Kim Dingle creates painting and sculptures that provocatively comment on gender, identity, and race. Often featuring her “Priss Girls”—two misbehaving little girls, Dingle subverts the tropes of female childhood and myths of nationhood and history. Her characters lash out and act violently, often in the grips of some inexplicable force against each other, and perhaps against nature as well. With muted beiges, browns, and sepias, Dingle creates ethereal scenes of frolic and frenzy that reference historical events and cultural norms. Most recently, she created a painting that referenced the 2016 election. Painted on a nursery wallpaper sprinkled with images of innocent lambs and hearts, she depicted the portraits of the 350 psychiatrists and mental health professionals who deemed Trump unfit to serve in office and warned the public about it before the 2016 election. Throughout her decades long practice, Dingle has employed deft humor and painterly skill to effectively communicate her message.
Born in 1951 in Pomona, California, Kim Dingle lives and works in Los Angeles. Dingle graduated from California State University Los Angeles with a BFA and two years later earned a MFA from Claremont Graduate School. She earned a Master of Fine Arts (1990) Claremont Graduate School.
Recently, her work was included in Women Painting Women at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2022). Dingle was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, and her work appeared in the group exhibition Sunshine and Noir: Art in L. A., 1960-1997, at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (1997), which traveled to major institutions in Europe and the United States. Early solo exhibitions of her work were presented at institutions including California State University, Los Angeles (1991); Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (1995-96); and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (1996).
Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Orange County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art.
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Selected Solo and Two Person Exhibitions
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Selected Group Exhibitions
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Bibliography
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Public Collections