Gallery Openings This Friday

This is the First Friday of the month... and of course that means that the galleries around the Dupont Circle area will have their extended openings. By the way... whoever maintains this website needs to really update it! Some of these galleries have closed while others have opened!

Anyway...Specially interesting will be the opening at Conner Contemporary, where Leigh will have Kehinde Wiley and Sabeen Raja. If you have time for only one show, go see this one.

BLOGs

The Examiner checks in with a timely article on the impact of BLOGS.

Tuesday Arts Agenda

The DCist Tuesday Arts Agenda is here.

Silverthorne Opening

Alexandra Silverthorne's photography exhibition "No More Hiroshimas! No more Nagasakis!" (which is co-organized by the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area) opens this Thursday at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library located at 901 G Street, NW in Washington. The opening reception is on the 2nd Floor, goes from 6:30 to 8PM and refreshments will be served.

The exhibition runs through May 29, 2005. For more information visit her website.

Opportunity for Artists

Solo Exhibitions for 2006 in Arlington Arts Center
Deadline: Friday, July 01, 2005

Ten to fifteen artists will be selected for solo exhibitions to take place in 2006 in one of Arlington Arts Center's newly renovated galleries.

All artists living or working in Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania are invited to submit slides. Artworks in all media will be considered.

For more info visit this website or contact them at:

Arlington Arts Center
3550 Wilson Blvd
Arlington, VA 22201

Walsh at Nevin Kelly

I've been hearing some very good things about the current exhibition of paintings by Thomas Walsh at Nevin Kelly Gallery.

Walsh's show runs through May 8, and I certainly hope to be able to drop by and take a look before it closes.

Manassas Opening

One of the best watercolorists in our area is Chris Krupinski, and she'll be having a new exhibition at the Center for the Arts' Caton Merchant Gallery in Manassas.

The exhibition opens this Friday as part of the Manassas Gallery Walk from 6-9PM. The reception for the artist is next May 14 from 6-8PM. Free and open to the public, but RSVP requited to 703/330-2787.

Watkins Opening

Julia Rommel's thesis exhibition is opening at American University's Watkins Gallery this coming Thursday with an opening reception from 7-9PM.

Rommel's work has (so far) been my favorite from the MFA thesis shows exhibited at AU.

The exhibition closes on May 11, so hurry!

One Night Stand

Samantha Wolov is putting on a one night erotic photo installation this coming Friday, May 6, from 6-9PM, at the Washington Gallery of Photography.

Its called "One Night Stand", and it is a one night-only installation and Wolov says about her work that

"Essentially, I wanted to create sexually arousing imagery without using the techniques used in modern pornographic magazines -- i.e., no posing, no acknowledgment of the camera, etc. Looking back at art history, the techniques used in Playboy, for example, actually had the opposite, more "sobering" effect.

I am hoping to make a form of "anti-porn" that was still arousing; no posing, complete disregard for the camera, very spur of the moment."

Wolov plans to set up an intimate viewing area, and her photos will then be projected onto the gallery walls.

The installation is free and open to the public and for more information, please email Wolov here.

Century Opening

There's only one gallery in our area that concentrates exclusively on classical realism, and that's Century Gallery in Alexandria.

And Century is hosting a reception this Saturday May 7, 2005 from 6-9PM for four area artists who have achieved a lot of recognition for their classical work; they are: John Murray, Dan Thompson, Randy Melick and Rick Weaver.

Porn as Art

The last great taboo barrier is apparently coming down as porn enters the rarified atmosphere of high art. The NYT has an interesting article on the latest and greatest here. You can get a password for the NYT site from Bugmenot here.

In 1997 I did an exhibition of my portraits of porn movie stars and starlets, and although it did really well (they all sold, and some are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Sex), it still received a rather prudish review in the Washington Post.

I wonder what the reaction would be now?

New Exhibit Up

A new solo Art exhibition featuring the works of Afrika Midnight Asha Abney is currently on exhibition at Norton Kirby Advertising, 2410 18th St NW in Washington, DC.

Hours are Monday - Friday, 10am - 8pm, and weekends by appointments only. The show has been curated by Collin Klamper, Afrika Midnight Asha Abney and David Dyer of Art N Deed. For more information send an email to Aashawarrior@aol.com or call 202/538-3403.

Jacobson on Pluta

While I was away, the City Paper's Lou Jacobson reviewed our current Andrzej Pluta photography show in our Bethesda gallery.

Read the review here.

Kirkland Opens Today

One of the bennies you get by being an arts blogger is that we all read each others' BLOGs and thus everyone who is anyone in the BLOGsphere knows that my good friend J.T. Kirkland is opening his first ever solo show today.

What: "Studies in Organic Minimalism" -– J.T. Kirkland solo art exhibition

Who: Presented by the League of Reston Artists and the University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus

When: May 2 – June 25, 2005
Special Reception for the artist: Friday, May 13, 2005 – 6:00 – 9:00pm

Where: University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus
11730 Plaza America Drive, Suite 200
Reston, Virginia
For directions, see the LRA's website.

Viewing: Exhibition is free and open to the public during regular business hours
Monday – Thursday 9:00am – 10:00pm
Friday 9:00am – 5:00pm
Saturday 9:00am – 1:00pm

Bailey on Gopnik on Barclay

Just back from an exhausting (but successful weekend art fair), and just in time to catch another great episode of Deadwood. Have a few hundred emails and a ten days of the WaPo and others to catch up on.

And leave it to Bailey to help me out with my lack of recent posting and give us some good reading and excellent discussion points as he responds to Blake Gopnik's piece on Christian Marclay's video work (filed all the way from London).

"How About an Art Exhibit Inspired by an Art Critic Who’s Dragged Behind a Pickup Truck in Texas?"
By J.W. Bailey

One of the emblems of postmodern art is its insulated obsession with distilling unimaginable human tragedy down to a clever relativist art trick that is appropriate for display in the sanitized environment of the white cube space – and the larger the scale of the tragedy, the more the art trick seems to revolve around the distorted use of multi-media to convey the horrors of the deaths of the usually nameless and faceless victims that are symbolized through the art.

In his review of Christian Marclay’s seminal postmodern work, "Guitar Drag," Blake Gopnik takes the trouble to inform us that the video of the guitar being dragged behind a pickup truck for 14 minutes along a rural road echoes the death of James Byrd, Jr., at the hands of vicious racists in Texas (mind you that Gopnik doesn’t actually mention the vicious racists part, though).

Gopnik, a refined genteel member of the Washington, D.C., art elite, and a person we can safely assume has never spent more than three seconds riding in the back bed of a pickup truck in Texas with a perverted gang of drunken good ole’ boy racist rednecks looking for trouble, let alone ever being dragged behind that pickup as an African-American victim of their sick and monstrous joyride, tells us that watching Marclay’s stirring musical piece made him feel the pain of James Byrd, Jr.

Of course, the only important thing about Mr. Byrd’s actual life and death that Gopnik can muster to say in his review is that Mr. Byrd was "a black man dragged along a Texas road until his body fell apart."

Hopefully, postmodern art critics will never be licensed as forensic examiners – but I do have my doubts about that as they seem to be self-qualified to speak as experts on just about every other subject.

For the forensic art record, here’s just part of what happened to Mr. James Byrd, Jr.:

An African-American man, James Bryd, Jr., was brutally murdered by being kidnapped, beaten unconscious, spray-painted in the face with black paint, tied to the back of a pick-up truck, pants dropped down to his ankles, dragged 2.5 miles over pavement through a rural black community in Jasper County called Huff Creek, leaving his skin, blood, arms, head, genitalia, and other parts of his body strewn along the highway. His remains were dumped in front of a black cemetery.

Mr. Byrd was also member of a large family and had three sons. Following Mr. Byrd’s death, the Byrd family emerged as one of the nation's most powerful voices fighting for all people, including gay and lesbian Americans, against hate and intolerance. Mr.Byrd's sister, Louvon Harris, and his nephew, Darrell Verrett, who also serves as the executive director of the James Byrd Jr. Foundation, have been key advocates for both state and federal hate crime legislation. The family has spoken in support of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act at press conferences with HRC and appeared at Equality Rocks to promote their message of ending hate violence in America.

Marclay wants to present us with a trivial and stupid work of postmodern art that capitalizes on the death of another human being – that should come as no surprise as the world of high art loves touting this culture of death stuff. Gopnik wants to tell us about how painful that experience Byrd went through must have been after watching Marclay’s guitar fall apart – there’s no surprise there either as most art critics, no matter what their postmodern philosophical shortcomings, must at least appear to be somewhat human to their readers by giving lip service to a human disaster that is the supposed inspiration for a positively reviewed work of art.

Perhaps one day Christian Marclay will arrange for a private screening of "Guitar Drag" for all the friends and family members of Mr. James Byrd, Jr. – maybe Marclay will also invite Blake Gopnik to come back to the gallery and review that audience’s reactions to his masterpiece. And if Gopnik can sit still for long enough and actually listen to what they think and have to say about this piece of "art," there might not be enough column space in a lifetime’s supply of the Washington Post to review those reactions.

But that’s a big question – I think we would be lucky to have Gopnik sit for more than 14 minutes in the safety of the air-conditioned white cube space screening room surrounded by the traumatized emotions of people who knew and loved Mr. Byrd, Jr. (and who saw what his body really looked like after being dragged along that Texas back road) before he would get bored and have to move on to the next great piece of postmodern art to review.

A quick exit from the insensitive and manipulative "Guitar Drag" would certainly be understandable from those who personally knew Mr. Bryd, Jr. and could not stomach watching and listening to the excesses of its wretched and exploitative symbolism.

If only the world of high art could so easily exit itself from its self-created excesses by shallow artists that are propped up by an army of gullible critics that the rest of us can’t stomach from time to time, who refuse to break with the party line of postmodernism in their reviews no matter how outrageous the exploitation of the death of another human being through the art they are philosophically required to celebrate.

Sincerely,

James W. Bailey

Away at the Fair

Still in Richmond for a weekend of trying to sell some art. In spite of the rain, it was a surprising good start today, with a few nice sales.

Also ran into an old friend, the fair Rebecca D'Angelo, who photographs for the Washington Post and others and was covering the fair.

Kirkland on Art Blogging

JT has a good piece on the state of the art (Blogging) in DCist. Read it here.

New Art BLOG

Alexandra Silverthorne has a new art-focused BLOG. It is called Solarize This and you should all visit often

P.S. See... I didn't mispell your last name!

NNE Gallery

A new (at least new to me) gallery is NNE Gallery, located at 1312 8th Street, NW, Washington DC 20001 and phone is 202-276-4540.

NNE Gallery had an opening reception tonite (I wish I'd had the press release earlier) for Washington DC artist, Nooni Reatig.

Per the release, Reatig first gained recognition in 1998 at the age of seventeen for a series of controversial paintings entitled, Red Alert. It was reviewed in The Washington Post, "A Young Artist's Naked Ambition," where Nooni claimed that she would "make a difference" (in the art world).

Upon graduation from The Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2002, and then a brief stint at The Corcoran College of Art and Design, she has been working on series of sculptures showcased in this exhibition.

Welcome aboard!

Airborne today

Hellooooooooo Betty!

I'm heading home late tonight; on the redeye to Dulles.

On the flight home I will be finishing Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.

Busy weekend, as I arrive early tomorrow morning and then immediately drive south for an art fair over the weekend.

Should be fairly exhausted by Monday...