Deborah Bright

Spantzo Gallery is pleased to present Deborah Bright’s first exhibition of new drawings and paintings: Small Appliances.This latest series of works is an exciting change of direction for the artist following a notable 35-year career in photography.

Returning to her love of drawing, Bright riffs on motifs from assorted modernist precedents, flavoring them with her own “favorite things” from pop culture, drag, retail sex commerce and comics.The show’s title refers to the sex toys that populate these drawings and paintings, some accurately rendered and others entirely imaginary.

After all, Bright reasons, we’ve spent untold centuries admiring the human body in Western art, so why not pay homage to those objects made for no other purpose than to give pleasure to that body? The artist’s taste for sumptuous hues and glowingly rendered textures enhances the works’ exuberance and saucy humor. Clearly, Bright is having fun with her new work — and it shows.

Deborah Bright’s works have been exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Insti- tute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Fogg Museum, Harvard University; The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; The Addison Gallery of American Art; The Victoria and Albert Museum and The Vancouver Art Gallery, among others. Her work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the National Museum of American Art,Washington, DC; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University; the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York; the Boston Athenaeum and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University. She has received numerous grants and awards for her art and critical writing and edited a noted book on queer photography,The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire. Bright lives and works in New York.