D’Amelio Terras, New York
March 31 – May 4, 2007
D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present Felicity and Caprice, a series of new drawings by gallery artist Delia Brown. The works on view are part of an on-going project loosely based on the plot of Claude Chabrol’s 1968 film “Les Biches”, which tells the story of an emotionally unstable young would-be painter, and her seduction into the arms and lifestyle of an heiress on a constant quest for relief from the tedium of a privileged life. In the drawings, Brown plays the heiress while the actress Hollis Witherspoon portrays the artist.
In the past Brown has addressed genre painting through still life, portraiture, self-portraiture, lush interior scenes, as well as the use of live models. In Felicity and Caprice, Brown employs allegory to portray a modern-day relationship between two women. Jealousy, assumed identity, madness, the tenuousness of relationships, and the complex dynamic between artist and patron play out in the intricately executed drawings on colored paper. Brown states: “By stripping Allegory of its moral determinacy and therefore reducing it to a formal pastiche, I look to use it as the structure within which to explore the romantic, social and economic desires of the artist.”
Delia Brown has had a number of solo and group exhibitions across Europe and the United States. In 2006 she had her first museum show at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI with a focus on self-portraiture. In 2005 D’Amelio Terras organized “All Access Atelier” at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, France where the gallery space was turned into a fully functional painting studio in which Brown worked on a series of oil paintings from live models in constructed environments. Later this year she will have a solo show at Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO. Delia Brown received an MFA in painting from UCLA in 2000 and currently lives and works in New York.
