It Girls

Katie Lyle

May 1 to 9, 2009

It Girls is a focused study of the female figure, an unsettling combination of the individual and the stereotype. Lyle’s figures both indulge and make strange the assumptions and narratives they incite.

The artworks are not objective representations of specific people, but rather a way of seeing that combines subjectivity, role playing, chance and imperfections. These deliberately feminine portraits are detailed studies of makeup, hairstyles, pose, clothing and gaze.

Lyle’s work is built up of disjointed figures and sources that she smooths together in order to construct composite portraits. The paint blurs and botches the real with images of celebrity, Internet, film and art history.

Katie Lyle is from Kingston, Ontario and received her BFA from Concordia University in 2005. This exhibition is the result of two years of study in the MFA program at the University of Victoria.