Priska C. Juschka Fine Art is pleased to present Twenty Paces, Debra Hampton’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. With reference to the practice of pistol dueling, and the distance at which craftsmen once tested the impregnability of bodily armor, Twenty Paces, reflects on identity formation—the protective guard and the multiple layers of gender-based persona, shaped by social perception amid a disparaging world of distress, desire and consumption.

Hampton guides us into a universe, inhabited by seemingly fragmentized, luxurious creatures, using magazine cut-outs to collage complexly woven female figures created equally by mechanical and organic elements such as car parts, weapons, jewelry and human anatomy over an initially automatic abstract ink drawing, an amalgam of drips and splashes, to develop intricate compositions, miraculously assembling in front of the viewer. Introducing, life-size, hollow suits of armor, constructed of post-consumer waste, recycled plastic, Hampton explores further the discourse between a charged sexualized identity and its mechanism of defense.

Hampton’s striking heroines, part goddess, part warrior, adorned with corsets and armor, hover conceptually between the historic and the utopian, captured in an ambiguous moment of creation and obliteration, ultimately portraying the fragile equilibrium of a world threatened by ecological catastrophe and economical excess at the brink of disaster.

Debra Hampton was born in Fullerton, CA and currently lives and works in New York, NY. Her work has been the subject of several solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, including shows at the National Academy Museum & School of Fine Arts in New York, NY; and the Queens Museum of Art in Queens, NY. Her work belongs to several collections including the Permanent Drawing Collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY; and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in Los Angeles, CA.