image size: 12" x 12"
Etherton Gallery is pleased to announce its first exhibition of the 2023-2024 season, Alice Leora Briggs and Kitty Brophy: El Sueño de Razón (The Sleep of Reason). The exhibition marks the gallery’s 43rd year in business, and the third anniversary in our Barrio Viejo neighborhood location. The exhibition explores the use of text-based artwork to describe institutional violence, and cultural patriarchy through the sgraffito (scratchboard) drawings of Alice Leora Briggs, and unique archival pigment prints of Kitty Brophy. A selection of Brophy’s Sketchbook Drawings will be featured in the gallery pop-up, In the Cases. The show opens September 19, 2023.
El Sueño de Razón features a selection of sgraffito drawings by Alice Leora Briggs, made to illustrate her recent book, Abcedario de Juárez: An Illustrated Lexicon (U. Texas Press, 2022). Abcedario was a collaboration with photojournalist Julián Cardona (1960-2020), that resulted in what Briggs describes as “an unhinged glossary of alphabetically ordered definitions of slang terms that periodically erupt into first-hand accounts of life or death, or both.” Based on photographs, first-hand accounts, and historical material, Briggs’ drawings feature corrupt cops, criminals, murder victims, soldiers, and crime scenes, that draw attention to the unpredictable violence in Juárez.
Artist Kitty Brophy is widely known for her figurative painting and drawing, with art works held in the permanent collection at MOCA Los Angeles and featured in the Club 57 exhibition at MOMA to name a few. Her work has included text throughout her practice and most recently Brophy has begun creating works solely composed of text, which the artist sees as an extension of her well-known figurative work and practice and a way of creating her art with words in place of figures. The text within these pieces comes to Brophy in a stream of consciousness, visions, and flow. Once the words have exited Brophy’s mind and landed onto the page, the artist then sets to work on the design and detail-oriented execution of each piece. There is no room for chance within this process, it is very much controlled and planned throughout its creation.
Etherton Gallery’s exhibition, El Sueño de Razón (The Sleep of Reason) is a minefield of words and phrases used by Alice Leora Briggs and Kitty Brophy to highlight injustice and hypocrisy in contemporary life. Like a real minefield, their work requires slow, sometimes uncomfortable looking as we reckon with the terms of our own experience in the world.
