Angela Dufresne “Pleasure Tips”
steven harvey fine art projects
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Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects presents an exhibition of drawings and videos by Angela Dufresne. The exhibition will show the range of Dufresne’s work on paper and the breadth of her drawing style. It will include atmospheric, tightly rendered graphite drawings from the mid-2000s, many of erotic public encounters; quick studies of friends and personalities; and energetically drawn charcoals with multiple figures and rowdy narratives in hybridized settings.
Dufresne’s work is theatrical but not explanatory, evocative of weird stories, and borrowing from mythology, film, art history and strange fantasy narratives. Figures, mythological animals, and interspecies creatures are grafted into complex interiors and landscape settings. Smaller scale portraits show actors in roles—Dufresne’s role models and alter egos—as well as friends performing in half human guises.
Dufresne also makes mash-up videos, exposing and presenting herself in multiple roles, singing and playing music against backdrops of studio interiors and landscapes. In her videos, Dufresne is artist, actor, musician, and engineer, the object of her own humiliation, and the recipient of pleasure in all its forms: sensual and aesthetic. A selection of Dufresne’s videos, dating from 2003-2016, will be on view.
Her work across the media explores visceral exposure, blunt sexuality, queer identity and feminist politics. Fierce intellectual curiosity and a wicked sense of humor are critical ingredients. The aesthetic source material she draws from is a singular personal pantheon, and also wildly diverse: John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, Courbet, Fragonard, Watteau, and Roger Brown, the Beach Boys and Jimi Hendrix. She refers to her work as “covers,” rather than appropriations, which highlights her empathic identification with this material, even when intense political questioning is at play.
Dufresne was born in 1969 in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City. She received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. She is an Assistant Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Hammer Projects, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2006); the Macalaster College Gallery, St. Paul, Minnesota (2010); as well as regular exhibitions at CRG Gallery and Monya Rowe Gallery. Dufresne has been included in group exhibitions at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY; Ogunquit Museum of American Art, ME; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT, MOMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, NY; The Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, MA; and in a two-person exhibition with Magalie Guerin at The Suburban, Oak Park, IL. This is SHFAP’s first exhibition with the artist.
Media
Schedule
from March 16, 2016 to April 17, 2016
Opening Reception on 2016-03-16 from 18:00 to 20:00