a practice in lingering – Victoria Brill

Exhibition Dates: November 10 – 21

Reception: November 13, 6p – 8p

Open Hours by appointment

‘a practice in lingering’ invites us to stay a while. In this intimate, contemplative exhibition, Dallas-based artist Victoria Brill presents new paintings and works on paper alongside a sculptural installation of water, stone, and candlelight.

Drawing on Byung-chul Han’s ‘The Scent of Time,’ which argues for lingering in an age when time has lost its duration, the exhibition is a reminder to be still: to pause and melt into a moment, whether present, remembered, or dreamed.

Lingering thoughts, lingering dreams, lingering touch. The works are small moments of this kind, slivers of the artist’s inner dialogue that have occupied her periphery in recent months. As always in her work, the figure takes her own form, floating in a placeless space, communing with more of herself. Some figures hold their full color while others thin to contour and underpainting, still forming or already going. To linger, here, is also to let go.

Within the space, a raised installation of shallow, water-filled pools of white pebbles and slowly burning candles draws from the votive candle fonts of spiritual spaces and the tide pools of her Pacific Northwest childhood. Visitors are invited to select a candle at the entrance, light it, and add it to the installation, leaving their own presence to linger among the small lights of others who have also been there.

Victoria Brill (b. 1996, Oregon) is a Dallas-based artist whose work turns the lens of figurative painting inward, using self-portraiture to explore identity as an evolving, layered experience. Working across oil painting, works on paper, and mixed media, her figures are often translucent and caught in mid-emergence, rendered in soft washes and visible underpaintings that highlight emotional states in flux.

Her figures frequently appear doubled or mirrored, embodying moments of reflection, grief, and renewal. These works are set against pristine, unpainted canvas or paper, existing in a liminal space between the material and the imagined. Recent pieces draw on childhood memories of the Pacific Northwest coastline, where sea stacks and tide pools—shaped by their environment but never quite tethered—serve as metaphors for the body’s resilience and solitude. Like these coastal forms, Brill’s figures are suspended in a constant process of becoming, negotiating between past and future selves.

Brill holds a BA in Visual and Performing Arts with a Minor in Art History from the University of Texas at Dallas (2018). She was awarded the Clare Hart DeGolyer Memorial Fund by the Dallas Museum of Art in 2018 and is a Cohort IV artist alum of The Cedars Union residency (2023-2025). Her work has been exhibited widely in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including at the Texas Vignette Art Fair (2022, 2023, 2024). Most recently she has been included in presentations outside of the state, including 40 under 40 (2025) curated by Jennie Goldstein, Curator of the Collection at The Whitney, and the Cimarron National Works on Paper survey (2025) at the Oklahoma State University Art Museum. She is currently the Director of Erin Cluley Gallery and serves on the board of Texas Vignette as Vice President and Programming Chair.

Instagram: @victoriajbrill