Interior view of self-portraits show, photographer eric manche
Self Portraits
OPENING NIGHT : Thursday, May 9, 7–10 pm
OPENING DAYS : The exhibition coincides with the West Austin Studio Tour and is open to the public May 11–12 and 18–19 from 11–6 pm
DORF Opens 2019 Season and West Austin Studio Tour with Self-Portraits
This group show expands the framework of self-portraiture while exploring culture, race, sexuality, gender, and religion. Featuring works by Alan Beckstead, Margarita Cabrera, Bug Davidson, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Michael Anthony Garcia, Christine Garvey, Katy Horan,
Terry Powers and Sara Vanderbeek.
Austin, TEXAS, April 22, 2019 – DORF announces Self-Portraits, a group exhibition that takes as its starting point the idea that an artist's work is a reflection of their identity and experience.
These nine multidisciplinary artists explore the power and vulnerability in portraying oneself while confronting socio-political and socio-economic notions of culture, race, sexuality, gender, and religion.
Through painting, sculpture, video, animation, ceramics, screen prints, installation and performance, Self Portraits pushes the boundaries of self-portraiture.
Beckstead is a Northern-California-based painter following in the tradition of the Bay-Area figurative painters, with a focus on Pride in polarizing times of celebration and protest.
Cabrera creates sculptures made out of mediums ranging from steel, copper, wood, ceramics, and fabric that focus on social-political community issues including cultural identity, migration, violence, inclusivity, labor, and empowerment.
Davidson is a motion-image artist and film director interested in communicating through visual language intersections of media & representation, social corporeal choreography, akousmata & action, and the enchantment of cinematic gesture.
Datchuk is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work deals with identity and the sense of being in-between, an imposter, neither fully Chinese nor Caucasian, by exploring the emotive power of domestic objects and rituals that fix, organize, soothe, and beautify our lives.
Garcia’s work delves deeply into personal experiences while casting a broad glance across society and its perceived norms. Recently, his work includes social practice work and overtly political themes.
Garvey is interested in the grotesque malleability of our flesh and finds in this examination a sense of pleasure, humor, delight, and perhaps relief. Her collages mirror the violent yet tender practice of surgery by cutting and mending, tearing apart drawings, photographs, and sculptural bodies to rebuild nature and the self.
Horan makes work about the female experience, examining the specific ways that women endure fear, loss, violence, madness and motherhood, connecting the collective pain of all women.
Powers paints people and places directly from observation as a documentary tool to record his specific experience of trying to make sense of the living world. For him, painting from observation is a way of consciously setting things up to paint unselfconsciously. The intent to make discoveries.
Vanderbeek is a multi-disciplinary artist focused on reframing the window and vernacular of portraiture. She uses her practice to contextualize autobiographical experiences, appropriate visual inspiration and respond to culture, politics and nature.
