Kim Dingle - Series of Works

Series of Works

Her first solo exhibition, “Portraits from the Dingle Library” combined images of her mother, Cram, with portraits of iconic figures like George Washington, Queen Elizabeth and George Foreman. Her inspiration for these works began with her mother’s belief that she is related to both George Washington and Queen Elizabeth.

Shortly after the Cram portrait series, Kim Dingle began a critique of girlhood innocence with a character based on Dingle’s niece, Wadow, who exhibited surprising violent bursts as a result of prenatal brain damage Wadow was a major source of inspiration for the new girl characters.

Dingle often inserted this Wadow and her cohorts, the Wild Girls, into celebrated historic scenes. These images reclaim famous American myths like George Washington and the cherry tree for her fleshy heroines and question the semiotics of patriotism. For example, in Untitled (Girls with the dresspole), 1998 Dingle’s leading ladies raise a dresspole in a pose reminiscent of the famous photograph of soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima.

The "wild girl" works led to another series of work for Dingle, this time employing the characters Fatty and Fudge. Fatty, a white girl and Fudge, a black girl, partner up to enact their diabolic whims. Their exploits and frustrations often turn on themselves, and Fatty and Fudge inevitable resort to attacking each other. In the “Never in School” series, Dingle introduced anonymous school mates, whom Fatty and Fudge blissfully dominate in the absence of adults or boys.

Fatty and Fudge became 3d in 1997 and were renamed Priss The Prisses took the form of stodgy, fierce, little tykes made out of porcelein and sporting extra course steel wool hair, thick prescription glasses and crunchy white dressess with patent leather maryjane shoes. Dingle hired a three year old girl to help design the Priss Installations which included grafittied wallpapered nursury rooms with wooden cribs being broken down and used to make spears and darts which were then used on real Target paintings by Dingle. These installations were first shown at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles, Jack Tilton in New York and toured European museums with Sunshine Noir: the Art of Los Angeles. Priss now resides in the permanent collction at MOCA Los Angeles.

"Priss" later took the form of a 1963 MG midget car and was the poster child for the 2000 Whitney Biennial.