Last Friday
I went to a couple of openings in Georgetown. First I dropped by Addison Ripley, now and for many years one of the best galleries in our area, and where a large crowd was leaving a lot of red dots behind as they were picking up the paintings of John Borden Evans. That's Evans with gallery co-owner Chris Addison (photo by Holly Foss) on the right.
Evans' paintings depict farm animals (chickens, cows, sheep, hens) as well as ordinary landscapes. The artist likes to float between scratchy, airy paintings (mostly the landscapes) and thicker, impasto works, such as in some of the paintings of cows.
In some of these thicker paintings he has crossed a debatable line. Let me explain.
In a few of the cow paintings, Evans has built up enough paint so that the two dimensional painting crosses into a third dimension (in these cases usually the head of a cow), so that the head of the animal sticks out, making the painting become a sculptural bas relief piece.
Were Evans an abstract painter, building thick, three dimensional goops of paint on canvas (as we all did in art school to create a response to an assignment that we left to the last minute), it is considered texture, or adds dimensionality to the dialogue.
But in the already fragile art world where representational painting has to defend itself everyday, and when an artist chooses a representational subject of such plebian character as a cow, and then goops on the paint to have the cow's head stick out of the canvas, warning bells begin to ring.
And I know that this is perhaps unfair to Evans, clearly a talented and skilled painter, but the cow's heads sticking out of the two dimensional plane, is just too overpowering for me, and makes me forget the rest of the show; not a good thing.
Almost across the street from Addison Ripley, the inaugural exhibition of art at the furniture concept store called "Space" was going on, and I went in.
Space was packed!
The owners, Tami Iams and Francesca Oriolo (pictured on the left), were by the door greeting everyone as they walked in, and I noticed that some of the cream of the DC gallery-art-opening world, and strangely enough, none of the grubs (for some strange reason they didn't know about this opening) were there.
And case after case of good Champagne flowed through the night, as more and more people came in, making the viewing of the artwork quite difficult.
Oh yeah... the artwork.
The exhibition, curated by Rody Douzoglou is titled Chill, and features works by Amalia Caputo, Marc Roman and one of the most talented young DC area painters that I know: Rachel Waldron.
Of the three, Waldron steals this show.
And Waldron has reinvented herself, at least for this show.
Rachel Waldron has exhibited widely around the DC area, including at our galleries, in group shows. After she graduated from GWU, she sort of disappeared, and re-emerged recently at the Arts Club of Washington and even more recently at the re-opening of the Arlington Arts Center.
And both the work at the Arlington Arts Center and the work at Space offer us a new Waldron.
The earlier Waldron was full of color and energy and a Boschian appeal to her work.
The new Waldron retains the energy, and the power and the sense of oddity owed to Hieronymus Bosch. But she has pushed it a step forward by employing a new approach that dismisses color and marries painting and drawing.
The best piece in the show is a perfect example. It is a Gulliverian work titled "All the Little Things" and it is charcoal, ink, acrylic and spray paint on paper (pictured to the right). The work is bursting with energy and movement, and that odd sense of subterranean sexuality that populates the Boschian Universe.
Waldron, clearly a gifted and technically skilled artist, marries her formidable technical skills with a tentative step into the demanding arena of the experimental artist. Her drawings/paintings are now populated by a mass produced process of spray painted, repetitive cut outs that hark of some of Sam Gilliam's most recent work. A Waldronesque bridge across the gulf of repetitive abstraction towards the shore of contemporary realism.
And it works!
And later, Waldron (perhaps pushed by a looming deadline) relaxes and just gives us an even more basic wedding of spray painted cut-outs atop abstracted backgrounds, cleverly switching them around to create unique works from the masters.
And in the process she helps Space, at least for this exhibition, leave a strong footprint on our art scene, and re-introduces Rachel Waldron to our universe of talented artists.
Welcome back.
