The gallery pairs artists William Burton Binnie and Jeff Grant for its inaugural show.
William Burton Binnie's "Not Yet Titled , a 2022 black-gesso-on-canvas-work, is included in the "Murmur" exhibition at Keijsers Koning in the Dallas Design District.On a sunny Friday afternoon in early February, artists William Burton Binnie and Jeff Grant are sitting on the patio at the South Dallas dive bar Lee Harvey’s.
For Binnie, the exhibition marks a sort of homecoming: It’s his first show in Dallas since he left in 2016. For the gallery, it marks a relocation. Moving to Dallas was a decision made for practical, financial and personal reasons. Keijsers Koning and his wife, Louky, participated in the Dallas Art Fair over the years and saw potential in the city and its collectors. Easy access to an international airport was also on the list of deciding factors.
Finding the connection between the two artists’ work was a happy accident. Keijsers Koning remembers an art fair in Manchester, England, where he showed the work of Binnie and Grant. What became interesting in that meditative “looking” is the way that both artists reframe ordinary objects or scenes. Grant works with objects — in this exhibit child’s playthings — and recontextualizes them. In his drawings, or in the viewing of them, child playthings lose their innocence, appearing to be something much more adult. And yet his very tools of creation are found in elementary school classrooms.