Artist/Prof's LA Show About 'Fashion Ova' Style'
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 27, 2010) − The artwork of Ebony Patterson, an assistant professor of painting at the University of Kentucky Department of Art, is the subject of a solo art show titled "Fashion Ova' Style" at See Line Gallery in Los Angeles. The show, which includes mixed media painting, tapestries, installation and works on paper, is on display through Nov. 11.
"Fashion Ova' Style" is a Jamaican colloquialism that comes from the country's popular dancehall culture. The term refers to a sense of inventiveness and willingness to push the envelope against what is understood as being "stylishly ordinary." It also exemplifies a pseudo – masculine trend in dancehalls that has become a kind of camp-machismo displayed by gangstas, entertainers and the dancehall’s avid patrons.
"This exhibition in Los Angeles is an important step in Professor Patterson’s emergence on the national stage," says Benjamin C. Withers, chair of the UK Department of Art. "She is another example of the quality of artists and teachers UK can attract. Hopefully, as we find the resources over time to significantly upgrade our facilities, we will be seeing stories like this on a regular basis, given the quality of the faculty already amassed at the UK Department of Art."
Patterson's solo show features select works from her ongoing body of work "Gangstas, Disciplez + the Doiley Boyz," which investigates notions of the machismo through exploring fashionable trends within Jamaican dancehall culture. While her earlier works explore the practice of skin bleaching, Patterson's most recent work includes other fashionable exploits and examines a wider involvement of so-called "bling culture" and its effect on the of reconstruction notions of machismo. Her artwork raises questions about perceptions of masculinity within a Jamaican context and larger questions about beauty, gender ideals and constructs of masculinity within popular black culture.
With a continued exploration of mixed media works in both drawing and painting, Patterson has most recently ventured into installation, street projects, mixed media tapestries and photographs along with three-dimensional objects and wallpaper to expand the discourse formally and conceptually. Combining flower petals, toys and tampons along with these images helped Patterson to expand her conversation about gender construction and how ideas about masculinity are indeed shifting into a kind of faux feminine. These additional mediums allow for further exploration of image, language and gesture and how this informs constructs of gender; reaffirming or deconstructing notions of masculinity and how this parallels the feminine. Her more recent works as a result of this have become more beautiful, decadent, iconic and confrontational.
Janet Levy is serving as curator of "Fashion Ova' Style," and is the founder of See Line Gallery, an exhibition space dedicated to supporting the work of exceptional contemporary artists. Since its launch, See Line has garnered critical acclaim from local and national press outlets and has established the careers of several emerging artists.
Patterson, who began teaching at UK in the fall of 2007, has participated in several group exhibitions at institutions like the Brooklyn Museum, Tacoma Contemporary, Kingston's Mutual Gallery and France's Centre International d`Art Contemporain. Amid her group show credits are "Young Talent V," "Jamaica Biennial 2006" and "Jamaica Biennial 2004" at the National Gallery of Jamaica; "Royal Overseas League Travel Scholars 2002 Exhibition" presented in both London and Edinburgh; "Taboo: Identities, Race, Sexuality + The Body" presented at Kingston's Olympia Art Center and the Tuska Center of Contemporary Art at UK, which she also curated; "Rockstone and Bootheel" at Real Art Ways, in Hartford, Conn.; and "Ghetto Biennale 2009" in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.