David Richard Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of paintings and collages by artist Dee Shapiro. The presentation debuts Shapiro’s newest body of work, her first ever figurative paintings that examine female nudes in art history, but through the artist’s unique lens of patterns and feminist discourse. Also included are earlier geometric paintings from the 1980s of antique Persian rugs that provide both cultural and historical context for the women figures as well as connecting the figures to Shapiro’s love of patterns, textiles and sewing that influenced her career and work for five decades. The inclusion of the artist’s exquisitely detailed paintings on paper of male and female genitalia shift the attention away from objectifying and essentializing the female body to more of a focus on playful and decorative depictions of genitalia as the functional and organic structures they are, with of course, a dose of innuendo.
