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A Look at Kim Dingle

by Angel Chen

The Cake Series

2680 Kim Light/LightBox

2680 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034

October 26, 2007 - December 8, 2007

The ever-amazing Kim Dingle, at the always fabulous Kim Light Gallery, presents us with girls in white dresses, cuffed bobby socks, perfect banana curls, and black patent leather Mary Janes, the stuff of little girl dreams of course. Only this time, her once wild girls have now gone ecstatic over cake. Little girls and food, frills and ruffled panties, doilies and…melting, moist, dripping, gooey, chocolate on pristine white party dresses, wild frosting swirls seething with the voracious appetites of childhood wants.

With a swish of the paint, creamy white sugary fantasy darlings and coquettes dance on. Like scenes from movie stills, the paintings frame moments of almost comic cultural puns, “Let them eat cake!” “I’ll have my cake and eat yours too!” “Take the cake and run!” Diving into cakes, falling out of cakes, scampering off with cakes, disappearing tipping party hats… until finally, in the last room, head hung down, guilty hands face and body smeared with melted chocolate all over herself and her dress, in a misty cloud of white paint halo. The last aftermath diptych when the party is over, the school chairs are empty; the cakes remain uneaten, but where have the girls gone? A cliffhanger.

Dingle’s engagement with the materiality of paint induces our engagement with the childhood fantasy of birthday cake. As we’ve seen Dingle’s girls in the past reflect issues of adolescence, racism, and feminism, these new paintings embody joy and delight in a poetically autobiographical way. Fine dining, hospitality, and the labor of owning a (vegetarian) restaurant, Fatty’s (named after her dog) in Eagle Rock (the spot which used to be part of her studio), have cured the girls of their violent streak, the girls have stopped fighting, and of course now they are eating instead, typical. Visiting Dingle in the outdoor back porch of her restaurant we sit by her new fire pit and discuss painting, restauranteuring, and how the girls have learned to behave. “No time to clobber each other with hammers if you have guests waiting,” she states humorously.

Dessert, in art as in life, follows The Last Supper, her April, 2007 show at Sperone Westwater in New York. And, “now that dessert has been served, I’m taking a break.” Hopefully a break from the restaurant, means back to painting, we’re hungry for more. Dining with Kim Dingle through her painting, we are now permanently and karmically entwined.

- Angel Chen

(*Images, from top to bottom: Kim Dingle, The Cake Series, October 26 - December 8, 2007, Kim Light / Lightbox, Untitled (Plastered), 2007, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in, Courtesy of Kim Light / Lightbox. Kim Dingle, The Cake Series, October 26 - December 8, 2007, Kim Light / Lightbox, Untitled (Going In), 2007, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in, Courtesy of Kim Light / Lightbox.Kim Dingle, The Cake Series, October 26 - December 8, 2007, Kim Light / Lightbox, Untitled (Dinner Setting with Cotton Candy), 2007, oil on canvas, diptych 71 1/2 x 123 in, individual 71 1/2 x 60 in, Courtesy of Kim Light / Lightbox. Kim Dingle, The Cake Series, October 26 - December 8, 2007, Kim Light / Lightbox, Untitled (One Candle), 2007, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in, Courtesy of Kim Light / Lightbox.)

Posted by Angel Chen on 11/25/07