Main Projects is pleased to present Close Company, an exhibition of paintings from Drea Cofield’s ongoing Selfie Project, on view October 8 through November 11 in The Library.
Begun in 2012, the Selfie Project starts from a simple shift in the traditional dynamics of portraiture: Cofield paints images that her subjects have already made of themselves. Working from selfies submitted by friends, strangers, and other participants, she translates these self-authored images into intimate oil paintings on shellac-primed cardboard. The pose, crop, setting, and degree of exposure originate with the subject, while Cofield’s process slows the fleeting digital image into something physical, singular, and sustained.
For Close Company, Main Projects invited members of the Richmond community to submit selfies directly to Cofield, and many of the resulting paintings depict people from the city’s overlapping artistic and social circles. That local dimension gives the exhibition an unusual intimacy: the subjects may be encountered first as paintings and later as friends, acquaintances, or familiar faces. Several works are also presented with handmade ceramic frames and wall supports created by Cofield during a residency in Spain, pushing the paintings further from the weightless images from which they began.
Across the exhibition, Cofield considers looking, agency, self-representation, and the complicated space between intimacy and display. What begins as a quick, often private image becomes through painting something slower and more deliberate, asking not only how we choose to be seen, but how looking changes when an image is given time, touch, and physical presence.
