judy’s dorothy’s

Exhibition Dates:
September 12 - October 31, 2025

Opening Reception in Project Space:
Friday, September 12, 2025, 5:00-9:00pm

Rivalry Projects is thrilled to present Judy’s Dorothy’s, an exhibition of new works on paper by Buffalo-based artist Julia Dzwonkoski. 

What do all of the works in the collection of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum have in common? In Dzwonkoski’s latest series of drawings, the answer is shoes, specifically Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. The signature shoes, and vibrant blue socks, appear in black and white studies of recognizable works in the museum’s collection. Along with slight alterations to the compositions, the original titles have been changed - The Dynamism of Judy, The Judy Mill, Judy-Frutti, and Why not Sneeze, Judy? - a comedic tribute to both Judy Garland and Judy Barton, who led a double life in Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo. 

Freely associative and above all humorous, Dzwonkoski’s drawings explore familiar symbols through extended repetition and variation. Dorothy’s shoes share an iconic quality with the ghosts she’s drawn for years.  Similarly, the name Judy tends to roll off of the tongue - Dzwonkoski says, “I love repeating it: Judy. Judy. Judy.” In Vertigo, Judy Barton participates in an elaborate scam—she pretends to be a glamorous heiress who’s possessed by a ghost. We never find out who Judy really is except that, like Dorothy, she’s from Kansas. Unlike Dorothy, Judy dies instead of waking up. For her previous exhibition, Rooms by Judy,  Dzwonkoski created a series of drawings just to be able to sign them ‘Judy’, and repeat her signature. This interest in copying, doubling and mistaken identity now manifests in Dorothy’s ruby red slippers - a stand in for the mystery of Judy and her puzzling influence on art history.

With over 40 studies in this series, the drawings are sparse and schematic, resembling each other as much as they mirror the originals. The size, location and number of shoes varies from artwork to artwork, the goal in each case being “a good fit.” Over time, the series grew to include not only figurative works in the Buffalo AKG collection but the post-war abstract and minimalist works for which the museum is known. Dzwonkoski states, “Those don’t have feet in them so I had to wing it.”

Judy’s Dorothy’s was generously supported by a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. The exhibition will be on view Rivalry Projects from September 12 - October 21, 2025.

WORKS

Installation ImageS

coming soon..

About the Artist

Julia Dzwonkoski (b. 1972) studied art at SUNY Buffalo and UC San Diego. Her drawings have been exhibited at Rivalry Projects (Buffalo), Gattopardo (LA), Current Space (Baltimore), Harkawik (NY) and are collected in the books Two Eyes in an Environment (2023) and 100 More Frogs (2025). She is currently working on a new series of drawings inspired by the poet and collagist Helen Adam.