Self and Sex Series: What A Young Woman Ought To Know
 Galleri Urbane proudly announces the opening of Forrest Solis’s Self and Sex Series: What A Young Woman Ought To Know, a solo exhibition on view from February 18th-March 24th.  Solis received her B.F.A. in 2001 from the Kansas City Art Institute and an M.F.A. in 2003 from Indiana University.  In her work, Solis is greatly influenced by psychoanalytic art theory and cites Freud, Jung, Lacan, and Bakhtin as part of her source material and inspiration. Currently, Solis’s paintings contain a fragmented canvas, juxtaposing lessons from early 20th century storybooks next to realistically rendered images of adult women performing daily tasks.  The storybook lessons often brink on the absurd, giving advice such as that tight clothing creates kidney difficulty.  However, these teachings are distinctly reminiscent of instructions given to children everywhere on why they should or shouldn’t do certain things, giving the sense of the uncanny to the observer.
   Originally, Solis only painted self-portraits to accompany the storybook images, allowing her to explore how she personally internalized such messages in her psyche and adult life.  In the current series, Solis has begun using a dark-haired model for these scenes saying that she chose the slender woman with short cropped hair for her adolescent and almost boyish appearance.  Perhaps the change in model allows Solis to show the universal way in which instruction given to little girls about their bodies, actions, and sex, even when absurd, goes on to affect the adult mind.
   Forrest Solis has received many awards and honors throughout her career including the prestigious Dedalus Foundation Master of Fine Arts Fellowship from Indiana University.  From 2003-2006, Solis taught as an Assistant Professor of Art at DePauw University and is currently an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University in Tempe.  Her paintings exhibit both domestically and internationally including solo exhibitions at Glasgow Gallery, Glasgow, MT; ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL; The Columbia Club, Indianapolis, IN; Bodner Art Gallery, Indianapolis, IN; and Galleri Urbane, Dallas, TX.  Solis’s work has been published in American Art Collectors Magazine, Direct Art, Studio Visit, and Visual Overture Magazine among others.
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