March 1 - April 26, 2023

Opening Reception: March 1st, 6-8 PM

For her new project Totally Tails, Alicia Gibson presents an installation comprised of 18 oil paintings of her dog Tails. Always mining her surroundings for her still-life paintings, Gibson now turns to portraiture but still looking at what is by her side, what is nearest and dearest –Tails.

Throughout art history, dogs have been prominently featured - in mosaics at Pompeii to Gaugin’s painting Still Life with Three Dogs and often depicted in hunting scenes and as lap dogs in aristocratic portraitures of the Renaissance. Gibson’s focus on her dog in this intimate and often humorous setting has its own more of a 21st Century flavor. From CM Coolidge’s Dogs Playing Poker to Francis Picabia’s Femme au bull-dog, the 20th Century saw a new way to incorporate the canine image. Anthropomorphic representations of dogs, as well as using source materials from magazines and photography became more prevalent. Gibson’s work echoes this kitsch and the uses mash-up aesthetic, but these works seem more akin to Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills than William Wegman’s Weimaraners. Tails personality is shown through various poses and filters in a performative nature but getting to the core of the canine spirit which is Totally Tails and ultimately which is Totally Gibson.

Alicia Gibson was born in Manhasset, NY. She received her BA from Boston College, a Post-Baccalaureate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and an MFA from Hunter Col-lege. Solo exhibitions have included Backronym in a Sentence at Grifter Gallery, NY, NY (2021), Friend from Foe at Loyal Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden (2017), Backseat Bingo, Marvin Gardens, Ridgewood, NY (2017), Not in a Million Beers, Real Estate Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY (2017), Pur-gatory Emporium, CANADA Gallery, NY, NY (2016), and Flip the Script Turn the Tide, Julius Ceasar Gallery, Chicago, IL (2016). Alicia has exhibited at Breeder Gallery, Greece, Rod Barton, UK, Venus Over LA, Howard’s, GA, Adams and Ollman, OR, Carroll and Sons, MA, Nevvan Gallery, Sweden and Stems Gallery, Belgium. Select NY galleries include Lyles and King, Derek Eller, Rachel Uffner, Zurcher, and Underdonk. Her work has been reviewed in Frieze, NY Times, Art News, Frontrunner Magazine, Hyperallergic, MOMUS, Art Papers and the Boston Globe.

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Alicia Gibson

by Catherine Spaulding

From prehistoric cave paintings to Jeff Koons’s Puppy, the dog has been an art subject for thousands of years. And it’s not hard to see why: from loyal hunting companion to lapdog, the dog is more than worthy of our cultural (and personal) attention. Was the artist thinking about this distinguished history when she made these oil paintings of her dog? Probably not.

Definitely not.

During the height of the COVID pandemic, Alicia, a native of NY and decade-plus Brooklyn resident, left for her mother’s home in the relatively isolated foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in South Carolina. Her plan was simple: she would save a little money while the city was shut down and return once the city was fun again. Then, her mother got sick—very sick—and so the artist stayed in South Carolina, enduring the hard labor and anxiety that comes with being the sole caregiver of an ailing parent, all while lacking her social and emotional support system back in Brooklyn. The works that resulted from this period are a series of oil paintings of the one constant in her life from Brooklyn to South Carolina: her dog, Tails. The portraits range from realistic—Tails in a Uhaul, Tails in a “Just Be You” t-shirt, Tails with his head caught goofily in a plastic Thro Yo frisbee—to surrealistic patchworks of the Sheltie nearly hidden behind digital makeup filters, masks, and other transformational accessories. The many faces of Tails, a cloning–Dolly situation of sorts. But the artist is not just having kitschy fun in painting these breezy depictions of her amusing canine companion. Like Alicia’s past work, the portraits are full of popping, girlish colors, such as the bright pink bow and floating purple hearts in “Pinky Bow Tails.” Her brushwork remains energetic and her lowbrow humor intact with such pieces as “Tails From The Crypt” and “‘We Can Do It’ Tails.” But there is also something new in these works: a radical tenderness, an appreciation of her canine companion’s ability to enjoy life in a lighthearted and unselfconscious way, even as the artist herself is trying to hold everything together. And as Alicia revels in the endlessly playful nature of her closest companion, it is also a reminder to the viewer to breathe, even when life feels lonely and uncertain. In these works, Alicia is doing what many of the best artists do in isolation: combining two things that bring her solace— painting and her eccentric Tails.

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Exhibition Catalog

Published by Marisa Newman Projects

Softcover, 7×7 in (18×18 cm), # of Pages: 20

ISBN 9798211453302

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