Breaking Ground:

Open House Saturday, June 13th, 1-5pm

BREAKING GROUND: A Transformative Project

Curated by Talley Dunn, Celebrating the Artists, Vision, and Relationships Behind the Creation of the Sculpture Garden on Seldin Plaza at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Talley Dunn Gallery is pleased to announce Breaking Ground: A Transformative Project, an exhibition that brings together artists Joel Shapiro, Ursula Von Rydingsvard, Christopher Wool, Elmgreen & Dragset, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Joseph Havel, Ugo Rondinone, Giuseppe Penone, Leonardo Drew, and Roxy Paine, whose work has been permanently installed on the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center campus, reflecting the philanthropic support of an individual donor. Organized in collaboration with the participating artists and their estates, the exhibition presents selected works and celebrates nearly a decade of extraordinary partnerships and relationships that shaped the Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein Sculpture Garden at the Donald Seldin Plaza in Dallas and helped establish it as a significant landmark for modern and contemporary sculpture in North Texas.

Presented at Talley Dunn Gallery, Breaking Ground offers a unique opportunity to engage with the broader practices of artists whose monumental outdoor sculptures form the foundation of the Dr. Goldstein Sculpture Garden at UTSW. Featuring a carefully selected group of works, the exhibition creates a dialogue between public installations and a range of sculptures, drawings, paintings, and mixed-media works, revealing the ideas, processes, and material investigations that inform each artist’s practice. By bringing these works into the gallery, the exhibition invites closer consideration of their formal, material, and conceptual concerns and offers a new perspective on works typically encountered in public space.

Gathering these artists together in a gallery setting, Breaking Ground extends the dialogue initiated at UTSW and showcases a range of sculptural practices developed over several decades. This is the first time these artists have been presented together in this context, underscoring both the caliber of artists engaged through the UTSW initiative and the project’s significance in the Dallas cultural landscape.

As curatorial advisor, Talley Dunn has played a central role in its development, fostering relationships among the artists, their estates, and UT Southwestern. The exhibition reflects the deep respect and admiration many of these artists hold for a remarkable patron Dr. Goldstein and celebrates the collaborative spirit that shaped the sculpture garden. The works in the exhibition were personally selected by the participating artists and estates in recognition of their permanent sculptures at UTSW and their participation in the broader initiative. Their participation underscores the personal investment that distinguishes this project and signals what the gallery hopes will be the first of many future collaborations.

Breaking Ground honors UT Southwestern’s remarkable collection of outdoor public sculpture, including ten major works by twelve internationally recognized artists, made possible by the ongoing philanthropic support of Nobel Laureate Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein.

The exhibition features works by artists active from the late twentieth century to the present, marking the culmination of an extraordinary chapter of collaboration among artists, estates, patrons, UTSW, and Talley Dunn Gallery, and points toward future partnerships while celebrating the relationships and shared vision that made it possible to create a world-class sculpture collection at UTSW.

The works engage modes of inquiry often associated with scientific thought, shaping distinct approaches to form, materiality, and process. Working across materials such as painted aluminum, bronze, stone, steel, and copper, the artists produce works through observation and experimentation, shifting between abstraction and representation and continually redefining sculpture as both object and environment.

Central to the exhibition is an exploration of the works’ performative qualities and the ways they are experienced and navigated in public space. Whether through the gravity-defying balance of Rondinone’s and Havel’s stacked forms, Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s playful transformation of everyday objects, Drew’s materially dense accumulations, Shapiro’s abstract geometric language, or the architectonic interventions of Elmgreen & Dragset, each work proposes a distinct relationship between permanence and change over time in both natural and built environments.

The exhibition also explores the dialogue between natural and constructed systems. In the work of Penone and von Rydingsvard, organic forms are rearticulated through carving, casting, and accumulation, while Paine’s branching structures translate biological models into industrial materials. Across these practices, sculpture holds natural growth and human intervention in productive tension.

Joel Shapiro ( b. 1941 – d. 2025 New York, New York)

Ursula von Rydingsvard (b.1942 Deesen, Germany; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York)

Christopher Wool (b. 1955 Chicago, Illinois : lives and works in New York and Marfa, Texas)

Micheal Elmgreen (b.1961 Copenhagen, Denmark; lives and works in Berlin, Germany)

Ingar Dragset (b. Trondiem, Norway; lives and works in Berlin, Germany)

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929 Stockholm, Sweden – d. 2022 New York, New York)

Coosje, Van Bruggen (b.1947 Groninngen, Netherlands – d. 2009 New York, New York)

Giuseppe Penone (b. 1947 Garessio, Italy; lives and works in Turin, Italy)

Ugo Rondinone (b. 1964 Brunnen, Switzerland; lives and works in New York, New York)

Joseph Havel (b. 1954 Minneapolis, Minnesota; lives and works in Paris and Menerbes, France and Houston, Texas)

Leonardo Drew (b. 1961 Tallahassee. Florida; lives and works in New York, New York and Uvalde, Texas)

Roxy Paine (b. 1966 New York, New York; lives and works in Red Lodge, Montana)

About the Exhibition

Breaking Ground: A Transformative Project brings together works by artists whose permanent outdoor sculptures form the cornerstone of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s sculpture garden. Curated by Talley Dunn, the exhibition reflects the relationships developed through nearly a decade of acquisitions and installations and celebrates the transformative impact of art, philanthropy, and institutional partnership.

Breaking Ground runs concurrently with Roxy Paine’s exhibition, Overgrown Neuron.