Friday, June 03, 2005
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Policed Postcards
Kriston with some interesting words on Frank Warren's PostSecret project and specifically Warren's possible curatorial hand at work.
Read it here.
Art League Talk Today
One of the things that I notice consistently is how common an artist's poor presentation skills (for their artwork) is; and the worst offenders are often experienced art professors.
Acidic mats, fragile work backed by corrugated cardboard, hand-cut mats, scratched frames, scratched plexi, kitschy frames, colored mats, dirty mats, huge signatures, unsigned works... you name it and every gallerist has seen it.
So the Art League asked me a while back to give a presentation on... presentation.
It will take place today at the Art League Gallery in Alexandria.
Call them for details at 703/683-1780.
Hurry!
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Thanks to the generosity of Bethesda area businesswoman and arts activist Carol Trawick, and the sponsorship of the Bethesda Urban Partnership, our Fraser Gallery of Bethesda presents an exhibition of the eight finalists of the first annual Bethesda Painting Awards.
Opening on Thursday, June 8 through July 6, 2005, the exhibition features works by eight finalists selected by the three independent jurors.
On opening night (Friday, June 10) the jurors will announce a $14,000 Best of Show prize, a $2,000 Second Prize, a $1,000 Third Prize and a $1,000 Young Artist Award.
The competition was juried by Churchill Davenport, Professor of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA); Chawky Frenn, an accomplished painter (represented by us) and Assistant Professor of Painting at George Mason University and Dr. Claudia Rousseau, a contemporary art critic and Professor of Art History at the School of Art & Design at Montgomery College. More information on the jurors is online here.
The eight finalists are: John Aquilino, Rockville, MD, David R. Daniels, Silver Spring, MD, Inga McCaslin Frick, Washington, D.C., Joe Kabriel, Annapolis, MD, Catherine Lees, Baltimore, MD, Sue Ousterhout, Chevy Chase, MD, Dominique Samyn-Werbrouck, Alexandria, VA, and Andrew Wodzianski, Washington, D.C. (represented by us). More information on the finalists is online here.
An opening reception, free and open to the public, will be held on Friday, June 10 from 6-9PM as part of the Bethesda Art Walk.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Bailey Strikes Again
Bailey, the Quran (Koran), Art, and Hypocrisy on World Net Daily.
Read it here.
Secrets in the New York Times
Another opportunity for all of those who dissed Art-O-Matic to eat crow.
Today's NYT has a piece by Sarah Boxer mostly focused on Frank Warren's PostSecret project, which made its first debut at the last AOM, then here with people's Top 10 lists, then at the Anne C. Fisher Gallery in G'town as part of Anne's Top 10 AOM list, and so on...
One of the best ways to prove negativity-driven mouthpieces wrong (just one of many ways), is success.
Congrats to Warren, and I know that this is not the last that we've heard of his project.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Gopnik on Portraits
Blake Gopnik comes across with a really excellent piece on portraiture. Read it here.
On June 1, the National Portrait Gallery is launching its first nationwide portrait competition, borrowing an idea from its British counterpart. Photography isn't being allowed in. But even if some truly interesting painting or sculpture emerges when the winners are announced next year, it's hard to see how it could touch the hermetic world of official portraiture. Unless a picture looks a fair bit like the portraiture that's come before, it doesn't fill the peculiar social and political roles its patrons have in mind for it.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Opportunity for Photographers
The Frederick Camera Clique's 19th Annual Summer Competition
Entries will be received at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center from
9 a.m. until noon on Saturday, June 25, and again from 9 a.m. until noon on
Saturday, July 2.
A reception for the exhibition will be held on Saturday, July 16 from 5-7
p.m. at the Mary Condon Hodgson Art Gallery at Frederick Community College.
The exhibition will be on display at the gallery from July 14 to Sept 8.
Click here for complete details of the competition and a downloadable entry form.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Seven: Videographer Wanted
An idea that I hope to implement for Seven is to have the entire process documented.
As such we're looking for a volunteer videographer who's be willing to videotape the entire exhibition process, from the delivery of artwork commencing June 27th, to Kelly Towles painting a wall, to Alessandra Torres transforming a room, to the formal opening on June 30th.
Interested? Email me.
Georgetown International
The deadline for the 9th Annual Georgetown International Fine Arts Competition is rapidly approaching: June 3, 2005.
The 2005 juror is Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator of the American University's Katzen Arts Center Galleries.
Entry forms and prospectus here.
Bring Darko Maver into the Equation
Nick Salvatore writes that:
All this discussion of lies and faked photos as art immediately reminded me of the career of Darko Maver.
As discussed here, Maver was supposed to have based his work on using various sculpting materials to painstakingly re-create crime scenes and murders he'd seen in photos. The pieces were so obsessively crafted and "life"-like that they were nearly indiscernable from the actual scenes he recreated. The audience only ever saw his work in the form of photographs, so presentations of his work wound up looking like collections of forensic and medical photos.
As it turns out, that's exactly what they were. A couple of neoists had found a bunch of grim photos, re-imagined them as images of re-creations, created a compelling life story for their artist, and presented it all to the unknowing public. Not that this is going on here, necessarily.
But it's interesting to me that, years after the Maver thing, there's an artist out there who's actually put in the man-hours to make a more audience-friendly version of the same point. And I can't help but wonder whether Demand's work achieves or conveys anything that "Maver's" work did not. I suppose I should see the show.
Vera Blagev
One of the great assets of living around the DC area, is that in addition to having one of the most active fine arts scenes around the nation, and loads of exhibition venues, we are also lucky to have a lot of alternative spaces that show art, as any perusal of the Washington City Paper "On Exhibit" section will prove.
Area artist Vera Blagev is currently showing in two of these venues. Some of her drawings are currently on display at the CD Warehouse store in Georgetown (3001 M Street NW in Washington DC) starting on May 16th running for 8 weeks and at Cafe Luna (1633 P Street NW in Washington DC) starting May 16th for one month.
New Arts BLOG
After reading Bailey's essay on Demand's work, Teague Clare was compelled to succumb to making a blog specifically so that he could easily post some things that came to him after reading it!
And a damned good start if I may say so myself!
Welcome to the BLOGsphere! Visit Innerbias often.
Friday, May 27, 2005
The Weekly Reviews
In the City Paper, Louis Jacobson reviews Richard Barrett and Pamela Soldwedel at Parker Gallery.
In the Gazette, Dr. Claudia Rousseau reviews Compelled by Content at Fraser Gallery Bethesda.
In the WaPo on Thursday's "Galleries" day = Zip. But on Friday Michael O'Sullivan reviews "Close Up in Black: African American Film Posters," on view at the International Gallery of the Smithsonian's S. Dillon Ripley Center.
At Solarize This, Alexandra Silverthorne reviews our Gabriela Bulisova show at Fraser Gallery Bethesda.
In DCist, J.T. Kirkland reviewed Teo Gonzalez at Irvine Contemporary and also Kehinde Wiley at Conner Contemporary.
And in here, Bailey reviewed Gopnik on Thomas Demand at MOMA.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Feed your Gehry Jones
In the unlikely event that you are one of those Jonesing for a local Gehry, now that it seems that the Corcoran's Gehry plans have evaporated, then the webcam for the new Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi may feed your Jones to see one of the origami buildings being constructed (perilously close to the waters of the Mississippi Sound by the way).
Locals in NYC
Congratulations to Chan Chao, whose beautiful Echo photographs opened last Friday at Yancey Richardson Gallery. Chao's show runs through July 2, 2005 and he's represented locally by Numark Gallery.
Congratulations also to Jesse Cohen, whose photographs also opened last week at Brooklyn's Ch'i and runs through June 15, 2005.
Congratulations to our own Tim Tate, whose glass installation opens at SOFA NY at the Armory on June 2 and runs through June 5, 2005.
And congratulations to the below-listed almost locals from Virginia Commonwealth University's acclaimed Graduate Sculpture Program -- currently ranked #1 in the country by U.S. News & World Report -- and so it should be a strong show. Their show opens at Kim Foster Gallery in New York on June 4 and runs through July 2, 2005.
