Danielle Orchard’s “At the Seams” Is a Meditation on the Art Historical Gaze
A new solo exhibition on view at Perrotin Seoul.
Born in Indiana and based in Brooklyn, Danielle Orchard is an artist who approaches the concept of the art historical gaze through an abstracted lens.
To mark her first solo exhibition in Asia, Orchard is viewing a new body of work, entitled, “At the Seams” at Perrotin Seoul. As the central figure of her oeuvre, Orchard’s characters are created through a combination of personal experience, art historical reference, and self-invention.
She subtly asks the viewer to consider their role in viewing the intimate scene before them. “You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her,” John Berger once wrote in Ways of Seeing, adding “[you] put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”
Similarly, Orchard understands the complex system of viewership, voyeurism, and artistic ownership of the female form and imbues her own paintings with these questions. In The Yellow Bathroom, the artist showcases a women who is seen washing her underwear. Despite the scene being a normal daily occurrence, Orchard raises the note of how our mere gaze of the act can elicit exotic and sexualized connotations.
“At the Seams” is on view at Perrotin Seoul until November 26.
Elsewhere, Tomi Ungerer will be honored at Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen.
Perrotin
1F
5 Palpan-Gil,
Jongno-gu
Seoul, South Korea
