Kelli Vance

Long Story Short Paris is pleased to present Another Sunny Day, a solo exhibition of paintings by Houston-based artist Kelli Vance.

As if pulling a thread, each painting leads to another, linked not only by their bare traces of familiarity—their thin, yet strong narrative presence, but also by the gaps formed by their very creation. For Vance, paintings come into being in this tightly wound tension—between the forces of description and elimination.

It is more than just being tightly cropped—the compositions that coalesce into the Another Sunny Day linger between modalities both mundane and rich with narrative. An earring is pulled, a belt is cinched, a lace bodice is felt. Deliberately, Vance quiets the context of such works, leaving the viewer instead to focus on the force felt inside—as if leaving us to wonder how hard is she pulling. Through fragments, Vance advances the viewer into bodily experiences—of being a woman, of being herself. In doing so, Vance reminds us that melodrama can be a kind of complication in and of itself. Resolutely a visualist, the artist complicates her tactics—sumptuous detail is dampened by a weak light, the illusion of perspective somehow maintained and overtly manipulated, while the figure is always tightly cropped—leaving the viewer to wonder in the breakages—-where they perhaps encounter something else, such as the weight of their own gaze. In these works of oil on linen, Vance creates Another Sunny Day, works which exist in the shade of knowing—a space of both uncertainty and possibility.

Kelli Vance (b. in Garland, TX in 1983) currently lives and works in Houston. She received her BFA from University of North Texas and her MFA from the University of Houston in 2008. Vance was a finalist for the Hunting Art Prize in 2013 and completed the Roswell Artist Residency Program in Roswell, New Mexico in 2008. She was included in the 2021 issue of New American Paintings. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Cris Worley Gallery, Dallas in 2020 and 2017 and at McClain Gallery, Houston in 2015, the Texas Biennial Anniversary Show at Big Medium, Austin in 2013 and at Samuel Freeman Gallery, LA in 2011.