Dirtypower
December 5, 2018 –
March 2, 2019
Caitlin Cherry, Installation view of "Dirtypower" at PC-G, December 5, 2018-March 2, 2019. Image Credit: Scott Alario.
Dirtypower
December 5, 2018–
March 2, 2019
Reilly Gallery, Smith Center for the Arts
Exhibition Opening Details
Artist Talk & Scholarly Roundtable:
Wednesday, February 27
6pm–7:30pm
About the Exhibition
Caitlin Cherry draws as much from the traditions of art history as from the trailblazing cultural theory authored in this technology-saturated age. A solo exhibition of newly commissioned artworks, Dirtypower merges two of the artist’s recent interests: imagery warped by Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) monitor technology, and the representation of black female bodies in institutions and media. The portrait paintings on view are rendered in kaleidoscopic color palettes, and some are displayed custom-designed wall-mounts, to look like malfunctioning flat-screen televisions. To reposition the outmoded idea of painting as a window to literal and figurative worlds, each artwork instead proposes painting as a screen—an addictively interactive and luminous surface that is central to everyday life while also mediating it. The painted figures, which Cherry uses to challenge presumptions about perception, authenticity, and beauty, visually communicate how entangled the individual, and their image-avatar, is with society and technology.
Dirtypower is organized by Jamilee Lacy, PCG’s Director and Chief Curator.
About the Artist
Caitlin Cherry lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Anderson Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, University Museum of Contemporary Art at University of Massachusetts in Amherst and The Brooklyn Art Museum. In 2019, she will present solo shows at Luis de Jesus in Los Angeles and at Luce Gallery in Turin, Italy. She has also recently exhibited work as part of significant New York group exhibitions, including A Wild Ass Beyond: ApocalypseRN at Performance Space, Punch curated by Nina Chanel Abney at Jeffrey Deitch, Touchstone at American Medium and The Sun is Gone but We Have the Light at Gawin Brown Enterprise. Cherry is a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Fellowship Residency and Leonore Annenberg Fellowship, among other awards and honors. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Supporters
The exhibition, conjunctive programming and fully-illustrated publication (forthcoming February 2019) is generously co-supported by Providence College’s Black Studies Program, Center @ Moore Hall, Department of Art & Art History and Women’s Studies Program. Additional funding is provided by The Reilly Gallery Fund, a gift of the late Robert F. Reilly (PC ’42).
Installation Images
Caitlin Cherry, Installation view of "Dirtypower" at PC-G, December 5, 2018-March 2, 2019. Image Credit: Scott Alario. 
Caitlin Cherry, Installation view of "Dirtypower" at PC-G, December 5, 2018-March 2, 2019. Image Credit: Scott Alario.
