Cathy Daley: Dance

Edward Cella Art + Architecture (ECAA) announced the exhibition of new drawings by Cathy Daley.

The exhibition represents the Los Angeles debut for the Toronto-based artist who mines contemporary vocabularies of glamour, fashion, popular culture, to examine the iconography of femininity as it exists in the cultural imaginary, personal memory, and fantasy.

Fanciful imagery of billowing skirts builds on persistent cultural images inspired from ballerina tutus, fairy-tale princesses, Barbie doll couture and other urban mythology.

Daley's celebratory, highly textured large scale drawings rendered in pastel and charcoal, investigate the powerful gestures that provoke memories of the feminine form within Western culture.

The work incorporates the iconography of Marilyn Monroe's windswept dress, to the ballerinas of Degas, and runway models off of the catwalk.

Each sensually explores the cultural representations of the feminine and the body, as derived from our visual culture of Hollywood, art, fashion and advertising.

Daley prizes black oil pastel for its depth and wide range of tonality and her use of it on translucent vellum reveals her spontaneous and direct working process.

In her hands, this elemental drawing medium creates a sculpture-like presence as she creates a strong sense of volume.