BE THERECandice Tripp: Tiny DramaPresented by Joshua Liner Gallery November 21, 2009- December 19, 2009Reception: November 21, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pmCandice TrippJoshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present Tiny Drama, an exhibition of new paintings by the South African artist Candice Tripp. This is Tripp’s first solo show with the gallery. Working in oil and ink on canvas, Tripp creates a precisely realized view of childhood that at first glance seems nostalgic, even precious. Medium-sized and uniformly square, for the most part, the nineteen pictures of Tiny Drama all depict small, finely rendered scenes of child figures in bucolic settings against a white background. What viewers quickly come to understand is that this pictorial technique is entirely ironical, mimicking the culture’s tendency to minimize the difficulties and dilemmas of childhood. If adulthood represents the successful repression of childhood traumas, Tripp’s project is to force the return of the repressed through a suite of clever, fable-like vignettes. In The Honey Trap, a boy wearing a pig mask is tempted to follow a trail of pink cupcakes toward a bare, menacing tree. In Sometimes the Skull Monkeys Break Out, not-yet-controlled impulses are literalized as a pack of monkeys escaping from the back of a girl’s head. Though wearing adorable outfits, the children all have blue-tinted skin, an arresting clue to their internal states of mind. All hide behind animal masks that when dropped reveal not faces but a whirling miasma of indistinct form and smeared paint—this action can bring both conflict and relief, as shown in Tiny Drama and The Luxury of Being Left Alone for a Little Bit. By contrast, the one image with no child and a discarded mask, The Last Known Whereabouts of Penny Stone, takes this stand-in for socialization to various unsettling conclusions.
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