Deborah Oropallo, born in Hackensack, New Jersey in 1954, is a distinguished artist with a profound artistic journey. She earned her BFA from Alfred University and an MA/MFA from the University of California at Berkeley. While initially trained as a painter, Oropallo skillfully integrated various mixed media techniques into her practice, including photomontage, video, computer editing, printmaking, and painting.
Her artistic creations, whether in still or moving images, capture the nuances of distortion that emerge from image manipulation. The resulting works showcase a complex layering of visual sources, creating a rich interplay between time, place, form, and content.
Oropallo's impressive exhibition history spans prestigious venues such as the Boise Art Museum in Idaho, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Montalvo Art Center in California, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Her work has also been featured in exhibits at renowned institutions like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Jewish Museum in New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art (Whitney Biennial).
In 2024, the Schneider Museum of Art in Oregon will host a monographic survey exhibition of Oropallo's work, which will later travel to the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, accompanied by a comprehensive catalog. Oropallo's artworks find homes in prestigious collections, including the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In 2008, Oropallo ventured into video art, and her solo works "Smoke Stacked" (2017) and "Going Ballistic" (2017) are held in the collections of the Nevada Museum of Art and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Archive, respectively. Collaborating with Andy Rappaport since 2017, their joint video work "Smoke Stacked" (2017) explores the intersection of art and the environment and is part of the Nevada Museum of Art's collection. Notably, "FLIGHT" was acquired by 21c Museum Hotels, Kentucky, for its permanent collection in 2020, and in 2022, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, acquired "One World" (2021), a 7-channel/7-screen video work.
Oropallo's artistic contributions are celebrated in two monographs: "POMP" (2009), published by Gallery 16, and "How To," published by the San Jose Museum of Art. Her remarkable achievements include receiving a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, the Engelhard Award, and a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.