Curator / Karen Liebowitz

Dress Me Up

Nicole Agbay Cherubini
Donna Conlon
Linda M. Ford
Mary-Beth Gregg
Karen Liebowitz
Nicola Lopez
Rachel Shuder

May 3 – June 1, 2003

Organized by seven artists who met while they were residents at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine during the summer of 2002.

After 25 years of Madonna, some of her lyrics have inevitably made their way into the ongoing dialogue of cultural production. The title Dress Me Up, a twist on one of her early songs, aptly expresses the premises that connect the works in this exhibition. These three words embody ideas of costume, transformation, masquerade, adornment, theater, identity, power, and play. In addition,, within our culture, artifice is often looked upon as negative, empty, and false, while the "natural" is deemed pure, authentic, and real. The work plays within this dichotomy; the masquerade becomes subversive and the facade is explored as a tool of power and communication. These artists challenge the above discourse through a variety of media (painting, sculpture, photography, installation, video, and printmaking). They each take notes or prisoners from Dress Me Up and put forth what ranges from subtly subversive to overtly political, feminist work allowing for a re-evaluation of our cultural and societal concerns.

Text by Karen Liebowitz