Afrodisiac dominates party

Party Crashers: Comic Book Culture Invades the Art World opened last night at the Arlington Arts Center.  The second half of this exhibit will open at Artisphere in Rosslyn on December 11.  Everybody knows that serious, sophisticated persons don't look at comic books.  They read graphic novels.  But both the learned and the innocent will enjoy sneaking into Party Crashers.  It's a wonderful exhibit that spans great creative comic space.  You can follow these comics up close, in detail, as if you were sitting down with the wall in your lap, and you can enjoy them from an art-gallery distance.  This exhibition also includes several video animations.

Don't miss Dash Shaw's video animation, Unclothed Man in the 35'th Century AD.  It's beautifully drawn and lyrical, and addresses fundamental technological trends and anxieties.  Deb Sokolow's webs of signs are more elaborate than the handwritten, newspaper-delivery conspiracy notes that used to appear occasionally about local newspaper boxes.  No exhibit of contemporary art is truly complete without a Powerpoint presentation.  This exhibit includes two Powerpoint presentations by Andrei Molotiu.  They are among the most informative and interesting Powerpoint presentations that I have ever seen.

The center of the party, however, unquestionably is Afrodisiac.  Jim Rugg and his partner Brian Maruca have created an astonishingly transgressive challenge to heterosexist and racist stereotypes.  They unsettle taboo zones of normative discourse about black masculinity and parody the hegemonic cultural construction of an Afro-centric identity.  This work should be required study for cultural reconstruction.  It's really funny.

Party Crashers: Comic Book Culture Invades the Art World is at the Arlington Arts Center through Jan. 16, 2011.  The exhibit component at Artisphere will be open through Feb. 13, 2011.

dream images at Piola in Rosslyn

A new exhibition of paintings, Sueños de Insomnio (Dreams of Insomnia), opened today at Piola in Rosslyn.  The artist, Marcelo Novo, explains:

I try to suppress my conscious awareness as much as I can, distracting it and bypassing its interference, thus allowing the images to flow freely. I utilize whatever medium is necessary in order to obtain a more pure and faithful transition between the inner and the outer. I start and finish my works in one session with the purpose of capturing a particular (or specific) state of mind. I consider that my art has its roots in Latin American and European Surrealism. ... Since it is not my intention to communicate any particular message through my art, I would like the viewers to make their own interpretation based on their individual experiences. I believe the viewer completes the work.

So you have Novo's permission to make your own interpretation of the above image.

Novo's work calls to mind an ocean churning with mixture of bright, bold colors.  I taste Piola's Mareverde pizza (shrimp, brie cheese, arugola, tomato sauce and mozzarella).  Or maybe it's an Ortomisto (fresh tomatoes, eggplant, spinach, sweet peppers, zucchini, broccoli, tomato sauce and mozzarella).   While Novo grew up in Argentina, if you view his paintings and have a Buenos Aires (onion and mozzarella), I insist that you have totally misinterpreted his work.  As an art critic, I do not share Novo's interpretive permissiveness.

Novo moved from South Carolina to Arlington two weeks ago.  While in South Carolina, he wrote out a plan for a ballet on napkins in a restaurant and then realized it in collaboration with a choreographer (Novo did the scenery and costumes).  He's looking for studio space and interested in working on collaborative projects with other artists.

Sueños de Insomnio (Dreams of Insomnia) will be on display at Piola in Rosslyn through November 27, 2010.

Art Scouts form groups at Arlington Arts Center

Art Scouts, a contemporary art exhibition now at the Arlington Arts Center, enlisted six artists each to curate one room/section of the Arlington Arts Center.  The artist-curators were instructed to present other artists who use the same materials or methods as they use.  The idea is that the selected works would provide insight into the artist-curator's work.   Maybe to local art scene cognoscenti they would.  But if you know nothing about the artist-curators, that's a poor viewing angle.

Moreover, having a technological theme may have crimped the artist-curators' presentations.  Some works, while technological appropriate, seem quite dull to a viewer not interested in art technology.  Most artists draw inspiration from a variety of artistic techniques.  Having multiple artist-curators with a common theme is a good idea for an exhibition.  Perhaps a future exhibition might choose a more broadly inspiring theme.

In the midst of these weaknesses,  J.J. McCracken's selection of performance art and installations stands out as artistically coherent and deeply thought-provoking.  Within her group of selected pieces, the exhibition opening on June 18 included live components of Jerry Kaba's Play Date and Ryan Kelley's Fortress of Solitude.   Play Date and Fortress of Solitude provide different perspectives on natural and unnatural worlds -- children playing games in a toxic world, Superman diligently working to build an imaginary fortress.  They show the much different but equally bizarre worlds into which women and men can ensconce themselves.  They depict irrepressible human creativity and its inevitable tie to repetitive work.

[video included above]

The Play Ship amidst the green grounds of the Arlington Arts Center represents a much more appealing vision of humans' future world that do Play Date and Fortress of Solitude.  So after you walk about the rooms of Art Scouts, be sure to enjoy what's outside.

Art Scouts is at the Arlington Arts Center through Aug. 21.

Other art reviews from the Ode Street Tribune:

• Jung Min Lee at the Lee Arts Center
• Spring Solos 2010 at the Arlington Arts Center
• G-40 becomes collective space
• Fall Solos 2009 at Arlington Arts Center

Jung Min Lee at the Lee Arts Center

Jung Min Lee's exhibit in the Mini Gallery of the Lee Art Center is well worth a visit.  Lee's drawings, screenprints, and paintings combine abstraction with powerful emotions.  Lee conveys emotions through eyes and bodily postures of chicks, teddy bears, and costumed figures. These are not just happy, cuddly animals, or persons enjoying costume play (cosplay).  Lee's innocent figures show the experience of life's struggles, fears, and heartbreaks. 

One work, entitled "Evolution," shows the development of a check from an egg.  Early on, the chick's eyes are large, but then they shrink.  The final chick in the sequence looks back indignantly.

I think that the masterpiece of the show is "Not Touching It..."  This is a large, graphite and charcoal drawing with soft textures like dandelion fluff.  In the midst of this flowering, pillowy beauty, a chick sits despondently, with one large eye staring out at the viewer.  A dead black chick lies in front.  It's a sad, sad image, but indescribably beautiful in its details.

All the pieces in the show, except for one, are for sale for prices from $150 to $1000.  "Not Touching It...", priced at $900, would easily support another zero or two appended to that price.  The one work not for sale is a wedding gift for one of Lee's friends.  It shows two chicks together in a box in the world as Lee sees it.  I don't doubt that they're glad to have each other.

Jung  Min Lee's exhibition, "Cosplay," is showing at the Lee Arts Center through July 26, 2010.  The Lee Arts Center is part of the Lee Community Center.  It is on Lee Highway, a few blocks past its intersection with N. George Mason Dr.

Images: Jung Min Lee with friends, above hang Lee's works "Acceptance" and "Sister time"; Jung Min Lee's "Evolution" (one part of two piece work); Jung Min Lee's "Not Touching It...," with gallery viewers.  All photos from opening night, June 3.

Spring Solos 2010 at the Arlington Arts Center

The Arlington Arts Center hosts work from six leading mid-Atlantic artists in its Spring Solos exhibition. Filling a room, Mia Feuer's beautiful wreckage easily attracts a visitor's eye.  Steven Pearson's acrylic paintings replicate with bright colors the irresistible pull of a Blackberry to the message-addicted.  You can easily appreciate these works if you quickly stroll through the Arts Center.  But the works that contemporary art experts Rebecca Jones and Henry Thaggert have selected for this exhibition also relate to each other in subtle ways.  To fully appreciation this exhibition, see the works in relation to each other.

Rachel Schmidt's story-room is an affective counterpoint to Mia Feuer's massive industrial installation. Schmidt's story-room arranges mainly objects that have clear meaning in everyday life.  A chair is for sitting.  On opening night, a person sat on a chair in one of Schmidt's story-settings and made a cellphone call.  The person seemed oblivious to the abstract worm of thought that grew from the back of the chair up onto the wall.  At the same time, the person absorbed in telephone conversation seemed to be in a world other than his actual circumstance: sitting on an artist's artwork and talking on his cellphone with the artist looking on from across the room.  Talking with other onlookers, Schmidt readily embraced the caller's behavior as part of her work.  Totally brilliant.  If this event was staged, it was staged very well.  The intimate, personal, associations in Schmidt's story-room present creation and destruction on a equally true scale as that of Mia Feuer's installation.

John James Anderson's display of D.C. fire hydrant information has formal parallels with some of Steven Pearson's work.  The geometric patterning of streets in some of Anderson's panels distantly echo the networks in some of Pearson's paintings.  Anderson also arranged images of individual fire hydrants into large, rectangular grids.  Like in Pearson's Gaining Momentum and Daily Paintings panels, the rectangular grid pushes against the insistently individual and idiosyncratic grid elements.  No two fire hydrants look the same.

Water is an undercurrent in this exhibition.  The saving water of fire hydrants in John James Anderson's installation becomes holy water associated with the shrines in Rachel Schmidt's story-room. Part of that story is also water that overflows and sinks a boat.  Ana B. Hernandez's Antibodies floats above the room, a cloud raining blood-red threads.  Gregory Thielker's paintings work through car windshields in the rain.  Thielker explains:

When the seams open in the verisimilitude of our experience, we take note of how or why we perceive in the manner that we do.  In the case of driving, the abstraction and distortion of water are indexical to the windshield (as smoke can be traced to fire).  The result is that painting can summon a pre-verbal experience -- slipping outside of static referents and into a gestalt of sensation, both fixed and fluid.

As a person who wears glasses most of the time, Thielker's paintings reminded me of the universality of that disability.  You may see differently.  Go to this exhibition and allow yourself the freedom to make sense of it.

The exhibition opened on Friday, April 16, and runs through June 5, 2010.  Admission, as always at the Arlington Arts Center, is free.  Those in the standard workweek grind can take advantage of the Arts Center's Saturday hours, 11am to 5pm.

The soundtrack for the above video is thanks to Tab & Anitek.  The soundtrack is Time Warp {Interlude} {feat. Scootie} from Tab & Anitek's freely available album, Traveling in Stereo.

G-40 becomes collective space

Crystal City has transformed a high-rise office space into G-40: The Summit, an exhibition of New Brow contemporary underground art.  The exhibition, which is open Wednesday through Saturday nights as well as Saturday and Sunday afternoons, also includes a schedule of musical and visual performances, lectures, and art demonstrations.  It is free and open to the public.  No tickets are needed.      

The exhibition is much greater than the sum of the contributing artists' works.  If you just look at the individual works, you are sure to find some that you love, and some that don't interest you at all.  The average level of painting skill is quite high, considerably higher than past Artomatic exhibitions.  But viewers looking for masterpieces of art can easily miss the greatness of the collective enterprise across the whole space.

G-40 presents spectacular urban vistas.  The best time to see them is when the space is least crowded and the lights against the darkness outside create colored reflections on the windows.  Walls, pillars, small rooms, halls, all are alive with creative effort.  The geographical distinctions by floors sadly mimic the tribal organization of international politics.  You can see across floors only when you're not really looking. Ignore the distinctions among floors.  Look across the space on each floor, and enjoy movement across the diverse shapes, colors, moods, and styles.

The political thrust of the exhibit seems to be mainly in popular creativity that overflows boundaries and washes away status hierarchies.   Protest and despair in the art resonates with stains on the carpeted floor and the empty office space of a business gone bankrupt.  Take away our jobs, but we will not be unemployed; show no respect for our work, but we will not quit; take away the work of our hands, and we will make more.  Make more!

Aaron Jasinski, Aaron Kraten, Adam Russell, Adrian 'Viajero' Roman, Alan Defibaugh, Aleloop, Alex Chiu, Alex Hornest, Alexa Meade, Andrew Hem, Angie Mason, Angry Woebots, Aniekan Udofia, Anko Christian, Anna Todaro, Annabelle Hartmann, Anthony Dihle, Arabella Proffer-Vendetta, Artistic Sole, Askew One, Aunia Kahn, Bay Truth Seeker, Beautiful Nightmare, Ben Tolman, Billy Mode, Blaine Fontana, Bonnie Durham, Brad Strain, Brandi Read, Brandon Hill, Brandon McLean, Brent Houzenga, Bryan Collins, Bryan Schnelle, Cabezon, Caia Koopman, Casey Weldon, Cern One, Charlie Owens, Chris Bishop, Chris Brett, Chris Granillo, Chris Murray, Chris RWK, Chris Sheridan, Chris Stain, Codak, Cope 2, Craig ‘Skibs’ Barber, Craig Robinson, Cutthroat, Dabs Myla, Damara The Destroyer, Dan May, Dana Ellyn, Daniel Barojas, Daniel Fleres, Darling, Jim and Tina, Daryll Peirce, Dave Chung, Dave Lowell, David Flores, David Foox, Decoy, Dennis Schuster, Dolla, Douglas Alvarez, Downer, Drew Storm Graham, Dust, Dustin Spagnola, E.L.K., edward gross, El Stabo, Emily Greene Liddle, Emma Overman, Ernesto Nasimo, Esho, Eyeone, Francisco Munoz, Frank Gonzales, Gaia, Ganyan, Gary Yong, Ghetto Picasso, gigi, Gosha Levochkin, Graham Franciose, Heather Randell, Herm Life!, Hyein Lee, Indie, Jack Howe, James Walker, Jared Davis, Jazirock, Jeremy Asher Lynch, Jessica Angel, Jessica van Brakle, Jim Mahfood, Jimbot, Joe Iurato, John Collier, John Felix Arnold III, John Koleszar, JoKa, Jophen Stein, Josh Taylor, Joshua Herbolsheimer, Joshua Krause, Julie Steiner, Justin Tolentino, Kareem Rizk, Keith Rosson, Kelly Castillo, Kelly Vivanco, Ken Keirns, Kenn Munk, Kerry Roper, Kevin E. Taylor, Ki Yoon Ko, Kristal Blanco, Lady Glock, Leah Bassett, Lelo, Leonor Morais, Liza Corbett, Luis Diaz, Luz Del Mar Rosado, Mar Hernández, Marc Wöhr, Marie Barr, Mario Wagner, Marka 27, Mary Spring, Matt Sesow, Matt Somma, Matthew Linares, Matthew Parker, Mauricio Murillo, Max Jones, Max Kauffman, MDOK, Mefee, Melanie Pruitt, Michael Owen, Michael Weber, Migdalia Luz Barens Vera, Mikel Glass, Molly Crabapple, Molotov Circus, Morten Andersen, Mr. Ben Venom, Mr. Penfold, Munk One, Nancie Yang, Natalie Shau, Nerosunero, Nick Morris, Nicolas Gracey, Nils Westergard, Nishi, Novie Trump, Ovie, Owen Beckmann, Pablo Crist, Pamela Henderson, PaperMonster, Parskid, Patrick "STAR27" Deignan, Patrick Fatica, Patrick Haemmerlein, Paul Chatem, Paulo Arraiano, Peabe, Peap, Peter Chang, Peter Krsko, Phoneticontrol, Pixel Pancho, Project Detonate, Raudiel Sañudo, Raul "Frame" Gamboa, Remi Mead, Reuben Rude, Richard Alan Haugh, Rick Reese, Ron Zakrin, Ruben Ubiera, Rudy Duboue, Rudy Fig, Saint JAHn, Scott Albrecht, Scott G. Brooks, Seamo One, Sergio Martinez, Shaunna Peterson, Shawn Martinbrough, Soule, Spencer Reynolds, Stuter, Sue Works, Susannah Parnin, Sylvia Ortiz, Tatiana Suarez, Terri Woodward, Terry Plater, The Krah, Thinkmule, Tim Conlon, Tim Phibs, Tim Slayton, TMNK, Tommii Lim, Treva Eldwood, Trevor Young, Truth Among Liars, Truth Among Liars, Twitch, Tyler Oyer, Ultra, Uncle Mildred, Ursula Young, Vacon Sartirani, Vanilla Royal, Veng, Walter Hall, Yulia Graham, Zach Tobias, Zachary Walsh

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Thanks to all the participating artist for sharing their work.  Thanks also to Tab for sharing the soundtrack in the above video.  The soundtrack  is "Mad World" (produced by A.U.R.C),  from Tab's first, mainly self-produced album, Poet in the Dark.

G-40: The Summit is at 223 23rd St. in Crystal City, VA.  The exhibit is open March 1-30, 2010, Wednesdays & Thursdays: 5 – 10pm; Fridays: 5pm – Midnight; Saturdays: 12pm – Midnight; Sundays: 12pm – 6pm.  It is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

[video included in post]

Romanoke tops Image/Project

The Arlington Arts Center is currently featuring an exhibit entitled Image/Project.  According to the exhibition description, it's "a national survey of photography and video."  Guggenheim Fellow Taryn Simon, represented by Gagosian gallery in New York, selected 17 projects from a list of qualified photographic and video art.  The Arlington Arts Center website explains:

The show reflects the ways in which contemporary artists tend to approach photography and video. Many of the artists presented here use photography as either a means for documenting or presenting cross-disciplinary projects, or as a tool for inquiry into the way we perceive and live in the world.

Arlington Arts Center has hosted fantastic exhibitions of original, creative art. Image/Project, unfortunately, seems to me about as insipid as the above description of it.  Fine art like Sun Xun's Shock of Time -- this show has none of it.

But a trip to the Arlington Arts Center some time before Jan. 16, 2010, would be a worthwhile and enjoyable excursion.  First, play awhile on the play ship.  Then check out Image/Project.  You might enjoy it much more than I did.  Go downstairs and see This is My City / Esta Es Mi Ciudad, an exhibition of photographs by students from Arlington and Suchitoto, El Salvador.  These photographs seem to me to provide a more wide-ranging perspective on the world that do the works in Image/Project.  Most rewarding of all, go upstairs and gaze upon Jill Romanoke's luminous charts.

Jill Romanoke's charts conceptually connect ancient Chinese oracle bones to modern bureaucratic artists such as Hanne Darboven.  Romanoke's charts consist of five piece of paper pressed together.  Each piece of paper Romanoke associates with a different place, and each has a different design.  By stacking the papers, Romanoke makes the designs interact virtually, but also accentuates the physicality of the paper.  All the paper she uses is hand-crafted.  She mentioned that some of her paper includes ground clam shells, while other paper was placed in a snow bank for weeks as part of the process of making it.  Beautifully hung and lit in the Arlington Arts Center, the charts radiate oracularly, but they also insistently, materially trace a specific history.

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This is My City / Esta Es Mi Ciudad, Image/Project, and works by Evan Reed & Jill Romanoke are on exhibition at the Arlington Arts Center from Nov. 20, 2009 to Jan. 16, 2010.  As always, admission is free.

Fall Solos 2009 at Arlington Arts Center

The works of six innovative artists are being exhibited in the Fall Solos 2009 show at the Arlington Arts Center through November 7, 2009.   The show features works that are strikingly diverse in media and subject matter.



Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum's works are appropriately at the center of the show. In the main-level corridor are her ornate, black-and-white figure drawings. Walk through that corridor to the Tiffany Gallery and you'll see luscious color drawings that she specifically designed for this space and its stained-glass window.   Phatsimo Sunstrum has also installed there a sound composition and a video.  The latter is both poignantly human ("show me forgiveness") and eerily otherworldly.   

The other artists' works provide a similar range.  David Page shows exquisitely designed wood-leather-metal objects that resonate with nature, industrial manufacturing, and sexual fetishes.   Cynthia Hron has designed with charcoal on paper and metal and plastic a beautiful, hairy place.  Roxana Perez-Mendez offers Pepper's Ghost holograms that show her struggling to move across a geographic space.  Christian Benefiel shows sculpture that many guys might like to put together out of junk in their garage, if they had sufficient inspiration and skill.  Jenn Figg has constructed a fantasy world of print cut-outs arranged into a diorama-like installation. For further insight into the art, check out a highly informative review of the exhibition at Daily Campello Art News. 

The Arlington Arts Center is open 11 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Saturday.  So Saturday is really your only chance if you work a standard-time work week.  Admission to the exhibition is free.