Road Agent is pleased to announce the three-person exhibition, Palace Does Dallas, part of the gallery’s ongoing exchange with acclaimed Austin gallery Art Palace. This show features new work by Austin-based artists Sterling Allen, Peat Duggins, and Ali Fitzgerald.

The sophistication and depth found in the work of these three artists belies their youth. Sterling Allen (the ArtPace artist-in-residence for early ’09) has in the last few years been exploring the idea of breaking down and rebuilding the world around him: photographs, symbols, objects, people. As he deconstructs, he combines and redefines his subjects with strange new boundaries and embellishments; appropriated objects have meanings that are both lost and changed. In his latest body of work, Allen is mashing together signifiers embraced by various sub and counter cultures; it’s an only slightly exaggerated interpretation of a very real cultural trend that he has observed. Nascar, pot paraphernalia, Bob Marley, high-school jocks, 40-oz.ers, dog fighting, redneck bars, misogyny, team jerseys—there has been a surprising and ongoing blending of these various identifiers amongst those who use them, leading to both a homogenization and a unification of once distinct subcultures. Allen approaches this phenomenon as an outsider himself, with a respectful dose of ambivalence—at once amused, turned off, turned on, optimistic, and nostalgic.

Peat Duggins deals with deconstruction and rebuilding, but in a vastly different way. Duggins, in his newest large-scale drawings, continues using as inspiration his loose yet ongoing narrative arc: an imaginary community, Hickory Ridge, is torn apart by corrupt politics, blind ambition, and other foibles, then rises from the ashes as something far more organic and workable. At this point in the tale, as nature creeps into and engulfs this formerly industrial and peopled place, it takes on an indisputable beauty and tranquility.

Ali Fitzgerald’s current narrative concerns the hard luck of a girl born into a shark-infested world—a parallel universe where toothy alpha fish reign and are undeniably menacing, unsympathetic tormentors of a resourceful, sensitive kid on the lam. In the tradition of diorama building, Fitzgerald creates cartoonishly dark three-dimensional tableaus out of two-dimensional materials, creating a kind of undulating, unstable space where the underdog is almost destined to remain misunderstood and repressed. Here, our “sad little white girl” has found herself sequestered at an elitist boarding school where she quickly learns she’ll never fit in...

Over the past several years alongside the artist collaborative Okay Mountain, Art Palace owner and director Arturo Palacios has introduced a new and assertive front of young talent to the Austin area and beyond. The range, intelligence, and industry of these mostly-UT graduates is beyond impressive; they are changing the face of (or perhaps giving a face to) the Austin art scene. Fueled by the massive university, the growth of the museums and non-profits, and a rash of enthusiastic new collectors, Austin’s updated art community is taking shape and adding to the impression that Texas will continue to aggressively stake out its place in the international art world.