Los Angeles Times: Art Reviews
March 9,1996
Susan Kandel (Special to the Times)

Mischievous Revenge

It's tempting to read Didi Dunphy's new works at Dan Bernier Gallery solely in terms of critique. Her tiny embroideries mimic Modernist abstractions, such as stripe paintings a la Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin-style pastel bands and Piet Mondrian's jazzy geometries.

If Modernism emblematizes a swollen male ego, these pieces seem to want to cut it down to size. Yet to reduce the gesture to aesthetic revenge is to miss the finer points of the artist's wit, which hinges both on a sense of mischief and a taste for masochism.

One of my favorites is a rainbow-colored composition of triangles and circles that recalls Adolph Gottlieb's pictographs, a schoolgirl's sampler and a digitized landscape.

Another, a wildly exuberant checkerboard, reminded me less of any particular geometric abstraction than of artist Sherrie Levine's take on the generic type.

Dunphy's method of second-generation appropriation is complex, at once a tautology, a hyperbole and a confutation of Postmodernism's supposed anomie. The work wears its labor-intense quality on its sleeve, and its pride‹its vanity, even‹is most becoming.