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Guise is a series of pigment prints by Deborah Oropallo, visually rich and layered with meanings about power, gender, and sexuality.
The artist initially borrowed images from internet sites for sexy costumes and began a series of paintings, Kink. The images showed poses that recall in Oropallo’s words, “the formal portraiture male power stance with elaborate costume.” In the print series, which Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery is showing the month of July, Deborah Oropallo layers images of contemporary women in sexy costumes with images of men from 17th and 18th century portrait paintings. She says, “I am most interested in the costumes and the idea of a uniform and what that uniform means – and the two roles of submissive and dominant.”
For example, in Ms Oropallo’s, Blue Girl, the artist starts with the image of the famous painting, Blue Boy by Gainsborough. We see the boy in the blue satin breeches and coat, but we also see the stripper dressed in white fishnet stockings and white platform heels from the “happy accident” of superimposing one image upon the other. The scale, superb color, and technical virtuosity of the prints enhance and support the intersection of art history and 21st century technology.
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