Deborah Dancy | A Faint Light

Robischon Gallery presents A Faint Light, an extensive, dynamic two-part solo exhibition by distinguished artist Deborah Dancy. In this second solo exhibition with the gallery, Dancy’s signature large-scale abstract works on canvas and paper, ignite the viewer’s imagination with the grit and gravitas of the artist’s brushwork and her uncommon use of color. The provocative works from Deborah Dancy’s ongoing Oblivion series are included in part two of the exhibition, featuring redressed porcelain period figurines and an accompanying range of unexpected mixed media figurative drawings.

Dancy states:

“A Faint Light explores the fragile and nuanced space between defined and suggested structures. In the paintings and works on paper, we discover meaning through the illuminated and obfuscated forms. These elements teeter between hope and potential despair. Incomplete and fragmented shapes hover, float and collide with one another in an ambiguous space. These spaces are both beautiful and unnerving. In this realm of the incomplete, the fragment, and residue of “almost was” and “might become,” we see a faint light.

As subtle as the paintings are, the Oblivion series on paper and the altered figurines are anything but. They are pointed, sardonic, and unapologetically political. Humor is a sharp tool in critiquing and dismantling idealized notions of the social, cultural, and historical narrative. Their transformative position argues for another outcome.”

Whether it’s the charged mark-making of Deborah Dancy’s bold abstractions or her visual disruption of an intentionally prettified past, Dancy’s expressive work takes a firm hold throughout the gallery, as it simultaneously encourages reflection and cultural dialogue.

Deborah Dancy (CT) has degrees in both painting and printmaking, including an M.F.A. and an M.S. from Illinois State University, and a B.F.A. from Illinois Wesleyan University. She is the recipient of a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; a National Endowment of the Arts NEFA award; New England Foundation for the Arts/NEA Individual Artist Grant; a Yaddo fellowship; a Connecticut Commission of the Arts Artist Grant; and a Nexus Press Artist Book Project Award, among other recognitions. Her work is included in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Boston Museum of Fine Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Birmingham Museum of Art; the Hunter Museum; Baltimore Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Montgomery Museum of Art; Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas; Grinnell College in Iowa; Allen Memorial Museum of Art at Oberlin College; and the United States Embassy in Cameroon. Dancy’s work is also included in many corporate and private collections such as the General Electric Company, the Bellagio Hotel, and Chemical Bank. She has been included in exhibitions at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; the Spencer Museum at the University of Kansas; the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College; DeCordova Museum in Massachusetts; Bruce Museum in Connecticut; and New Britain Museum of Art in Connecticut, with an upcoming solo exhibition at the University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, ME, among others.