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GALERIE XII - Patty Carroll - Anonymous Woman


  • Galerie XII 2525 Michigan Avenue, Suit B2 Santa Monica, CA 90404 (map)

GALERIE XII is pleased to welcome  American woman photographer,  Patty Carroll’s first solo show in Los  Angeles. 

Without identities, these “Anonymous  Women” are visual metaphors. Patty  Carroll addresses women and their  complicated relationships with  domesticity. By camouflaging the  figure in drapery and/or domestic  objects, Carroll creates a dark and  humorous game of hide-and-seek between her viewers and the  Anonymous Woman. 

She has called these pictures "un portraits" because they are not real portraits. While people have contended that her photographs of women in various phases of anonymity could be interpreted as everything from commentaries on women’s fight for identity to digs at commercialism, Carroll is happy for  viewers to read what they want into  her work. 

About Patty Carroll 

Patty Carroll has been known for her  use of highly intense, saturated color  photographs since the 1970’s. After  teaching photography for many  years, she delights viewers with her  playful critique of home and excess in  “Anonymous Women” a 4-part series  of studio installations made for the  camera, addressing women and their  complicated relationships with  domesticity. The photographs are  exhibited in large scale and previous  iterations were published as a  monograph, Anonymous Women, in  2017 with Daylight Books. The recent  chapter of the ongoing series is a  new monograph Domestic Demise,  published in 2020 by Aint-Bad Books.  The series has been exhibited  internationally, has won multiple  awards, and acknowledged as one  of Photolucida’s “Top 50” in 2104 and  

in 2017, and has been featured in  prestigious blogs and international  magazines such as the Huffington  Post, the BJP in Britain, and NYT  LensBlog, Washington Post Insight,  Vanity Fair, Italia and many others.  

G ra n ts / Pr i zes i n c l u d e A r t i st  Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council, 2003,  and 2020, Grand Prize winner in  “Herstory” with See Me, 2019, and  Grand Prize Winner of Don’t Take  Pictures, 2020. 

Selected one-person museum  exhibits include: Museum of  C o n te m p o ra r y P h oto g ra p hy,  Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago,  Kemper Museum of Contemporary  Art, Kansas City, Royal Photographic  Society, Bath, England, The State of  Illinois Gallery and Museum, Blue Star  Art Space, San Antonio, TX, White  Box Museum, Beijing, China, Northern  Illinois University Art Museum,  Chicago Cultural Center, The  Museum of Photographic Arts,  Tampa, FL, The Albrecht-Kemper  Museum, St. Joe, MO, The Baldwin  Photographic Gallery at MTSU in  Murphreesboro, TN, and the  Zheijhang Museum of Art, Hangzhou,  China. Artist Residences include:  Akiyoshidai Arts Village, Japan,  Anderson Ranch, Colorado, Texas  A&M University, Columbia College,  Chicago, and at Studios Inc. in  Kansas City, MO.  

Work included in many public and  private collections, including: The Art  Institute of Chicago, MOMA, MOCP,  MCA, The Sandor Photography  Collection, The Kansas Cit y  Collection, The Nelson Atkins Museum  of Art, The Kemper Museum of  Contemporary Art and the  Ruttenberg Foundation among  others.