exhibitions
Leslie Holt: Hello Masterpiece
June 27 – August 1, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 27
6:30 - 8 pm
Hello Summer! Hello Masterpiece! Curator’s Office is entering a gravitas-free zone this summer and aims to inject some humor back into your lives and a wink to your art appreciation. We welcome Leslie Holt’s witty postcard-size paintings into the gallery in which Hello Kitty invades art historic masterpieces from Hopper to Picasso, from Cezanne to Goya. A reception for the DC-area born artist takes place on Saturday, June 27 from 6:30 – 8 pm.
view exhibition
Art historian and professor of art history Ivy Cooper writes about Holt’s series Hello Masterpiece: “Cue Hello Kitty, who wanders into each of these paintings to play dress up, mimic characters, and generally wreak havoc with whatever seriousness these mini-masterpieces manage to maintain….Hello Kitty gets to treat art history like her personal playground. And why not? As famous as these masterpieces are, they don’t hold a candle to Hello Kitty, that marshmallow manga symbol of multinational corporate pop-cultural hegemony….With Hello Masterpiece, (Holt) has perfectly replicated the conflation of high and mass culture that marks 21st century Capitalism. At the same time, each individual work in the series makes its own commentary on perennial issues ranging from love and beauty to labor and fetishism.”
Leslie Holt has had solo exhibitions at the David Lusk Gallery, Memphis, TN; Firehouse Gallery, Grants Pass, OR; phD Gallery, St. Louis, MO; Bonsack Gallery, St. Louis, MO; College of the Siskiyous Art Gallery, Weed, CA. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL; Curator’s Office, Washington, DC;
PhD Gallery, St. Louis, MO; Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis, MO; artDC Fair, Washington, DC; Aqua Art Miami Fair, Miami Beach, FL; Ann Arundel Community College, Arnold, MD; Art St. Louis, St. Louis, MO; Wright State University, Dayton, OH; Art St. Louis Gallery, St. Louis, MO; Foundry Art Centre, St. Charles, MO; Fontbonne University, St. Louis, MO; Black Hills State University, Spearfish, SD; Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, Augusta, GA; Gallery 110, Seattle, WA; Hoingik University, Seoul, Korea among numerous other venues. She earned her MFA in Painting in 2003 from Washington State University, Pullman, WA.
image above: Leslie Holt, Hello Picasso (Dancers), oil on canvas, 6” x 4”, 2009