DeLuxe 2004 - 2005

Curator: Ellen Gallagher's "DeLuxe" is a suite of sixty mixed-media prints playing with advertisements found in vintage African-American magazines. The scale is just massive, it fills your peripheral vision. Editor: My first thought? A cabinet of curiosities, like an attic filled with forgotten faces and half-remembered dreams. Curator: Exactly! Gallagher uses plasticine, paper, and even glitter to transform these ads into something…otherworldly. Look at the recurring motifs—eyes, lips, wigs—archetypes, almost. Editor: Those eyes, in particular, haunt me. They seem to be watching, judging, maybe even pleading. Are they symbols of beauty, or are they trapped in a cycle of imposed ideals? Curator: Perhaps both. Gallagher’s work is brilliant because it refuses easy answers. It challenges us to confront the complexities of identity and representation. She’s playing with how these images were intended versus how they are now. Editor: It's a powerful reminder that even the most seemingly innocent images can carry a heavy weight of cultural baggage. It's like excavating cultural memory.