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Pleasures of the Dance

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Jesse Mockrin’s exhibition “Pleasures of Dance” opens tonight at New York’s Nathalie Karg Gallery; her work is on display through December 18. Mockrin’s paintings borrow liberally, and often directly, from the late Baroque period; her work is people with androgynes in rococo dress. “I think one of the things that drew me to Rococo is the fluidity of gender,” Mockrin told T Magazine earlier this year. “It’s that slippage.”

In an essay accompanying the exhibition, Edward Sterrett writes, “No one has asked with such insistent perspicacity why it is that in the painting of the high rococo, such a convoluted profusion of voluminous taffeta, of patterned damask, of coy, porcelanite thighs, is punctuated with a seemingly endless series of little side tables, shelves, and ottomans, jabbing awkwardly into the geometry of the room, tilting it outward so that the stray ribbon or rose that inevitably spill off their edges, appear as though tumbling off the pages of an open book.”

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English Tea, 2016, oil on linen, 37″ x 25″

 

The Suitor’s Visit, 2016, oil on linen, 37″ x 25″

Before the Ball, 2016, oil on linen, 37″ x 25″

The Visit Received, 2016, oil on linen, 37″ x 25″

The Picnic, 2016, oil on linen, 37″ x 25″