Victoria Dugger | Tough Love
September 6 – October 19, 2024
New York
Victoria Dugger, Bed Bugs Bite, 2024, Gouache, fabric, and pearls on wood panel, 60 x 72 x 2 in.
Victoria Dugger, Bed Bugs Bite, 2024, Gouache, fabric, and pearls on wood panel, 60 x 72 x 2 in.
Victoria Dugger, Friendly Fire, 2024, Gouache, fencing, and molding paste on panel, 26 x 26 x 4 in.
Victoria Dugger, Arm and A Leg, 2024, Nylon stockings, fabric, and ballet slipper, 41 x 40 x 36 in.
Victoria Dugger, Afternoon Delight, 2024, Gouache and glitter on watercolor paper, 30 x 22 in.
Victoria Dugger, Bending Over Backwards, 2024, Metal arch, nylon stockings, roses, and tiaras, 60 x 37 x 20 in.
Victoria Dugger, Bending Over Backwards, 2024, Metal arch, nylon stockings, roses, and tiaras, 60 x 37 x 20 in.
Victoria Dugger, At First Sight, 2024, Gouache and glitter on watercolor paper, 14 x 11 in.
Victoria Dugger, The Good Foot, 2024, gouache and glitter on stretched canvas, 36 x 48 x 1.38 in.
Victoria Dugger, Pick-A-Boo, 2024, Gouache and glitter on watercolor paper, 14 x 11 in.
Victoria Dugger, On Your Toes, 2024, gouache and glitter on watercolor paper, 14 x 11 in.
Victoria Dugger, Sugar Coat It, 2024, Garden chair, tutu, nylon stockings, pearls, and fabric trim, 34 x 22 x 14 in.
Victoria Dugger, Sugar Coat It, 2024, Garden chair, tutu, nylon stockings, pearls, and fabric trim, 34 x 22 x 14 in.
Victoria Dugger, Out of Water, 2024, Gouache and glitter on watercolor paper, 14 x 11 in.
Victoria Dugger, Eternally Yours, 2024, Gouache, barrettes, and hair on wood panel, 61 x 27 x 5 in.
Victoria Dugger, Nip it in the Bud, 2024, gouache and glitter on stretched canvas, 48 x 36 x 1 3/8 in.
Victoria Dugger, Pity Party, 2024, Gouache, fabric, and glitter vinyl on wood panel, 60 x 72 x 2 in.
Victoria Dugger, Pity Party, 2024, Gouache, fabric, and glitter vinyl on wood panel, 60 x 72 x 2 in.
Victoria Dugger, Sweet Dreams, 2024, Gouache, fencing, and molding paste on panel, 26 x 26 x 4 in.
Victoria Dugger, Soften the Blow, 2024, Garden chair, tutu, nylon stockings, pearls, and fabric, 34 x 22 x 14 in.
Victoria Dugger, Soften the Blow, 2024, Garden chair, tutu, nylon stockings, pearls, and fabric, 34 x 22 x 14 in.
Victoria Dugger, No Harm, No Fowl, 2024, Ballet slipper, hair, fencing, and gouche, 31 x 12 x 12 in.
Victoria Dugger | Tough Love
September 6 – October 19, 2024
Sargent’s Daughters is pleased to present Tough Love, a solo exhibition of new paintings, sculptures, and mixed media works by Athens, GA-based artist Victoria Dugger (b. 1991, Columbus, GA). In her second exhibition with the gallery, Dugger examines her experiences of Black girlhood and disability through the lens of the Southern Gothic. With a maximalist palette and multimedia adornments of glitter and bows, Dugger addresses abjection and body horror with a wry sense of humor and an art historical sensibility.
The exhibition’s title, Tough Love, is an oxymoron which highlights the difficulties of self love and acceptance, as well as the challenges of intimate or familial closeness. While Dugger’s imagery is often exaggerated and fantastical, the content of the work is largely autobiographical and grounded in her embodied experience.
A lifelong resident of Georgia, Dugger draws on the iconography of the South, including old-growth trees, white-washed houses, gingham and lace, to build out her artistic world. In this body of work, Dugger’s focus is on the domestic, which served as a safe space where she felt able to exist without societal judgment. Through her depictions of gardens, beds, and sitting rooms, the artist constructs an alternative world where the grotesque is celebrated and the usual rules and hierarchies do not apply.
All of the works in the show evince a commitment to materiality, overflowing with fabric, hair, glitter, and lace. Soft sculptures and decorative objects mix together stylized limbs and guts in tableaux that combine the threat of body horror with the joy of excessive ornamentation. In her paintings, art-historical compositions are referenced, covered in bows, and rendered strange and absurd. The centerpiece of the exhibition, a life-size garden arch entitled “Bending Over Backwards,” serves as the gateway to another world, made of twisted legs and ribbon rosettes.
In this way, Tough Love is a bold expansion of Dugger’s multimedia aesthetic world, suffused with visceral discomfort and absurdist delights.
Victoria Dugger is a visual artist who lives and works in Athens, Georgia. Dugger received her MFA in Studio & Design at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia in 2022. She was recently an Artist in Residence at the Lyndon House Arts Center (Athens, GA). Dugger was named the winner of the 2023 Southern Prize for Visual Arts and 2023 Southern Prize for Visual Arts Georgia Fellowship. Dugger recently completed the MacDowell Artist Residency (Peterborough, NH) and was named a finalist for the 2024 Hudgens Prize (Duluth, GA).
She had her debut solo exhibition, Out of Body, at Sargent’s Daughters which was reviewed by ARTnews and Hyperallergic. Recent solo exhibitions include Lyndon House Arts Center (Athens, GA), and Container Gallery, Columbus State University (Columbus, GA). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Fierman Gallery (New York, NY), The Minnesota Museum of American Art (St. Paul, MN), Ohr O’Keefe Museum of Art (Biloxi, MS), VSOP Projects (Greenpoint, NY), Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta, GA), Museum of Sex (New York, NY), Lamar Dodd School of Art (Athens, GA), and Swan Coach House Gallery (Atlanta, GA), among others. Dugger’s work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artnet News, Artnews, Art Observed, Whitehot Magazine, Arts Atlanta, The New York Times, Burnaway, Frieze, Vogue, and she was included in New American Paintings 159. She is represented by Sargent’s Daughters.
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