The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art

Just My Type: Angela Dufresne

Curated by Melissa Ragona and Anastasia James

February 9 – July 14, 2019
Morgan Anderson Gallery and Howard Greenberg Family Gallery

Angela Dufresne, Kerry Downey, 2016, oil on canvas, courtesy the artist

What’s in a face? In Angela Dufresne’s hands, a face is sometimes stretched to its absolute limits, becoming landscape, becoming monstrous, becoming pure color. Just My Type is a study in the topology of the face, as it transforms and morphs, never standing still long enough to zero in on a fixed “type.” The typologies in her paintings are hybrid machines; they threaten “categories” that identify us by normative names or force us into vulnerable positions. Dufresne wields heterotopic narratives that are non-hierarchical and perverse and poignantly articulate, porous ways of being in a world fraught by fear, power, and possession. Known for her impressive tableaux vivants that are both grandiose and humble, Just My Type: Angela Dufresne will feature intimate and rarely exhibited portraits of the artist’s friends, family, and community, as well as phantasmagoric beings that challenge our understanding of what makes a type.

Angela Dufresne (b. 1969) has exhibited at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, The National Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, The Cleveland Institute of Art, The Aldridge Museum in Connecticut, Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, the Rose Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts, Mills College in Oakland, California, and the Minneapolis School of Art and Design.

Angela Dufresne, Nicola Tyson, 2017, oil on canvas, courtesy the artist

She is currently Associate Professor of painting at RISD. Awards and honors include a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, residency at Yaddo, Purchase Award at The National Academy of Arts and Letters, two fellowships at The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, The Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, and a Jerome Foundation Fellowship. Dufresne is the first in her family to receive a college degree. She received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from The Tyler School of Art at Temple University.

PROGRAMS & EVENTS

FEBRUARY

Saturday, February 9
11 am – 5 pm: First day of Just My Type: Angela Dufresne, In Celebration: A Recent Gift from the Photography Collection of Marcuse Pfeifer, and Mohonk Mountain House at 150
5–7 pm: Opening reception and Performance for spring exhibitions:
Linda Mary Montano: The Art/Life Hospital, Just My Type: Angela Dufresne, In Celebration: A Recent Gift from the Photography Collection of Marcuse Pfeifer, and Mohonk Mountain House at 150. Featuring a performance by Linda Mary Montano, and the premiere of a new composition: “Work for Bowed Guitar and Electronics” by Zach Layton. The artists, David Humphrey and Jennifer Coates will join Angela Dufresne for an improvisation with saxophone and voice.

Sunday, February 10, 2 pm
Gallery Talk: A roundtable discussion on the exhibition Just My Type: Angela Dufresne, moderated by curator Melissa Ragona, with the artists Angela Dufresne, David Humphrey, and Geoffrey Chadsey

Sunday, February 17, 2 pm
The Carolee Schneemann Reading Club
Carolee Schneemann and Angela Dufresne in conversation: A Radical Reading of Evolution, Beauty, and Form.

Inspired by Angela Dufresne's painting of the same name, The Carolee Schneemann Reading Club features performative readings and animated discussions in relation to the work presented in Just My Type: Angela Dufresne—with the artists Carolee Schneemann, Nicola Tyson, Kerry Downey, and Angela Dufresne. Conceptualized and organized by Melissa Ragona.

Saturday, February 23, 2 pm
The Carolee Schneemann Reading Club
Nicola Tyson and Angela Dufresne in conversation: You Were Always So Well Turned-Out: The Art of Likeness across the Work of Angela Dufresne, Max Beckman and Thomas Gainsborough

Sunday, February 24, 4 pm
The Carolee Schneemann Reading Club
Kerry Downey: Look at Me, Don't Look at Me: Reflections on the Relationality of Portraiture. What does it mean to look at a person? Downey will share recent writings on Dufresne’s portraits and invite the community to reflect on the social implications of portraiture such as empathy, identification, and projection.

APRIL

Sunday, April 28, 2–4 pm

Family Day: In conjunction with the exhibition Just My Type: Angela Dufresne
Family Day registration at http://www.newpaltz.edu/museum/learn/familydays

JUNE

Saturday, June 15, 2–4 pm

Panel Discussion: "Particular Subjects in a State of Emergency" Angela Dufresne, Peter Rostovsky, and Faye Hirsch in conversation, moderated by Melissa Ragona

In Peter Rostovsky's essay, "Particular Subjects," he charges: "That figurative painting has enjoyed a resurgence recently is both a cause for celebration and caution. On the one hand, it highlights the politics implicit in the act of recognition. To represent an individual is to conjure the thorny questions of who this individual is: their class, race, gender, sexual orientation, relation to the artist and so on. But on another, it is to return to the familiar terra firma of Western painting—the figure and its ostensible certainties, never more comforting than in this uncertain time." What constitutes the "act of recognition" in portraiture? What kind of a position does "subjectivity" take in contemporary portraiture?