Francesca DiMattio: Housewares

Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston presents the exhibition Francesca DiMattio: Housewares. June 1 through August 30.

Join the Museum on Sunday, June 1, 11am to 2pm, in celebration of the exhibition opening. Mimosas and brunch fare provided by Pondicheri.

Blending traditions of genre, style, and periodization, Housewares presents a new series of paintings and sculptures by Francesca DiMattio. Fluctuating between illusionism and abstraction, high art and craft, DiMattio's work explores ideas of the domestic and the decorative, gender and class.

The Pattern Paintings present "undone interiors," where furnishings and objects collide in continually shifting planes. They are intricately layered scenes in which textiles, plastics, and varied textures of paint are laid over a drawing of rope and string alternately confirming and denying the demarcated spaces.  With images and patterns dissolving into one another, every passage describes both an element from the nameable world of interiors (e.g. wallpaper or arm rest) and an abstract shape existing outside of it.

Often comparing the rhythm of her painting to weaving, DiMattio fuses found objects, materials, and motifs to build abstract compositions where each element is recognizable but does not behave as it should. Likewise, her sculptures fuse together different traditions and techniques in exuberant collisions of materials and forms that look-but do not act-like vases, teapots, cups or chandeliers.

The exhibition is organized by Claudia Schmuckli.

Image (detail) provided by Blaffer Art Museum.  Full image below.