Just My Type

The images and essays in this book explore the nuances of Angela Dufresne's conceptual as well as material approaches to portraiture.What's in a face? In Angela Dufresne's hands, a face is sometimes stretched to its absolute limits, becoming landscape, becoming monstrous, becoming pure color. Just My Type is a study in the topology of the face, as it transforms and morphs, never standing still long enough to zero in on a fixed "type." The typologies in her paintings are hybrid machines; they threaten "categories" that identify us by normative names or force us into vulnerable positions. Dufresne wields heterotopic narratives that are nonhierarchical and perverse and poignantly articulate, porous ways of being in a world fraught by fear, power, and possession. Just My Type features intimate and rarely exhibited portraits of the artist's friends, family, and community, as well as phantasmagoric beings that challenge our understanding of what makes a type.