Contact: Petra Fallaux, Gallery Director
(412) 268-3877

For immediate release:
January 15, 2002

The Regina Gouger Miller Gallery presents:
"Plenty" by Nancy Davidson

PITTSBURGH-The Regina Gouger Miller Gallery is thrilled to announce its first ever exhibit dedicated to the work of a single artist: Nancy Davidson. Her lavish show of sculptures, digital prints, and video, aptly titled, Plenty, will be on view on all three gallery floors January 15 through March 1, 2002.

Plenty offers a fantastical visit to the sculptural landscape Davidson has developed in the last decade: her clay being the flexible air held by weather balloons and carefully molded by close-fitting frolicsome garments. Carnivaleyes will stare at us, their eyeliner and mascara marked by showy fringes, Ruby Red jewels seduce us, yet barely containing their oozing balloon-flesh. Crystal Blue Persuasion, Davidson's largest work, is installed on the first floor and lets us flash back to the 60's. Buttress, Dulcinea, Loulous, Maebe, Neither Bigugly or Smallnice, and Netella, all feature Davidson's signature balloons shaped by spider-web netting, corsets, tutus, satins or spandex. The gloriously sexy sculptures are the subject of Davidson's digital print series. On the third floor six examples from three series (Scrupulously Fake, Bonnnfemmerie, and Fevvers) are shown. Plenty also includes a 1999 video, Breathless, exhibited on the second floor.

It is easy to understand why Davidson's sculpture has found much acclaim: it is light and direct, yet playfully referential, bringing a witty sophistication to familiar forms. In her digital prints she takes this familiarity to surprising erotic heights. Though there is no doubt Davidson's work seriously addresses ideals of feminine beauty, its burlesque magnification lands it squarely in the realm of comedy. The gloriously sexy and absurd objects conjure serious subjects like the objectification of the female body, but in a playfully carnivalesque and hyperbolic voice.

Nancy Davidson will talk about her work at a free public lecture on Thursday, January 17, at 5 p.m. in Mconomy, University Center, at Carnegie Mellon University. The opening reception of her exhibit will follow the lecture from 6-8 p.m.
Davidson received her masters degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and bachelor degrees from The University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and Northeastern Illinois State University. Her work has been exhibited at Robert Miller Gallery and Dorsky Gallery in New York, The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Wesleyan University, Nova Sin Gallery in Prague, and Shoshona Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica. Reviews of her exhibitions have appeared in Art in America, New Art Examiner, Art/Text, The New York Times, Frieze, Art Journal, Artforum, and Art Issues.

Nancy Davidson lives and works in New York City. Her work is represented by Robert Miller Gallery, New York.

Plenty is supported by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts.