Steven and Billy Dufala practice in a variety of media, approaching sculpture, theater, performance, music, digital media, and good old-fashioned drawing with equal passion and zeal. The Dufala brothers have exhibited widely. Their 2009 solo exhibition, Trophy, at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, explored concepts of use-value, sentimentality, exaggeration and shelf-life through an absurd and trash-picked lens. For the 2005 Fringe Festival they organized a now infamous toilet-trike race through the streets of Old City, for which they built fourteen toilet tricycles. In 2004, they rode a cardboard tank across town on city streets during rush hour, amazing pedestrians, puzzling motorists, and in general, giving the audience a dose of dark, dark humor. In 2009 the Dufala Brothers were awarded the West Grand Prize, an international juried prize in its inaugural year. Both Dufala Brothers graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and live and work in Philadelphia. Steven was a founding member of the experimental, performative band, Man Man, in which Billy played for several years.
Grounds for Sculpture
Hamilton, NJ
May 5–Sep 1, 2024
Billy Dufala
(group)
Curated by Monument Lab
Billy Dufala, Future futures, 2024, aluminum bales, 12 x 15 x 12 feet
The Dufala Brothers
(group)
Organized by Rosario Güiraldes and Lisa Sigal, Open Sessions Curators
The Drawing Center
New York, NY
Aug 16–Sep 15, 2019
Reception: Aug 15, 6–8pm
Group show featuring the Dufala brothers, organized by Rosario Güiraldes and Lisa Sigal
The Drawing Center
New York, NY
Oct 12–Dec 2, 2018
Steven and Billy Dufala have been invited to participate in the Drawing Center's 2018–2019 Open Sessions.
The Barnes Foundation
Jun 30–Oct 2, 2017
In 2014 artist Mohamed Bourouissa invited Philadelphia artists, including Anthony Campuzano & Kate Abercrombie, and Billy Dufala, to create costumes for the horses in a horse tuning event he was filming at a North Philadelphia stable. The resulting film, costumes, and ephemera have been exhibited at Kamel Mennnour, Paris; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and are currently on view at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Mar 31, 2017
A Dada-inspired, temporary installation in the galleries for the museum’s Final Fridays program.
Billy and Steven Dufala, William Edmondson, and Bill Traylor are included in "A Being in The World" at Salon 94 Bowery, curated by Jayson Musson and Fabienne Stephan.
A Being in The World
June 29, 2016–July 29, 2016
Salon 94 Bowery
The Dufala brothers were invited to jury the 74th annual Woodmere Annual, which also features selections of their work.
Woodmere Annual
June 27–September 7, 2015
Gallery Talk with the artists
July 11, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
$15 ($10 members)
Closing Reception
September 7, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Free and open to the public
Hooloon Gallery
53 N. 2nd St, Philadelphia
Feb 7–Mar 15, 2015
Organized by Laris Kreslins, and including: Kate Abercrombie, Anthony Campuzano and the Dufala Brothers
Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program has enlisted the Dufala Brothers to participate in their Open Source, curated by Pedro Alonzo.
The Dufala Brothers recently spoke at TedxPhoenixville, the Colonial Theatre on September 27.
Geoff Sobelle's Object Lesson, for which Steven Dufala designed the sets, won three prizes at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, inlcuding the Scotsman Fringe First Award, the Total Theatre Award, and the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh award.
The Right Amount of Wrong, a solo exhibition of the Dufala brothers' work, is currently on view, by appointment, at the West Collection Warehouse in Oaks, PA.
There will be fundraising/consciousness raising event for Billy Dufala's RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residency) organization, a non-profit whose mission is to create awareness about sustainability issues through art and design.
November 6, 6-9PM
Crane Arts Building
1400 N American Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122
Billy Dufala's Recycled Artist in Residency (RAIR) project collaborates with Simon Kim, Mary Ellen Carroll and Brian Zanisnik on three microexhibitions for ICA@50, the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania's 50th anniversary exhibition program, running February–August, 2014.
For their installation at the DCCA, the Dufala brothers continue their ongoing investigations of domesticity and its ephemera.
Curated by Maiza Hixson
February 10 - May 13, 2012
Constance S. and Robert J. Hennessy Project Space
Gallery artists Steven and Billy Dufala\'s work will be included in:
Urbanism: Reimagining the Lived Environment
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
Fisher Brooks Gallery, Samuel M.V. Hamilton
Building
July 2 – September 4, 2011
Philadelphia has long been a cultural center and, indeed, when PAFA was founded, Philadelphia was the most vibrant city in the Republic. A cradle for American art for over two centuries, it is now a city where hundreds of artists live and where hundreds more are being trained in its art schools and universities. Philadelphia is also a center that, over the past decade, has attracted artists away from other major cities, providing not only a richly supportive artistic community but also affordable working spaces and good transport and communications. The city provides a dynamic and vital environment that can be perceived in much of the work that is currently emerging from artists’ studios. In this context, Urbanism provides an opportunity to look at four emerging artists from Philadelphia who, in various ways, re-focus the idea of the urban through a lens that explores the dreams, experience, and potential of the lived environment.
Employing a variety of media, Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala, known as the Dufala Brothers, create three-dimensional works that touch upon the absurd, while giving new meaning to discarded and homeless objects. Refashioning the everyday in ways that are unexpected and humorous, a dumpster can become a coffin and a toilet bowl can be transformed into the seat of a tricycle. In this repurposing of common objects, the Dufala Brothers question not only the nature and logic of consumer culture, but they also challenge us to think again about what art is and what it can be. Born in Philadelphia, Steven Dufala and Billy Blaise Dufala both studied at PAFA. They are both on the teaching staff of PAFA.
Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala's solo exhibition, Problemy, plays with the humble yet hugely important artifacts of daily life. The exhibition includes new drawings, paintings, digital prints, and sculptures, as well as site-specific installations on the Haverford College campus.
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College
September 3 -October 8, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, September 3, 5:30-7:30pm
Gallery Talk: Thursday, September 16, 4:30-6pm
A Sense of Humor examines the many faces of humor in art, whether lighthearted tongue-in-cheek work, biting witticism that stabs at the politics of today, or quirky objects that call to mind the familiar. Through installations, paintings, sculpture, photographs, video, and audio, the 22 featured artists arrive at humor from many different points of view.
Artists include: Erwin Wurm, José Carcavilla, Barnaby Barford, Matt Stuart, Laurina Paperina, David Shrigley, Tim Hawkinson, Jean Lowe, Bill Amundson, Gregory Scott, Richard Saja, Jeffu Warmouth, Fanny Allié, William Wegman, Joel-Peter Witkin, Daniel Carr, Erika Rothenberg, Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala, Charles Krafft and Mike Simi.
Exhibition runs from June 20 to September 26 at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI.
Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala have won an Obie Award in machine design for their work in "Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines," presented last summer at New York's Here Arts Center in association with Rainpan 43.
Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala will be included in an upcoming exhibition at Slought Foundation, Philadelphia. "Solitary Pleasures" is a provocative exhibition exploring the theme of masturbation and other forms of solitary pleasure, including smoking, drinking, reading, and art itself. The exhibition will feature historical works, contemporary works, and work by younger artists that present different visual representations of solitary pleasures. In addition, texts, quotations, and other research material will offer a larger historical context for appreciating the multiplicity of solitary pleasures in contemporary culture. A visual lineage including artists such as Durer, Titian, Giorgione, Hans Baldung Grien, among others will be suggested through reproductions, while quotations from Diogenes, Diderot, Rousseau, Kant, Freud, Irigaray, Foucault, Derrida, and others will offer an intellectual and historical context for the exhibition. Instead of trying to be exhaustive, the exhibition speculates on the possibilities posed by the subject of solitary pleasures. "Solitary Pleasures" runs from March 26 to April 21.
David Ebony of Art in America has named Fleisher/Ollman Gallery one of the ten best booths at this year's Armory Show Modern.
Ebony writes: "It would be difficult to find a better example of Ed Paschke's work than the 1970 painting of a figure playing an accordion on view here. Corresponding with canvases by Christina Ramberg, whose figurative abstraction closely relate to those of the Chicago Imagists, it was the centerpiece of a booth containing sculpture by William Edmondson and the Philadelphia Wireman. Recent works by young artists, such as the team of Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala, more than held their own here. Known for focusing on environmental issues in their works, the brothers showed large watercolors of the floating islands of plastic bottles and other refuse that litter the oceans, as well as a peculiar, jerry-built machine sculpture that resembles a yellow power saw."
Gallery artists, Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala, have designed the intricately futile machines that are featured in machines machines machines machines machines machines machines, which is currently onstage at Here (New York).
machines machines machines machines machines machines machines explodes the world of garage tinkers and backyard engineers in a ridiculous theatre piece featuring the world\'s most complicated machines set to perform the simplest tasks. Following the formula, \"the most of amount of effort for the least amount of gain,\" three chowderhead geniuses reach for the heights of mechanical ingenuity to reveal the depths of human idiocy.
Machines x 7 focuses on a trio of fretful men (Rainpan co-founders Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford along with Pig Iron\'s Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel) who may or may not be brothers living in what may or may not be a postapocalyptic world. In constant fear of an unnamed and unseen enemy, they grow increasingly paranoid and wire their bunker with an enormous array of machines constructed from debris.
HERE
145 Sixth Avenue
NY, NY
2/27/09
We are thrilled to announce that gallery artists, Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala, were awarded the West Prize Grand Prize, a cash award of $25,000.
The West Prize, in its inaugural year, was selected from an open call for early career artists. 3,600 artists from 73 countries submitted 18,000 works for consideration.
The Dufala Brothers "Ice Cream Truck Tank," along with work from the other nine finalists—Rob Carter, Brian Cooper, Jonas Criscoe, Thomas Doyle, Deborah Hamon, James Johnson, Georg Parthen, Ann Toebbe, and Nathan Vincent—will be on exhibition at the NEXT Art Fair, in Chicago, May 1-4, 2009.
