Kelli Vance b. 1983 - Working from staged photographs, Kelli Vance’s paintings borderline on cinematic. Vance’s luxurious and masterly paintings have often presented women in states of anomie or conflict—personal, social, physical. This is the feminine in a quietly hostile environment of her own making, or trapped in a set of expectations that she either works with, to maintain equilibrium, or against, with mixed results—sometimes defeated, sometimes defiant. Vance’s women are in a kind of unseen, unstoppable trouble, or they are recalling it, or are bracing for it. They are often in their final minutes of innocence before the sinister shadow overtakes the narrative.
As viewers, we shift back and forth between states of admiration of the subjects’ elegance and seductiveness—these women are in control, at the ready, waiting for the arrival of something sublime, or pedestrian, or terrifying—and apprehension concerning their imminent fates. Is the danger roiling up from within, or descending from without? This is gorgeous and unsettling work.
Kelli Vance graduated from the University of Houston with her MFA in 2008. Her work was recently acquired by Houston Airports in 2021 and is in the permanent collection of the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art. Roswell, New Mexico. In 2017, Vance received an Individual Artist Grant from Houston Arts Alliance and the City of Houston. She was included in the 2009 Texas Biennial and in 2014 was a finalist for the Hunting Art Prize. Vance’s work has shown across Texas as well as in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New Mexico.
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance | We Don't Sleep
May 21 - June 25, 2022
Kelli Vance: Performance Anxiety
January 4 - February 8, 2020
Kelli Vance: Performance Anxiety
January 4 - February 8, 2020
Kelli Vance: Performance Anxiety
January 4 - February 8, 2020
Kelli Vance: Performance Anxiety
January 4 - February 8, 2020
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: Sappers and Miners
May 13 – June 17, 2017
Kelli Vance: We Don’t Sleep at Cris Worley Fine Arts, May 11 – June 15, 2024
Kelli Vance’s exhibition Don’t Abandon Me offered a captivating and unsettling exploration of female figures in intimate settings. Vance’s deceptively realistic and wash-like painting style captures close-up, anonymized figures with a striking lack of detail, even in elements like their hair. The highlights in their jewelry — pearls and other baubles — catch the eye, revealing slight peaks that lift from the painting’s surface.
The figures, often topless but usually adorned with lace and jewels, tumble over one another in boudoirs and bathrooms. These women obsess over one another in scenes imbued with a sense of quiet tension and underlying anxiety.
Vance’s paintings, described in the press release as taking “Lynchian dread a step further,” evoke the eerie atmospheres of films like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. The women’s faces are obscured, reflecting a sense of deprivation of self, while their circumstances are rendered with sharp focus. The narratives within these paintings are rich with decadent detail and photographic refinement, yet the works vibrate with an ineffable anxiety.
The exhibition oscillates between admiration for the subjects’ elegance and seductiveness and a deep apprehension about their fates. Vance’s women appear in control and poised, waiting for something sublime, pedestrian, or terrifying to arrive. This tension between beauty and dread creates a powerful and layered viewing experience.
Don’t Abandon Me was a masterful display of Vance’s ability to merge high glamor with a pervasive sense of unease. The result is a series of paintings that are as gorgeous as they are unsettling, inviting viewers to navigate the fine line between admiration and apprehension.
