Women Painting Men

May 20 – June 23, 2018
Guest Curated by Gwendolyn Zabicki

Gallery Talk: Saturday June 9 at 2pm

Featuring paintings by Karen Azarnia, Mel Cook, Katie Hammond (Halton), Jessica Stanfill, Celeste Rapone, and Gwendolyn Zabicki.

Coverage in the Chicago Tribune:  “Crushing the Patriarchy in One Look” by KT Hawbaker

Gwendolyn Zabicki, “Tree Trimmer,” 2015. Oil on canvas. 32 x 24 inches.

Katie Halton @beast4thee Missing you already Acrylic and fabric on canvas 48 x 48 IN 2018

Celeste Rapone, “Rider Husband,” Oil on Canvas, 42” x 48”.

Jessica Stanfill. “Gabrielle and the Swan,” 2015. Oil on canvas.

Mel Cook. “Fruit Punch II,” 2015. Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 in.

Karen Azarnia. “Field,” 2018. Oil on canvas, 42 x 60 inches.

“Women Painting Men” is a group exhibition featuring the work of six female painters.

In this show, we see portrayals of men that run from sexual to sympathetic to sentimental. This exhibition asks viewers to consider: is the female gaze simply a reversal of the male gaze–that is to say, men rendered as sexual objects for the viewer’s pleasure; or is the female gaze best understood as a new generation of women learning to look at themselves and others in a new way?

Laura Mulvey coined the term “the male gaze” in her 1975 essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In the essay, she states that the female gaze is women looking at themselves through the eyes of men. More than 40 years have passed since Mulvey wrote her still powerful essay. Do alternative modes of seeing and representation exist in the world, or are artists and viewers alike still trapped in a binary of active and passive?