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Artwork Description

Night Bloom is part of the body of work titled Bedroom Paintings created in 2023/24 which explores ideas of sleeplessness and dreaming through the framework of gender, history, painting and the bedroom. In Night Bloom Fauerso references and repositions the iconic portrait of Madame Devaucay by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Painted in 1807, Ingre’s portrait depicts Antonia Duvauçey of Nittis, the lover of Charles-Jean-Marie Alquier, then ambassador to the Holy See. The portrait was praised for portraying both the calm and elusive charms of Madame Devaucay and was describes as, “not a portrait that gives pleasure..[but]...a portrait that gives rise to dreams”. In Fauerso’s painting Madame Devaucay’s disembodied head is surrounded by night blooming plants including the Queen of the Night Cactus and the Tuberose. Conjuring the stillness of the night, the painting uses the metaphor of the ‘night bloom’ to illuminate the unexplored interior life of Madame Devaucay and the many enigmatic ‘companion portraits’ of powerful men throughout history. Joey Fauerso is an artist and 2022 Guggenheim Fellow in the Fine Arts and the recipient of the 2023 Presidential Seminar Award from Texas State University. Her work consists mostly of painting, video, installation and performance addressing issues of gender, humor and family. Recently her work has been exhibited at the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas, the Galveston Art Center, Western Exhibitions Gallery, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, MASS MoCA, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Drawing Center in New York. Fauerso has been the recipient of multiple grants and residencies, including a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2020 Joan Mitchell Grant for Painters and Sculptors, a 2021 Sustainable Arts Foundation grant, the RAIR artist in residence grant, Yaddo, MacDowell, and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Fauerso’s work is part of the permanent collection of multiple museums and institutions including the Blanton Museum of Art, Ruby City Museum, and The McNay Museum of Art. Fauerso is a Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University, and lives with her family in San Antonio, Texas.