What’s in a face? In Angela Dufresne’s hands, a face is sometimes stretched to its absolute limits, becoming landscape, becoming monstrous, becoming pure color. “Just My Type: Angela Dufresne” 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.” Co-curated by Professor Melissa Ragona and Anastasia James, “Just My Type” is on view at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz February 9 through July 14.
The typologies in Dufresne’s paintings are hybrid machines; they threaten “categories” that identify us by normative names or force us into vulnerable positions. She wields heterotopic narratives that are non-hierarchical and perverse and poignantly articulate, porous ways of being in a world fraught by fear, power, and possession. Known for her impressive tableaux vivants that are both grandiose and humble, “Just My Type: Angela Dufresne” will feature intimate and rarely exhibited portraits of the artist’s friends, family, and community, as well as phantasmagoric beings that challenge our understanding of what makes a type.