The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz announces “Just My Type: Angela Dufresne,” an exhibition of intimate and rarely exhibited portraits by the Brooklyn-based artist, whose work depicts communities of phantasmagoric beings that challenge our understanding of what makes a type.
“Just My Type: Angela Dufresne” is co-curated by Anastasia James, curator of exhibitions and programs at the Dorsky Museum, and Melissa Ragona, independent curator and associate professor of art history and critical theory in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.
The exhibition will be on view from Feb. 9 – July 14 in the Dorsky’s Morgan Anderson and Howard Greenberg Family galleries. A public opening reception will be held on Saturday, Feb. 9 from 5 – 7 p.m.
What’s in a face? In Angela Dufresne’s hands, faces are stretched to their 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 that undermine and threaten the normative categorization that forces real people into vulnerable positions. Dufresne wields heterotopic narratives that are non-hierarchical, perverse and poignantly articulate, and depicts porous ways of being in a world fraught by fear, power and possession.
Angela Dufresne (b. 1969) is associate professor of painting at Rhode Island School of Design. She has exhibited widely across the U.S., including at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and the National Academy of Arts and Letters in New York; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri; The Cleveland Institute of Art, the Rose Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts, and the Minneapolis School of Art and Design.
Her awards and honors include a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship; a residency at Yaddo, the artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, New York; the Purchase Award at The National Academy of Arts and Letters; two fellowships at The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts; and a Jerome Foundation Fellowship.
Dufresne received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from The Tyler School of Art at Temple University. She is the first in her family to earn a college degree.
About The Dorsky Museum
Through its collections, exhibitions and public programs, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz supports and enriches the academic programs at the College, presents a broad range of world art for study and enjoyment and serves as a center for Hudson Valley arts and culture. The museum is widely recognized as the premier public showplace for exhibition, education and cultural scholarship about the Hudson Valley region’s art and artists from yesterday and today. With more than 9,000 square feet of exhibition space distributed over six galleries, The Dorsky Museum is one of the largest museums in the SUNY system. Since its official dedication on Oct. 20, 2001, The Dorsky has presented more than 100 exhibitions, including commissions, collection-based projects and in-depth studies of contemporary artists including Robert Morris, Alice Neel, Judy Pfaff, Carolee Schneemann and Ushio Shinohara.
Museum Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Closed Mondays, Tuesdays, Holidays and Intersessions.
For more information about The Dorsky Museum and its programs, visit http://www.newpaltz.edu/museum or call (845) 257-3844.
