JULIANNA DAIL: WHEN DOROTHY MET ALICE / March 30-April 29, 2007

For its 32nd exhibition, Realform Project Space is proud to announce “When Dorothy Met Alice” by JULIANNA DAIL, an installation which utilizes a commonplace scenario—the crime scene—to relate the metaphorical tangent of two literary and mythological figures, the protagonists of Frank L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Dail identifies them as representing alternate aspects of then female psyche in turns aggressive and self-deprecating. Dail’s sculptures and installations originate from books and her memory of the story. As with most memories gaps and false impressions occur. Just like a prop used in theater there is fakery involved, rawness upon close inspection, a reference to the real. She twists the identifiable around questions about politics and social policies so that the memory becomes allegorical. In each of the sources for her current installation, the protagonist is thrust into a world of perverse challenges, presenting readers with not only an empathetic wanderer amidst bizarre fantasies, but a model of “common sense” whose innocent wisdom is the perfect perspective to gainsay which lessons are most worthwhile. Dail mines the detritus of cultural memory, leaving the answers to us. In a place where both Dorothy and Alice can co-exist, the possibilities for adventure, and its result in self-knowledge, are endless.