{"data":{"id":"4358","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":4358,"topgoose_id":1970,"tms_id":4358,"display_name":"Ellen Gallagher","sort_name":"Gallagher Ellen","display_date":"1965–","begin_date":"1965","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eIn the mid-1990s, when Ellen Gallagher’s work came to widespread attention, many artists were seeking to articulate political positions on race, gender, and sexual identity. Gallagher’s paintings, drawings, and prints examine racially charged imagery through the prism of Minimalism and Process art, obsessive workmanship and technical virtuosity. Often combining found imagery and text with highly detailed mark making, Gallagher allows materiality to take the fore, treating political content as a framework for formal exploration.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGallagher’s ambitious portfolio \u003ca href=\"/collection/works/24764\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eDeLuxe\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, which premiered at the Whitney in 2005, aptly illustrates her fusion of visual play with critique as well as her inventive skill as a printmaker. Comprising a series of sixty works on paper installed in a grid, \u003cem\u003eDeLuxe\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003ealters reproductions of vintage magazine advertisements for products marketed to African American consumers. In addition to traditional printing methods, including etching, screenprint, and lithography, Gallagher uses mold-making and collage techniques to alter the images, adding yellow plasticine bouffant hairdos, excising sections of the images to leave eyeballs blank, affixing crystals to clothing, and even employing a tattoo machine. The vintage ads promote aspirational—and strongly assimilationist—values, promising a better life through beauty products and wigs. While the advertising imagery refers to outmoded stereotypes, \u003cem\u003eDeLuxe\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003ereaffirms\nthe singularity of these individuals at a\nparticular moment in time: their postures,\nsmiles, styles, and desires. Gallagher\nhas said the advertisements “had a kind\nof urgency and a necessity to them, also a\nwhimsy. . . . It seemed to me to be about\nidentity in the most open sense of that word.”\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500126100","wikidata_id":"Q4132681","created_at":"2017-08-30T16:56:06.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-29T07:03:02.889-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/4358/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/4358/exhibitions"}}}}