PRESS RELEASE
Exhibit: Big Pelt
Artist: Jeffrey Dell
Exhibit dates: 25 September – 1 November 2008
Opening reception: Thursday, 25 September 2008, 6 – 8 PM
Gallery Talk: Saturday, 11 October 2008, 1 PM
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Jeffrey Dell's work pushes the boundaries of printmaking by building a textural surface, not commonly seen in serigraphy. With this unique use of the printmaking medium, Dell makes surprising images that do not always look like prints. In Big Pelt, the works play with both line and color, and autobiographical motifs evoke the artist's fascination with some of life’s exuberances, as well as a few personal challenges.
“Pelt” refers to the use of hair and fur on nearly every piece that is in this show. It can also refer lightly to the sense of a stoning, or being pelted with something, like the cigarette butt or farmer being pelted with the sun. “Big” is also meant to be playful, as well as refer back to Dell’s Big Dermis series. Big in the way that we sometimes use the word when we're talking about something we don't fully understand or know.
The work in Big Pelt is somewhat darker than the rest of the screen printing work Dell has created in the last two years. It’s not dark, just less fully about play and exuberance. There’s a psychological element to this work that is a bit more complex. Much of the work in Big Pelt is about body perception. It’s about aging and entropy. Entropy has been an important theme for Dell for a long time.
Dell identifies with the idea expressed in Jeffrey Eugenides’ book Middlesex that hair is life. Dell sees hair as both an expression of how insuppressible life is, while still being a reflection of the slow dissolution of life. It is both life force and entropy. On the body of a loved one, is treasured and adored. On the body of a stranger, however, it’s shocking and repulsive. Many of the new pieces in Big Pelt attempt to find the edge between feeling a bit of both of those.
There are strong autobiographical elements to the new work in Big Pelt. The cigarette butt is a fairly straight-forward example. In the larger scheme of things, the addictive behavior is a reflection of other themes like the slow dissolution of the self (entropy) from forces both interior and exterior.
There is a masculine theme that is subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) reflected in these forms. Much of the work can be seen as being about a man’s sense of himself, even if Dell makes no claim to anything closer to universal that solely himself.
Jeffrey Dell teaches printmaking at Texas State University – San Marcos and also an intensive seminar in contemporary printmaking techniques at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy every August.
d berman gallery
1701 Guadalupe Street
Austin, Texas 78701
(512) 477.8877
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 6 PM
For high-resolution images and other information to accompany these exhibitions, please see our press website at http://www.dbermangallery.com/press access page.htm. The press site includes links to both the current and upcoming shows. For any other information or materials, please email Anastasia Colombo at anastasia@dbermangallery.com.
d berman gallery is wheelchair accessible. Unless otherwise noted, all events and exhibits are open and free to the public.