Opal Ecker DeRuvo: Touch and Recognition

Childs Gallery is pleased to present Touch and Recognition, an exhibition of prints and photographs by transfeminine, transdisciplinary artist and collaborative printmaker, Opal Ecker DeRuvo. Showcasing the artist's interest in depicting intimate portraiture, Touch and Recognition examines the lineage of representational image making from the artist's earliest prints to their current photography practice.  

Spanning roughly a decade and multiple media, including drypoint, monotype, lithography, aquatint, and kallitype, DeRuvo's work connects printmaking, early photography techniques, and modern technology in a conversation surrounding the use of line and light in portraiture. DeRuvo's early works depict everyday personal scenes in small, intimate prints executed through traditional printmaking media. More recently, they have explored using historic photo-processes, large-scale image transfers, and laser imaging techniques to produce more expansive, black and white artworks. 

DeRuvo began printmaking as an apprentice to a master printmaker at the age of 14 and received their BFA in printmaking from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. For the next six years they worked as a collaborative printmaker at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT. DeRuvo went on to receive their MFA from Yale in the painting and printmaking department, where they began to investigate the origins of photography within the materials and history of printmaking.  

DeRuvo is interested in the role of images in the formation of identity. Incorporating fundamental physics of light and the intricacy of our perception, their cross-disciplinary research looks to expand trans representation beyond the ways in which they are seen, and toward new ways of seeing. Their recent practice has sought to connect the materiality of photography with the experiences of trans-embodiment.  

DeRuvo's work as a printer has long been on display at Childs Gallery through their collaboration with artist E Lombardo – DeRuvo served as the printer for Lombardo's 2013-2016 series The Caprichos, a queer-feminist re-envisioning of all eighty plates in Francisco Goya's 1799 Los Caprichos. Their own work has since been included in many group shows at Childs, with Touch and Recognition marking their first solo exhibition at the gallery. They have additionally shown at the International Print Center of New York, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, the Westmoreland Museum of Art, and completed residencies at the Atelier Circulaire in Montreal, Quebec, and the Ateliers im Alten Schlachthof, Sigmaringen, Germany. They recently published a book of etchings with Edition Schwarze Seite in Germany and completed public art commissions at Artspace New Haven and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. DeRuvo is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. 

Touch and Recognition is on view at Childs Gallery June 1 through July 29, 2023. An opening reception with the artist will be held Sunday, June 11, 2-4pm.