Wall text for the solo exhibition "Breath Holes" at the SFAC gallery

Desiree Holman likes to play with dolls.   In this, she is not without art historical precedent.   Laurie Simmons and Cindy Sherman are perhaps the most relevant, recent examples.   In past works, Holman has used dolls as surrogates, through which she explores what she calls "the sloppy stuff of human emotion."   This might also be described as desire and the negotiation between self and other.   If Simmons and Sherman are engaged in a feminist critique of the image and the construction of identity, Holman makes it personal.   In Breath Holes, Holman draws on her own autobiography, to explore the complex psychosocial terrain of romantic relationships.   By inhabiting the skin of the "other" Holman doesn't critique the male gaze as much as she inhabits it.   This is both a violent and an empathetic gesture, but one in keeping with the grotesque tradition in which beauty and ugliness, the animate and the inanimate, tragedy and comedy co-exist.   Holman's visual narratives draw us into and shed light on the messy, humorous and contradictory world of human emotion or what the 19 th century writer Jean Paul called, "soul dizziness."

Mary Ceruti