Each of the easel-sized framed ink drawings in David Canright’s show “Built Environments” at Conduit Gallery takes a single subject, such as All-Inclusive Resort (2025), Section 416 G of the Transatlantic Cable (2025) or the medical care facility of Treatment Center (2024), and imagines it in fantastic, brain-melting detail, as if it were a beehive-like structure made up of hundreds of individual cells, containing both realistic and imaginary elements.

While from an arm’s-length distance, the superabundance of detail might suggest the jollity of a Richard Scarry or Where’s Waldo-type children’s book, a closer study reveals something much weirder and more cryptic.

Although the content of each of the miniature cells is apparently governed by the overall purpose of the larger structure, the connection is often not obvious, which adds a sense of mystery. Human figures are mostly absent, adding a further eerie aspect.

Although the depicted structures are largely mechanical in nature, each of them combines both a staggering level of detail and an enormous variety of contents within itself. This makes them seem, paradoxically, somewhat organic, more like looking at a diagram of a biological cell (which has both detail and variety) than, say, a microchip (great detail, little variety).

It must have taken a phenomenal level of focus and concentration to produce each of these drawings (I’d have guessed several weeks for each), and yet, all 19 of them were made within the last two years: a remarkably productive output.

This is one of the most distinctive and memorable shows of the year.

Details

“David Canright: Built Environments” continues through June 7 at Conduit Gallery, 1626-C Hi Line Drive, Dallas. Free. Open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 214-939-0064 or visit conduitgallery.com.

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