Kim Dingle: I Will Be Your Server (The Lost Supper Paintings)

at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects (through April 13)
Reviewed by Lita Barrie

Priss has captivated the artworld with her mischievous antics since she first appeared in Kim Dingle’s artwork thirty years ago, dressed in her Sunday Best and ready for battle. Dingle’s imaginary character split and replicated, like a Tribble on StarTrek, into a bi-racial pair, Fatty and Fudge, and then into a wild pack, the “Priss Girls.” These ornery tots run amok: causing mayhem, having fights, raging temper tantrums, and destroying things. Priss and her gang of rambunctious pre-pubescent girls inhabit a world with no adults, no men, and no rules. Like a female counterpart to Peter Pan, Priss has no desire to grow up. But unlike Peter and the Lost Boys who yearned for a mother figure, Priss and her anarchic cohorts have no desire for adult supervision because they enjoy being very bad. Although the Priss Girls are dressed like proper little ladies in white crinoline dresses, frilly socks, and Mary Jane shoes, their improper behavior is most unlady-like — and they most definitely do not care. Their revolt against restrictive notions of acceptable female behavior continues to capture the feminist fervor for “girls who just want to have fun” as much today as it did in the 1990’s.

I Know I Left it in There Somewhere, 2007