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September Issue 2004
Rabold Gallery in Aiken, SC, Offers Works by Deanne Dunbar
The Rabold Gallery in Aiken, SC, presents Pretty
Sure, an exhibit of paintings in oil on canvas by Deanne Dunbar,
an emerging artist from Pennsylvania. Dunbar is one of the gallery's
most popular and best selling artists. The exhibit opens Sept.
16 and continues through Oct. 16, 2004.
Pretty Sure is the flip side of the artist's feminist art
exhibit at Rabold Gallery last year. Unlike last year's three-part
exhibit, this year's show is a single body of 20 works. Dunbar
continues to focus on the representation of women as object of
desire, both in life and in art. In Pretty Sure, she appropriates
the male gaze in order to speculate about how she herself and
other women might be viewed by men and how this gaze might affect
the women.
Dunbar admits to a troubling dichotomy in her frame of reference on this point. "I worry both that my mind is considered not as important as my body, and that I continue to feel dependent on the male gaze for approval and recognition," she said. "It is important to me that a man notices my intelligence. While I know I am as well qualified for intellectual pursuits, I cannot ignore that most intellectual fields - like science, art, or politics - can be traced to their conception in specifically male arenas. As I seek to take a position in these fields, I imagine that men are, or at some point in history have been, the educator of females as they entered these arenas. With my work, I consider the implications of the male as the educator of the female."
Individual works in the exhibition depict women in a range of male perspectives, from tender admiration to more opportunistic voyeurism. Included in the body of work is a series of paintings with the artist's familiar and popular use of large women as an object of desire. These women typically are being watched unawares, sometimes in compromising positions and even to humorous effect. "The male gaze signifies a psychological relationship of power in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze. The gaze often operates when the viewed is not aware, but I wish to address the times that I am aware that I am being watched. I feel fear that the watcher will collect on his wishes without my consent while I simultaneously struggle to construct an identity that posits me as his desire, one that will impress him. I hope that I will be protected by inspiring in the watcher a level of respect."
Dunbar's work springs from the prevalence of
female subject matter in the history of art. She is interested
in and inspired by the celebrated works of Degas, Ingres, Bonnard,
and Hopper. "These are evidence to me that male artists approached
their work with their sexual desires in mind," she said.
"But because I seek to impress those who are watching by
representing myself in their image, I believe I might be helping
to perpetuate a male-centered society in order to be important
in it."
Both in title and content, Pretty Sure captures the artist's
ongoing pursuit to understand the dynamics of male-female relationships
and to shed new light on the representation of women in art.
Dunbar studied art at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, and
has exhibited throughout Pennsylvania as well as in New York and
Indiana. She twice received purchase awards at shows at The Erie
Art Museum and twice received the Doane Purchase Award in Meadville.
She won the 2000 Doane Prize in Painting and the 2003 Juror's
Prize at the Meadville Center for the Arts. Also a writer, Dunbar
received the 2001 Ione Sandberg Shriber Prize in Creative Writing
and the 2003 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artist
Fellowship for Fiction.
For more information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings,
call the gallery at 803/641-4405 or e-mail to (raboldgallery@bellsouth.net).
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