- This event has passed.
Alexandre Hogue Gallery: Unstable Entity by Rebecca Drolen
October 26, 2023, 9:00 am-December 14, 2023, 4:30 pm
FreeThe 2023–24 season at the Alexandre Hogue Gallery continues with Rebecca Drolen’s exhibition ‘Unstable Entity.’
Unstable Entity uses photographs and architectural constructs to explore balancing and tipping points within culturally unstable expectations of female strength, resilience, and bodily performance. The work compares physical bodily forms to ad-hoc assemblages that are tenuously balanced using common building materials. Within this juxtaposition is a meditation on the body as an architectural construct and the unsettled standards of what it means to be a “strong woman.” The collage of forms speculates on the relationship of female strength to intimidation, sexuality, and desire and the individual stamina required to pursue both mental and physical wellness. Female body builders enter the work as a form of archetype or idealized body representing a maximized performance of strength and physicality. The artist’s performances pursue stamina, wavering balance, and the labor associated with managing the collision of roles between being the subject and operator of the photograph. The work is a montage of layered priorities alongside feverish persistence to perform to meet the standards of contemporary femininity, despite its distinct illogics.
The Alexander Hogue Gallery is open Monday – Friday from 9AM- 4:30PM. This show is free and open to the public.
—
Rebecca Drolen (b. 1983) is an artist and educator working in Arkansas. Her photographs are concerned with how individuals visually assemble their identity and the constructed ideals placed on gendered bodily performance. Her work playfully explores the expansive nature of photography in contemporary art as it incorporates built spaces, assemblage and performance.
Drolen’s work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions on a national and international level, within noteworthy venues such as the Huffington Post, Oxford American’s “Eyes on the South,” the Light Factory, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Springfield Art Museum, The Oklahoma State Museum of Art, the CICA Museum in Gimpo, Korea, the Galveston Art Center, Filter Photo, and the Theory of Clouds Gallery in Kobe, Japan. Drolen has had work published in various art books, magazines, and blogs and has photographs held in private and institutional collections.