Density Betrays Us – Artist Panel Two
Moderated by Melissa Ragona

Density Betrays Us Virtual Panel Discussion Part 2

Special Focus: Carol Rama 

Tuesday, August 10 @ 4:00 pm

A discussion with artists, Carl D’Alvia, Terrance James Jr., Angela Dufresne and Carol Rama Collectors’ Jennifer Bacon and Filippo Fossati — Moderated by Melissa Ragona

Similar to the first panel, several artists featured in Density Betrays Us will discuss the space in their work that attempts to wrestle with the tension between figure and abstract object, between foreground and background, between density and weightlessness, between social and material terrain. However, one important shift in our focus will be a special presentation on the work of the Italian-born, self-taught artist, Carol Rama (1918-2015) by the collectors/curators Jennifer Bacon and Filippo Fossati. Rama’s work —with its bold forays into the underbelly of psychic and physical representations of female desire, flying in the face of convention and seeming civility—is one of the touchstones of this exhibition. As her most recent solo exhibition at The New Museum in New York emphasized, Rama was at the forefront of rethinking the “body” — transforming it into an anti-body, one that defied order, form, or anything that even seemed to have a predictable density.

Please RSVP on Eventbrite HERE.

Please join the panel via Zoom HERE.

Email poke@theholenyc.com for additional questions.

Carl D’Alvia (American) is a sculptor that lives and works in Connecticut and New York. D’Alvia’s post-pop resin, bronze and marble sculptures range from the abstract and geometric to the figurative and anthropomorphic. The work often explores dichotomies such as minimal/ornate, industrial/handmade, and comic/tragic. D’Alvia won the Rome Prize in 2012. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally including American Academy in Rome, Italy and The Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence, Rhode Island and, most recently, a solo exhibition at Hesse Flatow in New York.

Terrance James Jr. (American) is an interdisciplinary artist and photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, and has participated in art festivals and fairs such as at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in Pingyao, China; the Auckland Photo Festival, in Auckland, New Zealand; and at SCOPE Art Miami, Miami Beach, FL. He attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2017 and was a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace participant in 2018-2019. He received his BA from The Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 2011 and MFA from Parsons The New School of Design in 2013.

Carol Rama (Italian: born Olga Carolina Rama in Turin; 1918 –2015) was an Italian self-taught artist whose unconventional painting encompassed an erotic, and often sexually aggressive universe populated by characters who present themes of sexual identity with specific references to female sensuality. Her work was relatively little known until curator Lea Vergine included several pieces in a 1980 exhibition, prompting Rama to revisit her earlier watercolor style. She was awarded the Golden Lion at the 2003 Venice Biennale, and European institutions only began to mount retrospectives when she was in her nineties (she died at age 97). Posthumously, in 2017, the New Museum in New York organized a major retrospective of her work: “Carol Rama: Antibodies,” a large and illuminating tour of 60 years of Rama’s unsettling art.

Filippo Fossati (Italian) is a writer, curator, and art-dealer born in Turin, Italy — he specializes in Italian art of the 20th century. He started an art publishing company in 1983 and opened his own gallery in Torino in 1988. In 1996, he partnered with Jennifer Bacon & Jennie Schueler to produce the first show of Italian artist Carol Rama in the U.S. at Esso Gallery in New York and, subsequently, joined Bacon as co-owner. He continues to work with many contemporary international artists and consult for private and public collections.

Jennifer Bacon (American) has degrees in Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute Chicago and from Temple University. She opened Esso Gallery in 1996 and has since worked with a diverse range of contemporary international artists. She has successfully introduced European artists to American audiences and presented American artists overseas. She has been the adviser of several private and public collections. Her interest in design and applied arts informs her current collection of artist-designed jewelry.

Angela Dufresne (American) is a Brooklyn-based painter Through painting, drawing and performative works, she wields heterotopic narratives that are both non-hierarchical and perverse. She has had solo exhibits at Yossi Milo Gallery, the Kemper Museum in Kansas City (2018) and the Dorsky Musuem at SUNY New Paltz (2019).   Also, she has exhibited at the Hammer Museum (LA), P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), The National Academy of Arts and Letters (New York), Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Cleveland Institute of Art, The Aldridge Museum and various other galleries and museums throughout the US and Europe. She is currently Associate Professor of painting at RISD. Awards and honors include National Academy of Arts and Design induction 2018, a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Jerome Foundation Fellowship.