DC Moore is pleased to announce Those Who Dare, an exhibition of 5 artists – Mary Frank, Vanessa German, Whitfield Lovell, Duane Michals, and Carrie Moyer. These artists work in brazen and original ways with the human figure, some very directly, and others with veiled references. The title, Those Who Dare refers not only to the boldness of their own artistic expressions across a variety of media but also to the adventurous and audacious subjects they choose.

Three new works from Whitfield Lovell’s Spell Suite are on view for the first time in the gallery. The title of the series plays on both references to a sequence of pieces in dance or music, as well as the mesmerizing, arresting quality of a spell or enchantment. Being in a spell can connote a state of consciousness or a spiritual or emotional transcendence.  Nina Simone was known for her song, “I Put a Spell on you” and in Lovell’s Spell Suite the need for love and acceptance in this life is interwoven through the individual works. Spell No. 6 (Yours is My Whole Heart, Where You are Not I Cannot Be) the drawn face of a handsome mid-aged man is shown with a visible scar across his cheek, and below is a large vintage tin pitcher, as could be used for dispensing oil. This resonant juxtaposition lends itself to multiple meanings, strong, yet unknowable.

Duane Michals has challenged viewers through his use of photography since his first sequenced photographs were shown in the 1960s when the artist wrote irreverently in the margins of his prints, something deemed as both innovative and sacrilegious at the time. In the ensuing decades, Michals’ art has been described as contemplative, confessional, and comedic. Two new sequences included present a wry look at the 89-year-old Michals. The first is the four-photograph sequence, Taxidermied Duane on Permanent Display in a Shop Window (2017), and the second Duane Sees a Rose (2018) is a metaphysical and epistemological play on Gertrude Stein’s infamous play on words.