23/4/2003
Dotty Attie
P.P.O.W, New York
In this exhibition, consisting of a series of 5 large works and a number of related smaller pieces, Attie invites the viewer to become the "traveller" of her exhibition's title, an undisclosed dramatis personae who actively investigates the narrative underpinnings of the spectacle.
P·P·O·W is pleased to announce "Sometimes a Traveller," its sixth show of art works by Dotty Attie. Using strategies of appropriation, Attie has been repainting details from old masters such as Caravaggio and Eakins. Her previous work fractures the masculinist lens through which works like Fantin-Latour¹s A Studio in the Batignolles Quarter, were painted. More recently she has been culling images from documentary and art photographs, to reveal the patriarchal and social structures embedded within them. She re-presents these images on meticulously painted square canvases, interspersed with panels of text.
In this exhibition, consisting of a series of 5 large works and a number of related smaller pieces, Attie invites the viewer to become the "traveller" of her exhibition's title, an undisclosed dramatis personae who actively investigates the narrative underpinnings of the spectacle. Painted on assemblages of canvases of approximately 6 x 6 inches arranged in rows, each major painting subjects the viewer to a ‘genre’ of images culled from history’s vast photographic record. These scenes include battle field atrocities, professional and amateur sporting events, noirish deployments of law and order, ordinary domestic scenes and exotic nineteenth century colonial and travel expeditions. The scenarios in each panel depict people often engaged with what is happening outside the picture frame. Characters look out, casting their gaze in every direction and often pointing directly at the viewer. The viewer or ‘traveller’ unknowingly becomes complicit in the artist’s project while reading the text panels: "Sometimes a traveller, in foreign lands where customs and mores are unfamiliar will find to his surprise that in certain places and at certain times resistance and refusal mean consent".
As the viewer of Attie’s paintings, we are implicated in the narrative and seduced by the medium. Attie paints details from the source photographs in a delicate grisaille. This technique simulates the photographic originals, creating tension between that delicacy and the violence she often portrays. This seduction furthers the intention of her text. For instance, in one piece of twenty-eight panels on exotic travel both the colonizer and the colonized become the subjects of Orientalism. In another piece, showing a variety of images from 20th century battles, soldiers - while resisting the enemy - cannot exist without the expectation of war. The paradox emerges where resistance requires engagement, and where engagement is a form of resistance. Through painting and text Attie returns these images to us so that we may accept our atrocities, our indulgences, and even the more subtle permissible violences of our pastimes.
Dotty Attie’s work has been seen in numerous museum and gallery exhibitions worldwide. She has been exhibiting since 1972.
P·P·O·W
Pilkington, Olsoff Fine Arts, Inc.
555 W 25th Street, New York