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Gallery Exhibitions  Narratives / Blogs |
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Danielle McCullough | Athens, Ohio RocketfishheartthrobGO is one image from a larger body of work by Danielle McCullough called “Love Luv BANG bang”. McCullough describes her work as a stream of consciousness painting that combines a variety of materials used to create animated, playful objects that were inspired by sex toys. Her paintings are inspired as much by the drawing mark of comic artist Lynda Barry as they are by the cocky splash of abstract expressionism. The meaning of the toys is enmeshed in the materiality and the objects are not clearly illustrated, so while the objects and materials may appear somewhat familiar, they are not specifically identifiable. The objects seem cartoonish, floating in space across the surface of the canvas. The media is also not clearly delineated, but fused with the playful objects, crossing boundaries, perhaps mutating and creating hybrids, “slippery synthetic stand-ins for chaotic biological forces”. The artist challenges the “undoing” of gender through sex by exploring the possibility of nebulous borders between the figurative and inanimate. Because it is through being sexual that we “do” gender, McCullough questions the biological classifications that we rely on as the sole means of defining gender and physicality. The sexual objects that emerge from the artist’s stream of consciousness are open-ended and therefore, cannot be categorically identified. Danielle McCullough received her M.F.A. in painting from Ohio University and has been exhibiting her work throughout the Midwest for the past six years. - by Karen Roberts |
