Puttanesca

Expressionist imprint of Victoria Duffee's exhibition

The brown wool sweater rakes. Pull it over your head. Do you see it sparkling? A tiny star system. The thread follows the skein that rolled through the dark forest behind the house, like a path. No, a fuse that leads to this memory of a meal. Behold, the flame that flies. It's your blonde hair. The girl in the blue summer dress, she too is raking. Each step is a stitch on the way to a memory that will explode in all directions, slowly, like a flowering tree. The scent permeates. You have to climb to the top of it. The path is covered with snow, you run without a trace out of the eye of the needle. A drop of blood from fingertip to tip of tongue. This is how it is to be infected by a memory. But is it real? -It happens first, then you remember it. First a flash of light, then thunder. You can no longer fit in the passport photo in your wallet. You have stepped out of the frame. The illusion-free child sees Dad's thumb detached from his hand and knows that it is true, as the face in the mirror does not exist, but still cries. And the warmth in the lining of the glove you forgot on the table is you and yet not, just as a false smile is a smile. Of all the things you have lost, the one you have forgotten is the heaviest. The cat rises from the loom, thread by thread, flees from the tail, the black snake. Sisyphus pushes a meatball up a mountain of pasta. When he is tired he takes a bite. For every bite it grows, like hunger.

-Joakim Kjørsvik

The collected works in Victoria Duffee's exhibition

, provide opposite perspectives on a central question of what is authentic or real. A series of weavings are representations of family members, and obscure depictions of famous Italian works of art. The woven works are made from the family members' old clothes and textiles. The Italian references point to Duffee's search for keys to her own family’s background as immigrants to the United States a few generations ago. The exhibition also contains a 'Peppers Ghost' Optical illusion. -A metaphor for a deeper truth often revealed through the fantasies or lies we present to each other. By showing a work that deals with reality through a ghostly emphasis, Duffee touches on concepts such as: death, the psychological and possible spiritual presence of ancestors, magical thinking, and asks questions about what our individual perception of reality really is.

The Exibition is kindly supportet by Norwegian Visual Artist Fund.