In Still Life with Fruits and a Young Woman by 17th-century French painter Louise Moillon, a young woman stands before a table laden with ripe fruit, gazing directly at the viewer as she cuts open an orange held close to her chest, the orange halves mimicking her breasts. To Kelli Vance the gaze seemed defiant, perfectly capturing the dichotomy of seduction and repulsion. This duality—an invitation to admire coupled with the implied threat of the knife—became a catalyst for her latest body of work, The Velvet Trap.
Inspired by Moillon’s ambiguous interplay of allure and unease, Vance began to explore the intersections of women, food, and tension. Each chosen object carries layers of symbolism: pears recalling the feminine form celebrated in Renaissance art; cheese and fruits a nod to memento mori; cherry pie evoking sexual metaphor and contradiction through its sweet yet tart nature. Luxurious foods, textiles, and accessories invite indulgence, yet the women who wield them disrupt any straightforward pleasure, imbuing each scene with ambiguity and latent threat. In Vance’s painting, It Was Like Being in Church, a hand poised to slice a cake transforms into something sinister when paired with a Medusa bracelet and eerie chiaroscuro. The myth of Medusa—reimagined in contemporary discourse as a reclamation of female power—becomes a central motif, reframing acts of looking and desire. The cake itself carries narrative weight, recalling Agatha Christie’s A Pocket Full of Rye, where a man meets his end through poisoned pastry. Through these carefully layered references, Vance crafts images that embody the femme fatale: alluring, dangerous, and ultimately defiant.
Positioning the viewer as both participant and witness, these works bring them to the precipice of an implied crime scene. The women command authority and agency, while the compositions unravel into explorations of sexuality, identity, and control. Each tableau is a mysterious mise-en-scène, where beauty and menace entwine, and where every gesture asks more questions than it answers.
Kelli Vance graduated from the University of Houston with her MFA in Studio Art in 2008. Her work was recently acquired by Houston Airports, city of Houston, and is in the permanent collection of the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, New Mexico. Vance received an Individual Artist Grant from Houston Arts Alliance and the City of Houston and was included in the 2009 Texas Biennial. She was a finalist for the Hunting Art Prize and was a Roswell Artist-in-Residence in Roswell, New Mexico. Solo exhibitions include Cris Worley Gallery, Dallas in 2024, 2020 and 2017; Long Story Short in Paris and New York in 2023; Long Story Short Los Angeles in 2022; McClain Gallery, Houston in 2015, the Texas Biennial Anniversary Show at Big Medium, Austin in 2013 and at Samuel Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles in 2011.
Kelli Vance’s exhibition will take place in DIMIN's Living Room and will run concurrently with Whit Harris’ I’m Just Trying to Find a Little Joy Here in the main gallery. The Living Room is the street facing exhibition space at DIMIN at 406 Broadway, Fl. 2, New York, NY, 10013.
Please send all inquires to gallery@dimin.nyc.