Childs Gallery
Opal Ecker DeRuvo: Touch and Recognition
Opal Ecker DeRuvo: Touch and Recognition
Opal Ecker DeRuvo
Childs Gallery is pleased to present Touch and Recognition, an exhibition of prints and photographs by transfeminine, transdisciplinary artist and collaborative printmaker, Opal Ecker DeRuvo. Showcasing the artist’s interest in depicting intimate portraiture, Touch and Recognition examines the lineage of representational image making from the artist’s earliest prints to their current photography practice.
Spanning roughly a decade and multiple media, including drypoint, monotype, lithography, aquatint, and kallitype, DeRuvo’s work connects printmaking, early photography techniques, and modern technology in a conservation surrounding the use of line and light in portraiture. DeRuvo’s early works depict everyday personal scenes in small, intimate prints executed through traditional printmaking media. More recently, they have explored using historic photo-processes, large-scale image transfers, and laser imaging techniques to produce more expansive, black and white artworks.
Image Credit:
Opal Ecker DeRuvo, Fractions, 2021
DeRuvo began printmaking as an apprentice to a master printmaker at the age of 14 and received their BFA in printmaking from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. For the next six years they worked as a collaborative printmaker at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT. DeRuvo went on to receive their MFA from Yale in the painting and printmaking department, where they began to investigate the origins of photography within the materials and history of printmaking.
DeRuvo is interested in the role of images in the formation of identity. Incorporating fundamental physics of light and the intricacy of our perception, their cross-disciplinary research looks to expand trans representation beyond the ways in which they are seen, and toward new ways of seeing. Their recent practice has sought to connect the materiality of photography with the experiences of trans-embodiment.