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Gallery Wendi Norris

February 5 - March 2, 2009

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161 Jessie Street San Francisco, CA 94105
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72 Virgins to Die For Beauty Queens, 2008 oil on canvas 36 x 36 in.
Gallery Reception: February 05, 2009, 6:00 to 9:00 pm Frey Norris Gallery is pleased to present our debut solo exhibition, 72 Virgins to Die For, for San Francisco Bay Area artist, Joshua Hagler. The eponymous 72 virgins will populate a series of 15 paintings and receive varied treatment through installations in a variety of materials, including textiles, illumination and dead polychromatic butterflies. The dialogue between the three dimensional and two dimensional works engage with fetishes around purity, ritual cleansing and the cult of the virgin as it has manifested in various cultures throughout history and into the present. This idea of purity is examined in the context of political power, acting as a proxy for capricious divine providence, the Wrathful Hand of God; Hagler tackles these immensely charged and controversial themes with dexterity and empathy, having come himself from a community of faith and experienced a difficult ideological separation from this group.