Friday, September 15, 2006

Tonite: Sandberg at Conner

This week is shaping out to be an extraordinary week to see the best that contemporary painting has to offer to the DC region.

In addition to Robin Rose at Hemphill, and Manon Cleary at Edison Place Gallery, and the New Leipzig Painters at the Katzen Arts Center, and New York's David FeBland at Fraser Gallery (which is selling out as usual), tonight Conner Contemporary Art hosts the opening for Erik Sandberg's newest solo, titled Contrary.

Just like Cleary and Rose are easily some of the best DC area painters of their generation, Sandberg - in my opinion - is amongst the best Washington area painters of his generation. Buy Erik Sandberg now.

The opening night reception is tonight, Friday, September 15th from 6-8pm.

Saturday: 14th Street Galleries

The Galleries of the 14th Street Arts Corridor in Washington, DC launch the Fall Art Season with joint receptions on Saturday, September 16.

Who: Adamson Gallery, Curator’s Office, G Fine Art, Hemphill, Irvine Contemporary, Gallery plan b, Transformer, and Street Scenes: Art Not Ads (a Welmoed Laanstra public art project).

What: Joint Receptions to launch the fall season

When: Saturday, September 16, 6-9 PM

Exchange

Tomorrow is the WPA/C's EXCHANGE: DC @ Baltimore opening at the Creative Alliance (3134 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, MD). The opening is from 7 – 9pm. Curated by Gabriel Martinez.

Features work by Trawick Prize finalists Molly Springfield and Jason Zimmerman as well as Breck Brunson, Avi Gupta, Nilay Lawson, Carrie Mallory, Isabel Manalo, Piero Passacantando, Solomon Sanchez, and my good friend and former Georgetown neighbor Rocky Wang.

Congratulations

To former Trawick Prize winner Jiha Moon, who was included in the New York Times review of the "One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now" group show at the Asia Society in New York City.

Read the Roberta Smith review here.

From the Reverend's files

"After pickled sheep, unmade beds and painting with elephant dung, some questioned where modern art could go next.

Kira O'Reilly will provide her own answer today by spending four hours naked, hugging a dead pig - at the taxpayer's expense.

The controversial Irish performance artist will invite one person at a time to watch her sit in a specially-constructed set and perform a 'crushing slow dance' with the carcass in her arms."
Details here.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Manon Cleary Tonight

Tonight, from 6-8PM, is the opening for the Manon Cleary retrospective at the Edison Place Gallery located at 701 9th Street, NW (enter from 8th and G).

Without a doubt the leading realist painter in the Greater Washington region, and made nationally famous by HBO a few years ago, Cleary's retrospective is long overdue and it's a huge black mark on the conscience of DC area museums and curators.

At the Corcoran Tonight

The WPA/C is having their first All Members' meeting tonight at 6:30 p.m. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the auditorium.

Paul Greenhalgh, the new director of the Corcoran will be there to meet the WPA/C members and invites them and see the current show: "redefined: Modern and Contemporary Art form the Collection."

Details here.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Thank you!

To the artists who sent me art as a birthday present! WOW! I was only kidding serious!

And in return I will send all of you a piece of artwork for your walls!

Robin Rose at Hemphill

Robin Rose, one of the District's most influential painters, opens this Saturday, Sept. 16 at Hemphill Fine Arts. This will be Rose's first solo at Hemphill since he switched galleries from Numark Gallery, where he used to exhibit in prior years. The opening reception for Rose is Saturday, September 16, 2006 from 6:30 - 8:30 PM.

This is shaping like the week to see two of the District's giants of paintings, as Manon Cleary, easily one of the most technically gifted and creative painters that I have seen in all my years of looking at the visual arts, also opens this week, in her case Cleary opens on Thursday at Edison Place Gallery.

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: September 22, 2006

The Arts Council of Fairfax County announces Arts Council @ GRACE, a juried art exhibition offering $2,000 in prize monies.

This year’s exhibition will mark a first time collaboration with the regional visual art center GRACE in Reston, VA. Artists from DC, MD, or VA are encouraged to apply. Artists working in any media can submit up to four (4) images on CD, or video totaling no more than five (5) minutes on DVD.

Juror: Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen. Cash prizes totaling $2000. Entry Fee: $35 (waived for Arts Council and GRACE members). Exhibition will take place November 3 – December 1, 2006.

Information is available on their at website at www.artsfairfax.org or contact Angela Jerardi, Visual Arts Coordinator at ajerardi@artsfairfax.org.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Art Narratives

WOW! Check out the kind of artwork presentation that Paradise Studios has done for Bailey.

It's about 2MBytes - Click here.

Gopnikisms

"One of the things that drive me crazy is that there's this notion, especially among younger artists, that to make serious art some woman has to get naked. I see it in performance art all the time."

- Blake Gopnik
UPDATE(s):
1. Capps polices Gopnik here.
2. Bailey... ah "Baileys" Gopnik here.

DCing

I'm in DC all this week.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Opportunity for Artists

Deadline: October 6, 2006

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities' Art Bank Program has a call for entries as they are purchasing artwork to be part of the District of Columbia's 2007 Art Bank Program.

Works in the collection are owned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and loaned to other District Government agencies for display in public areas. Deadline: October 6, 2006.

For more information and an application, please visit their website to download the Call for Entries application, or call 202-724-5613 to have one sent to you.

The City's Art Bank is a growing collection of moveable works funded through DC Creates Public Art, the District’s Art in Public Places Program.

Works in the collection are owned by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and are loaned to other District government agencies for display in public areas of government buildings. This collection helps preserve the city’s past and is an important legacy for future generations. Currently, approximately 1,600 artworks are on display in more than 100 agencies.

9/11 Artwork

Beliefnet artists have put together a 9/11 art scrapbook. See it here.

Manon Cleary

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Wanna go to an opening tonight?

The place to go tonight in the DC area is the opening reception at the Katzen Arts Center at AU.

The Mid-Atlantic's best looking arts venue will host the opening receptions from 6-9PM to welcome:

Life After Death: New Leipzig Painters from the Rubell Family Collection
Eberhard Havekost: New Works from the Rubell Family Collection
Hungarian Revolution, 1956
Mindy Weisel: Words on a Journey
Athena Tacha: Small Wonders
Just the fact that Don and Mera Rubell may be there (they will be at the Katzen on Sept. 19 to discuss "their very personal process of selecting and collecting art") probably means that every art dealer within a 200 mile radius will probably show up.

I am particularly interested in Life After Death: New Leipzig Painters from the Rubell Family Collection. In 1989, the seven artists represented in this exhibition: Tilo Baumgärtel, Tim Eitel, Martin Kobe, Neo Rauch, Christoph Ruckhäberle, David Schnell and Matthias Weischer — all rejected the trendy genres of today's art critics and museum curators: video, photography and installation art, and instead chose to study figurative painting at the Leipzig Art Academy.

The resulting work goes completely against the grain of what a lot of art writers, critics and curators try to force-feed us as the only viable contemporary art forms, and reflects the fact that as long as talent is given room to grow, there is room for all genres and visual interests, including the much maligned realism.

It will be interesting to read what the chief art critic of the Washington Post, a leading town crier for the "painting is dead" mob, writes about this show. However, if his review of fellow German painter Gerhardt Richter's 2003 show is an indication (which Gopnik should have hated), Gopnik won't step out of line and will conveniently join the international applause chorus to the Leipzig boys.

Kudos to the Katzen for bringing a top-notch show to the capital area.

Friday, September 08, 2006

Wanna go to a DC opening this weekend?

The read Heather Goss over at DCist as she has a list of the top shows opening this weekend as the "arts season" kicks in with a bang at the Greater DC area's top galleries.

Read the openings list here.

Signs

I don't know if it is true or not, but a friend of mine told me a while back that some of the subjects in Trawick prizewinner James Rieck send hidden signals/messages via their hands' depictions.

If you know how to read that sort of stuff, go here and tell me if the top two paintings of the little girls are "messaging" anything.

Is it just me or...

This recent Zippy comic strip looks influenced by like Mark Jenkins' "Embed."

Zippy

Tapedude

When Zippy references something -- like Mark Cline's Foamhenge out in the Virginia country, there is a tiny "Tip of the Pen" credit of thanks to the person who made the reference. There is no tip of the pen here so he probably came up with idea without knowing about Mark Jenkins' tapework. Nonetheless, the Tapedude rocks!

Update: The Tapedude informs me that the Zippy comic "is a drawing of a bronze sculpture that exists in LA... and when I did my 'embed,' I had people asking me if that piece had inspired mine (it hadn't)." Jenkins just had a show in Rotterdam, Holland last week and the below piece is from that show.
Fleur