About this artwork
Ellen Gallagher’s large-scale works utilize repetitive forms and an aggregation of both common and unorthodox materials to create subtly layered surfaces. Upon close inspection, her early paintings on canvas and paper reveal uncomfortable racial signifiers. The artist’s elaborate and labor-intensive method of building figures and forms always presents loaded imagery in ways that disrupt predictable interpretation. In Untitled Gallagher established controlled patterns melded out of rubber—a material that she uses for all of her black paintings—to articulate what she refers to as a “fantasy” rendering of an African, delineated by a system of signs indicating hair, skin, tattoos, and jewelry.
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Status
- On View, Gallery 293
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Department
- Contemporary Art
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Artist
- Ellen Gallagher
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Title
- Untitled
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality)
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Date
- 1999
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Medium
- Enamel, rubber, and paper on canvas
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Dimensions
- 305 × 244 cm (120 × 96 in.)
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Credit Line
- Major Acquisitions Fund
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Reference Number
- 2004.479
Extended information about this artwork
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