series of solo exhibitions. In 2018, the Dallas Museum of Art acquired his immersive piece Chapel.
In Moreno’s view, the success of OFG has a lot to do with Jacobs’ curatorial tendencies, but in the early days they didn’t know what they were doing.
“We’re middle-class, Latinx kids from the suburbs of Arlington,” Moreno says. “We really had no idea what the art world was, but through trial and error and passion, we were able to come together to create OFG and set the momentum to go and immerse ourselves in the art world. We both learned a lot.”
When Moreno returned to Dallas in 2012, he moved into the space next door to the gallery. In short order, Moreno’s grad school friends Arthur Peña and Michelle Rawlings, both Dallas natives, moved into two of the other apartments on the compound. They would both receive their first Dallas exhibitions at OFG. Designer and artist Travis LaMothe eventually claimed the final living space.
With Oliver Francis Gallery, a name inspired by artists Oliver Rafferty and Francis Upritchard, Jacobs built an impressive roster of shows. He exhibited work by Ludwig Schwarz, Keith Allyn Spencer, Josh Reames, Puppies Puppies, Kristin Oppenheim and Morehshin Allahyari, among others.
While running OFG, Jacobs worked as a curator for the nonprofit Goss-Michael Foundation, which at the time sat where the Virgin Hotel is now. There, he carved in-roads for local artists, exhibiting them alongside works by international art stars like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.
Back then, the Design District west of downtown was bustling with galleries. There were young, hip spaces opening like Circuit 12 Contemporary and Zhulong Gallery (now both shuttered), alongside mainstays like Galleri Urbane, Cris Worley, Holly Johnson and Conduit Gallery. Meanwhile, East Dallas played host to more experimental spaces and projects, like Two Bronze Doors, Beefhaus, OFG, Deep Ellum Windows and the artist residency program Central Trak, all of which were closed by 2018. Many of them closed long before that.
The existence of OFG and its contemporaries stood in a sort of defiance to the Dallas gallery scene. These spaces were gritty and exciting. The art and music they showed felt dangerous, which attracted crowds but didn’t translate into a sustainable business model.
Although Jacobs dabbled in representing local artists, he says he could count on his hands how many works of art he sold. In 2015, he was burned out. He shut down the gallery, which by then he had rebranded OFG.XXX, and turned the space into a powerlifting gym for his friends.
“I was really depressed at the time and had some health problems, so I really started to work out,” Jacobs says. “I’ve always had this conflict between intellectual pursuits and wanting to be active.”
He got a desk job at a nonprofit without any ties to the art world so that he could save enough money to travel for a couple of years. In 2017, he left, unsure if he would ever return to Dallas.
Living abroad
That year, he accepted a curatorial residency in Germany at Egill Sæbjörnsson’s studio. Within weeks, he found himself once again facing a real estate windfall. For a monthly 300 euros, he rented two spaces in popular Berlin neighborhoods, Charlottenburg and Kreuzberg, and started Pushkin & Gogol, a gallery with two locations. That fall, he exhibited Dallas-based Jesse Morgan Barnett, one of the first artists he showed at OFG, and Berlin-based Maren Karlson.
“People were interested to see what this kid from Texas was going to do,” Jacobs says. “I had really great turnouts.”
Then, his dad had a heart attack, so he came home.
In Dallas, he turned Pushkin & Gogol into an art handling company. He builds crates and pedestals, installs work at museums and in homes, and transports art across the country. When COVID-19 hit, he threw himself into disc golf, working his way up to the leaderboard of advanced amateur tournaments.
In February 2021, he was looking for a place to live and once again, serendipity struck. Moreno had moved to Exposition Park and connected Jacobs with his landlord, who had a 400-square-foot live/work space. That space was the recently shuttered Reading Room gallery, which curator Karen Weiner had closed down after a decade-long run as one of the city’s most subtle, stimulating art spaces. (Coincidentally, she had opened the Reading Room in July of 2011, the same month that OFG opened.) It seemed Jacobs would be opening, or in this case re-opening, a gallery.
His isn’t the only art space bringing life to the neighborhood. Earlier this year, PAO Projects, a gallery with an experimental curatorial perspective, opened around the corner. He’s just a few blocks from the artist-run cooperative 500X and the Power Station, where Gregory Ruppe manages the underground (literally) space Culture Hole. Across town, spaces like Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, Browder Street and PRP are bringing some of that energy from 10 years ago back to Dallas.
“OFG has always had the energy of an artist-run space because Kevin was an artist first,” Moreno says. “I honestly feel like it’s going to stick this time. We’ve both matured a lot, and we understand how things work.”
Jacobs has exhibitions for the rest of the year planned out with works from Dallas-based artist River Shell, Iranian artist Morehshin Allahyari and Cypriot artist Lito Kattou.
“I’m excited to focus on the act of selling, the act of providing a certain type of customer service. I think I was entitled back in the day. I didn’t have the money or the desire to hold people’s hand or explain the art to them,” Jacobs says. “People missed out on collecting really incredible artists early in their career, but you know, some of that is on me. I’m ready to be more responsible.”
Ten years later, the attitude might be different, but a lot of the details are the same: Jacobs opens a gallery with an exhibition of work by his friend from college. But this time, with a VIP reception and a valet stand out front.
“I changed the name as a way to signify some change, some evolution,” Jacobs says. “But it’s still OFG; it’s just French now.”
‘Francisco Moreno: Demons’ is gallery’s debut exhibition
The debut exhibition at Olivier François Galerie is a solo exhibition, “Francisco Moreno: Demons,” featuring new paintings by the artist. Moreno continues a careerlong interest in bringing the masters into conversation with contemporary painting. This exhibition centers on one large work, The Allegory of Weed Gummy and Alcohol Induced Anxiety, in which you’ll find references to Renaissance painters.
Moreno says this work takes direct inspiration from the earliest known painting by Michelangelo, The Torment of Saint Anthony, which he saw when it was acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum in 2009. In it, the ascendant saint is tormented by eight flying demons. Just like its 15th-century inspiration, Moreno’s image is wild and the demons are mythical, scary beasts. But in 2021, you’ll find the saintly figure in front of a privacy fence, surrounded by a series of crushed beer cans and a vial of marijuana edibles.
“I think I’ve always liked the idea of history painting: The ability to communicate ideas through elaborate compositions,” Moreno says. “The demon that’s always been haunting me is that I always wanted to make a history painting but never really knew how.”
For him, this large work is about the anxieties of connection and networking required in the art world, often made easier through substance abuse. That, and a particularly unpleasant experience on edibles.
The other works on display retain the themes of demonic torment but are smaller, more intimate works.
Details
Through Sept. 4, Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m. and by appointment, 3715 Parry Ave., Dallas. For more information, visit ofg.xxx.
