Exhibits & Events

Fleisher/Ollman is pleased to present Uuughhh, the Dufala Brothers fifth solo exhibition at the gallery, wherehumor melds with socio-cultural commentary in a vision at once profane, profound, and lighthearted.Creating sculpture and drawings that reference themes of the moment like the environmental devastationcaused by our continued thirst for metals and minerals, the histrionics of masculinist culture, and supply chaindisruption, the Brothers present a weird dystopia where objects hint at utility but ultimately fail as functionalthings. Think a grown-up version of the 1960s children’s Christmas animation Rudolph the Red-NosedReindeer’s island of misfit toys. A copper pipe sculpture and its watercolor counterpart suggest refrigerationcooling systems but loops to an endless nowhere, a meditation on the perils of fluorocarbons and ozonedegradation in our atmosphere. A weighty, rectilinear object composed of welded industrial chain might be abuilding block from a world where bricks, concrete and wood are no longer available in a heavy-metalcentered post-apocalypse. A graphite drawing at once a cartoonish, muscle bound arm and a plume ofsmoke, shares the same disposition as the chain block—the language of swaggering, titanic industry. Ametronome carved from coal is oddly inert and frozen in mid-tempo as if it has captured the moment of anenvironmental point of no return. Collage/drawing hybrids of paper cutouts that look like rubber bands piledupon drawn grounds underscore how the most mundane items exponentially accrue in our kitchen junkdrawers and eventually end up in landfills. Lungs fashioned from ductwork seemingly connected to thegallery’s HVAC system might imply a cyborg breathing apparatus required for survival in the not-so-distantfuture. Always searching for the humorous spin on serious subjects like sustainability, the Dufala Brothershave taken notions of recycling to the level of bodily byproducts, collecting belly button lint and fashioning itinto celestial bodies.

The Dufala Brothers both graduated with certificates from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Theyhave had solo exhibitions at the West Collection, Oaks, PA; Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts,Wilmington, DE; Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, Haverford, PA; Buffalo State College, Buffalo,NY; and Space 1026, Fleisher/Ollman, and Fleisher Art Memorial, all in Philadelphia. The Dufalas have beenfeatured in many group exhibitions in the Philadelphia region in venues such as the Philadelphia Museum ofArt, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Galleries at Moore College of Art, Space 1026, SloughtFoundation, Globe Dye Works, Delaware County Community College, and Fleisher/Ollman. Elsewhere, theyhave shown at the Drawing Center, New York, NY; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI;Naidre's, Brooklyn, NY; and The Corner at Whitman-Walker, Washington, DC. In 2014, the Dufala Brothers were resident artists in Philadelphia's Mantua neighborhood where they collaborated with local church andcivic leaders in organizing a funeral for a home slated for demolition (project overseen by TempleContemporary, Philadelphia). In 2009, they received the West Grand Prize. Their work is in the collections ofthe Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.