Ellen Gallagher
1965–
In 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.
Gallagher’s ambitious portfolio DeLuxe, 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, DeLuxe alters 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, DeLuxe reaffirms the singularity of these individuals at a particular moment in time: their postures, smiles, styles, and desires. Gallagher has said the advertisements “had a kind of urgency and a necessity to them, also a whimsy. . . . It seemed to me to be about identity in the most open sense of that word.”
Introduction
Ellen Gallagher (born December 16, 1965) is an American artist. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is held in the permanent collections of many major museums. Her media include painting, works on paper, film and video. Some of her pieces refer to issues of race, and may combine formality with racial stereotypes and depict "ordering principles" society imposes.
Wikidata identifier
Q4132681
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 26, 2025.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, collagist, painter
ULAN identifier
500126100
Names
Ellen Gallagher
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 26, 2025.
