Dianne Blell

The underlying current driving Dianne Blell’s work is the photographic rendering of the compelling forces of yearning, desire, and the affinities at play in the romantic pursuit of the ideal in love, myth, and religion, and their archetypal visual representation in art history. Her staged photographs are produced, designed, painted, and constructed in the studio. The background sets, figures, and details are photographed separately in large format 4x5 film and then digitally assembled into the final narrative compositions.

Blell has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, Los Angeles Institute for Contemporary Art, Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison, and Krannert Art Museum at University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, Parrish Art Museum in Southhampton, Barbican Gallery in London,  Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among many others. She has received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts/Arts Fellowship.

Courtesy of the artist