An exhibition of new selfie paintings, Infinite Nude, by Drea Cofield will open on Thursday, September 5th 6-8PM at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Infinite Nudewill be on view concurrently with Chasing Rabbits, a solo show by Dannielle Hodson.

For the past several years, Cofield has engaged the genre of portraiture by painting selfies. Many of these are self-portraits, some are paintings of friends, some are sent to her by strangers on the internet. The rules are simple: Cofield seeks images of her subjects in mirrors, illuminated by natural light if possible, but exceptions are made for the fluorescent lights often found in bathrooms and the coloration of neons and nighttime incandescents. She then chooses images to paint onto small surfaces of cardboard primed with shellac, a historical painting surface hewn roughly to the size of a phone or tablet.

Cofield’s selfie paintings are gem-like and intimate, the quickness of a snapshot replaced by the much slower translation into paint. The harsh edges of photography are smoothed tenderly by brushstrokes; the backlit illumination of screen images materialized as exquisite color worlds. Each painting engages its subject’s personality and surroundings: clutter and pets feature, as do props. Clothes come on and off, bodies are turned, glimpsed, presented, displayed. Some people look directly at the camera, some gazes are coyer, sidelong or over the shoulder. Many viewers block their eyes or faces intentionally, cropping their bodies or shielding their gazes with their phones.

Portraiture has historically engaged the question of who is looking at whom and why, and Cofield’s paintings are no exception. Where traditionally, portraiture has relied on the interpretation of a sitter by a painter, Cofield paints an image which was made with intention by its subject, and consented to be turned into a painting. This interjection insists on the agency of the sitter by including them in the conception of their own self-image, in an inclusive and feminist reinterpretation of the genre. It also implicates painting’s relationship to digital self-imaging culture, one of the predominant modes of contemporary visual communication. Selfies can be seen as a shorthand for the representation of one’s public and private identities: used for everything from expressing a mood to documenting an outfit; from conceiving a public self-image through online culture, to the most private depictions of the body and its desires through illicit texts.

Most of Cofield’s paintings can be held in one hand—the way one might cradle a phone or another person’s shoulder. In order to be really seen, these delicate paintings must be studied with attention, up close, in person. We live in a time oversaturated with images, made and circulated in such excess that it is impossible to locate the particular and the human, never mind how an image was meant to be used. Cofield’s paintings teach us how to look more intentionally, both at art and at each other.

Exhibition text by Gaby Collins-Fernandez

About Drea Cofield

Drea Cofield currently lives and works in New York City. She received an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Heaven Gallery in Chicago and Library Street Collective in Detroit. She's recently had solo exhibitions at Galleri Urbane in Dallas and Exeter Gallery in Baltimore. This will be Drea Cofield's first exhibition at Kravets Wehby Gallery.

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