TALLULAH DIRNFELD

Gallery Sade proudly presents Precious Moments, a solo exhibition from Los Angeles based artist Tallulah Dirnfeld. This curated collection of new works delves into a girlhood memorialized. Drawing inspiration from the iconic 1970s doll company, Precious Moments seeks to carve out statues of adolescence from memory, approaching each image like a collectible porcelain doll, an item created to preserve an ideal of beauty and purity. For these keepsakes, fragility is a virtue that warrants being cherished, protected, and proudly displayed. 

Within this world, the artist explores themes of self-objectification, isolation, and the abstraction of memory. Candy-colored hues fade into sickly yellow casts, cracks start to creep across the surface, backgrounds blur into the distance and faceless figures loom close– we can sense the presence of it all, but we never make out the details. 

Precious Moments looks into memory as a mirror, searching for something to long for. Like her muses, the artist applies foundation over scars to create sanitized statues. Yet beneath their polished exteriors lie raw vulnerability, trapped and troubled. They’re scrubbed clean, perfect for consumption, never to be recalled, but they threaten with invisible fangs that haunt their porcelain smiles. The nature of girlhood is indeed precious. Build a shrine to it, and see how quickly idols can become effigies, with just a shift of the light.