Artists at War: Pro & Con

MOCA DC has a superinteresting call for artists to put their creativity to work into delivering artwork both pro and con the Iraq War.

It's interesting to me, because as far as I know this is the first ever artists' call and exhibition where we may actually see pro war artwork, rather than immediately know ahead of time that all political artwork is against the liberation or invasion (depending on your point of view) of Iraq.

Will anyone have the cojones to enter, and then for MOCA to exhibit, pro war artwork? The left has little patience for things that it doesn't like, and this may put it to a test, while the right often tends to paint (no pun intended) any dissident view as anti-American.

Details here.

Collecting the Work of Emerging Artists

On Wednesday, April 18, 2007 from 6:30 – 8pm, DC's Transformer, in partnership with Civilian Art Projects, will present FRAMEWORK Panel #6 – Collecting the Work of Emerging Artists. This event will take place at Civilian Art Projects, 406 7th Street, NW, 3rd Floor (7th & D Streets).

Collecting the Work of Emerging Artists will be moderated by DC area ubercollector and arts enthusiast Philip Barlow, and will feature several area art collectors including James Alefantis, Monica Bussolati, Allison Cohen, Melvin L. Hardy, and Dr. Michael Pollack. The panel will focus on how each participating panelist "developed his or her current art collection, the importance of collecting the work of emerging artists, as well as where the panelists look to purchase work."

Attendance for this event is free, but seating will be limited. Rsvp your attendance to info@transformergallery.org or call 202-483-1102.

A Secret History of the Washington Body School

Save this date: Friday May 11, 2007 from 7-9pm. That's when Ian and Jan: The Undiscovered Duo, A Secret History of the Washington Body School, featuring Jeffry Cudlin and Meg Mitchell opens at DCA in the District.

Cudlin and Mitchell will stage an art historical intervention, weaving an alternative history for Washington art.

While Washington celebrates the Washington Color School through the multi-gallery Colorfield.remix project, Cudlin and Mitchell will mount a retrospective for their alter egos, Ian and Jan — a fictitious husband-and-wife performance art duo.

According to the exhibition’s premise, "Ian and Jan led the Washington Body School , a group that, in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, exhibited their body art alongside the work of prominent Washington abstract painters.

Ian and Jan: The Washington Body School will provide humorous commentary on Washington ’s cultural legacy, on revisionist art historical agendas, and on gender bias and power politics in the arts. The show will include photographs, drawings, props, and videos of the couple in action."

Does that sound cool or what?

PS - Oh yeah... the previously mentioned Cudlin skinny buttocks is viewable below! :-)

Art-O-Matic Saturday Sked

AOM is in full swing and in addition to the great and the not-so-great artwork, there are loads of free music events and dancing scheduled for Saturday.

Today's schedule is here and it includes live music by Circus of Saints, Mary Shapiro, Opposite Sex, Layne Garrett, The Mesmers, Hailcon, Alona, Medium Underground, and Jeremy Parker.

Free and open to the public.

The model as the star

My recent readings of various Georgia O'Keefe biographies bring to mind that the young O'Keefe career received an interesting boost through the lenses of Alfred Steiglitz, whose series of nude photographs with O'Keefe as the subject caused quite a sensation during the first decades of the 20th century and made the young painter a household name amongst American art aficionados duirng those halcyon years for American art.

Fierce Sonia is a young Greater DC area model and photographer, whose work I included in "Seven" (and it sold well) when I curated that mammoth project for the WPA/C.

And now Fierce Sonia is making waves of her own on the web as a model working with professional photographer David Allio.

The second new art exhibition of 2007 by David Allio brought nearly 10,000 viewers to the online gallery on opening day. The ten-image exhibition entitled "A Day with Sonia" is an artistic twist on a more-traditional photojournalistic look at one day with a professional figure model.

"The concept of following a single subject for one day is nothing new to a photojournalist. But, a few of the rules of traditional photojournalism were bent slightly for artistic effect," Allio admitted.

"My primary challenge for this exhibition was to find the right model to be featured in this creative collaboration. The project was discussed with several potential feature models. But, Sonia was the first person to bring to me both the fierce desire and commitment to balance her creative insight, strength, charisma, and confidence with a trust of my skills and vision in this artistic collaboration."

This was Sonia's fourth artistic collaboration with David Allio. Artworks from previous projects have earned the duo an OMP Fine Art Showcase Award and Best Picture Award from Japan's Photo Unlimited.

Exhibition is online here.

Wanna go to an Alexandria opening tonight?

Gallery West, the member operated fine art gallery at 1213 King Street in Old Town Alexandria, VA has a solo show of hand turned wood pieces by Alan Becker showing from April 4 - May 6, 2007 and the opening reception is tonight Saturday April 14, 2007 6-9PM.

After that go and check out Art-O-Matic, as there are several parties and events going on there until 1AM.

Art-O-Matic is Rockin' Now

Just back from my first quicklook at AOM, and the 2007 location is just amazing and wait until you see the views that one gets from the 6th and 8th floor of 2121 Crystal Drive.

There are dozens of parties going on right now even as I write this and there will be a lot of parties this weekend, as well as performances, music and other artistic efforts.

Soon I'll be writing my first take on this amazing show, based on this first walk-through and also tell you about the rumor sweeping through AOM.

As usual there's a lot of great art and a lot of dreck, and a lot of Kelly Towles-wannabes, but already one can feel the palpable great artistic energy that is AOM's true gift to the visual arts community of the Greater DC region.

Wanna go to a Baltimore opening tonight?

The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) highlights eight first-year students in MICA’s graphic design master of fine arts (M.F.A.) program in conjunction with the Graphic Design MFA Thesis Exhibition. First-Year Graphic Design MFA Exhibition provides a glimpse into the work of emerging artists and graduate students in the College’s graduate programs. The exhibition takes place in Bunting Center’s Pinkard Gallery at 1401 Mount Royal Avenue, with an opening reception on Friday, April 13, 5–7 p.m. and open studios on Friday, April 13, 7–9 p.m.

Works by 11 students form the First-Year MFA III Exhibition from Friday, April 13–Sunday, April 22, with an opening reception on Friday, April 13, 5–7 p.m. and open studios on Friday, April 13, 7–9 p.m. The students are Mount Royal School of Art students Lauren Boilini, Michael Burmeister, Andrea Chung, and Ben Steele; Rinehart School of Sculpture students Katie Cirasuolo, Jessie Lehson, and Elena Patino; Hoffberger School of Painting students Osvaldo Budet and Dominic Terlizzi; and photography and digital imaging program students Andrew Buckland and Anna DiCicco.

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow night?

The Randall Scott Gallery in DC, in collaboration with Contemporaria Georgetown will open "The Living Room Show" with a reception tomorrow, April 14th 6-9pm. The exhibition runs through May 19th, 2007.

Art-O-Matic Opens Today

As I am pounding into your heads by now, AOM, the region's most energetic artist-driven visual arts display opens today at 3PM in Crystal City at 2121 Crystal City Drive, just a couple of blocks from the Crystal City Metro station and also boasting plenty of free parking after 4PM. Expect a huge, multi-party at many levels, set of events to start later in the evening.

As there are around 600 artists, plus bars, music stages, performance stages, etc. it helps that ArtDC has an interactive map of AOM here (thanks Jesse!).

Lately I've fallen into the habit of predicting how the regional DC art press, both online and printed, will react (or not) to particularly interesting shows.

- At the last AOM, the WaPo's chief art critic, Mr. Blake Gopnik, brutalized the show in one of the bloodiest art reviews that I have ever read. And yet Gopnik's review had the usual opposite effect, and it in turn galvanized several hundred artists and WaPo readers against Blake and it also probably delivered several thousand extra curious visitors to AOM, so in the end, the Gopnik review was a good thing for AOM. I think that this year, Gopnik will not venture into AOM at all, since he is conceptually against the concept of AOM. It is a shame that the area's largest homegrown arts event will thus be ignored by the world's second most influential newspaper's chief art critic, who tends to forget that it is also a local newspaper. In the unlikely event that his boss (my good friend John Pancake, the WaPo's Arts Editor), actually tells Blake to go and review AOM, I suspect that Gopnik will once again tear it up, as conceptually, his mind is already made up that this most democratic and liberal of art shows is flawed from the beginning by a lack of a traditional curatorial hand.

- Also at the WaPo, we can pretty much count on a review by art and movie critic Michael O'Sullivan, as O'Sullivan is perhaps the only one in that newspaper that understands that AOM is not just about the artwork that hangs and is presented on the walls, but about the spectacular footprint that it leaves upon the region's art scene and the breath-taking success that it has had over the years in bringing art to the public, and artists to the eyes of collectors and gallerists. Leave it to O'Sullivan's keen eye to spot the potential "new" art star to emerge from this year's AOM.

- The WaPo's freelancer charged with covering DC art galleries is the fair Jessica Dawson, currently a graduate art history student at GWU. If history teaches us anything, it is that Dawson has been pretty regular in covering all the previous AOM's, usually led around by the indefatigable Judy Jashinsky. And so I think that Dawson will once again write about AOM, and probably deliver her standard "what I didn't like" report, mixed in with a couple of lukewarm maybes.

- The Washington City Paper will probably give AOM decent coverage, and I'm sure that we'll see a profile of either the show itself or some of the more colorful characters that inhabit AOM. Art critic Jeffry Cudlin is also an artist, and he participated in the last AOM, but since his name is missing from this year's AOM artists' list, I suspect that Jeffry will review this year's AOM provided that he can arrange his schedule so that he can get his skinny buttocks over to Crystal City (Note to Cudlin: start planning the trip now). As usual, we can expect a brooding, intelligently written review, which (since he was an ex-participant), we hope will explore the impact of AOM on the regional art psyche and public, besides the art on the walls.

- The bloggers I suspect have already made up galvanized minds, and if we liked it before, we'll like it again, and those who hated it before, will most likely hate it again, and already do, even before they set foot in Crystal City. Curious to me is how many of them/us seem to focus on the artwork, and completely miss the true impact of AOM. Also curious to me is how writers who are generally lefty pinkos in almost all they profess, become neoconartcritics when it comes to a massive open show organized by artists, lacking a curatorial Big Brother and essentially a 21st century rebirth of the democratic artistic movement that dethroned the academic art salons of Europe back in the late 1800s.

See ya there!

WOW!

WOW is all that I can say in view of the WaPo's spectacular online coverage that they're giving Art-O-Matic.

Here the Going Out Gurus have put together a slide show and all kinds of good stuff about the painters, sculptors, filmmakers, naked people, fire-breathers and other mutants that we will soon be staring at in AOM.

This is the kind of coverage that separates anemic paper coverage and augments it with terrific online coverage.

A cyberspace kiss and a hug and a "well done!" to the GOGs.

O'Keefe

On a recent trip, in the airplane seat pocket, I found Laurie Lisle's biography of Georgia O'Keefe, which claims to be OK's first published bio.

Compounded with all this recent traveling to New Mexico and Arizona, I read it very quickly and it has sort of kindled some interest in this legendary American painter, and I've just picked up Georgia O'Keefe: A Life by Roxana Robinson as well as the huge copy of Georgia O'Keefe in the West by Doris and Nicholas Callaway.

In all my previous light explorations of O'Keefe, such as museum visits, I've never really been too attracted to her work, but after reading an early biography, and re-looking at some of her work, my eyes are now opening to the fact that perhaps O'Keefe's legacy lies more in the conceptual range of painting, coupled with an extraordinary life and a spectacularly O'Keefe-centric personality, as well as pretty good luck in some instances.

She certainly only had ordinary painting skills and ordinary techniques (surprising considering her training), but perhaps more importantly, an enviable work ethic and a superlative eye for the subject matter, as well as a powerful and skilled champion in Steiglitz, easily the world's first art critic + art dealer + curator + gallerist + artist + art cheerleader all combined into one person.

It is thus her life, her aloofness, and her conceptual view of painting that I now have discovered and find somewhat attractive to read more about.

Art-O-Matic Update

As everyone knows by now, AOM opens this coming weekend in Crystal City at 2121 Crystal City Drive, just a couple of blocks from the Crystal City Metro station and also boasting plenty of free parking after 4PM.

Herewith some updates:

- The Right Reverend Bailey challenges the WaPo's chief art critic to give AOM a fair critical eye (good luck with that!). Details here.

- If you see some naked painted people walking around, don't freak out as I am told that there's going to be some body painting going on around the 6th floor of AOM on Friday.

- After 4pm there is free underground parking in the Crystal City Shops across the street.

Artomatic will open to the public at 3pm, Friday, April 13, 2007. It is free and open to the public (donations accepted).

Busy week

This week (in fact all of April) is shaping up to be a very busy set of days for visual arts lovers along the Mid Atlantic. In addition to the mega opening of Artomatic this coming Friday, the following openings stand out (and I'm leaving out a ton of stuff that I hope to be able to mention later in the week):

In Philly, Nexus has two new exhibitions by member artist Matthew Pruden and a collaboration between member artist Yukie Kobayashi and artist Elasabé Dixon. The opening reception for both exhibitions is Thursday, April 12 from 6 to 9 PM. Matthew Pruden presents his 2nd solo exhibition at Nexus Gallery, titled "Magnetic Sleep." This exhibition of multi-media projects is the result of his research into 19th century spirit photography, parapsychology, and Spiritualism. Yukie Yobayashi has collaborated with artist Elsabé Dixon to create Kumo Cloud Wolk, an installation comprised of hand made paper and silk weavings. There's also a gallery talk on Sunday, April 15, at 2 PM, moderated by Elyse A. Gonzales, Assistant Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art. The exhibitions run through April 29, 2007.

In Baltimore, on Thursday, April 12, 2007, photographers Thomas Struth and Mitch Epstein will be discussing their work at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of BMA's "Conversations with Contemporary Photographers" program. Free and open to the public and no registration is necessary. BMA Meyerhoff Auditorium, 7 pm. The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) highlights eight first-year students in MICA’s graphic design master of fine arts (M.F.A.) program in conjunction with the Graphic Design MFA Thesis Exhibition. First-Year Graphic Design MFA Exhibition provides a glimpse into the work of emerging artists and graduate students in the College’s graduate programs. The exhibition takes place in Bunting Center’s Pinkard Gallery at 1401 Mount Royal Avenue, with an opening reception on Friday, April 13, 5–7 p.m. and open studios on Friday, April 13, 7–9 p.m. Works by 11 students form the First-Year MFA III Exhibition from Friday, April 13 – Sunday, April 22, with an opening reception on Friday, April 13, 5–7 p.m. and open studios on Friday, April 13, 7–9 p.m. The students are Mount Royal School of Art students Lauren Boilini, Michael Burmeister, Andrea Chung, and Ben Steele; Rinehart School of Sculpture students Katie Cirasuolo, Jessie Lehson, and Elena Patino; Hoffberger School of Painting students Osvaldo Budet and Dominic Terlizzi; and photography and digital imaging program students Andrew Buckland and Anna DiCicco.

In Bethesda, MD, as this coming Friday is the second Friday of the month, it's time for the monthly Bethesda Art Walk, with 13 galleries and studios that open their doors from 6-9pm on the second Friday of every month. At Gallery Neptune, C'ville artist Warren Craghead has "How to be Everywhere," which is new work by Craghead based on the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire. Work by David Wallace and sculptures by Mark Behme will also be on exhibition. Also available will be a book of the same title consisting of drawings based on Apollinaire's poetry. The opening reception and book launch will be Friday April 13, 6pm - 9pm. At Fraser Gallery, New York painter (and VCU graduate) David Gordon makes his DC area gallery debut. Opening reception from 6-9PM.

In Arlington, VA, the Arlington Arts Center has the opening receptions for their Spring Solos on Friday, April 13, from 6-9PM. Solos include Keith Sharp (MD), Katherine Kavanaugh (VA), Ephraim Russell (PA), Gail Gorlitzz (DC), Soomin Ham (VA), Dominie Nash (MD) plus an Eye on Arlington exhibition of John M. Adams (VA). Outside on the AAC grounds you can also check out "Disintegration," curated by Twylene Moyer, Managing Editor of Sculpture magazine with works by Margaret Boozer (MD), Michele Kong (PA), and Cory Wagner (MD).

In DC, Conner Contemporary Art has an exhibition of rarely seen paintings by Howard Mehring, who has been called the "sleeping giant" of Washington Color Painting and who was the first of the second generation of Color Field painters to explore the potentials of color through novel experiments with painting techniques including pouring, staining, stippling, and sectional painting. There will be an opening night reception, Friday, April 13th from 6 to 8pm. The reception is concurrent with Marsha Mateyka Gallery around the corner, who will be presenting "Gene Davis: Selected Works from the Estate of the Artist." The next night, Hemphill Fine Arts has an opening reception on Saturday, April 14 from 6:30 - 8:30 PM for three different artists: Leon Berkowitz for "The Cathedral Series," and ex-Fuseboxer now living in France Jason Gubbiotti for "Wrong Way To Paradise," and also Portia Munson's "Pink Project: Contained." The exhibitions go through May 26, 2007. Over at Irvine Contemporary, Martin and Lauren have "Oliver Vernon: Macro/Micro," featuring paintings and on-site sculpture by Vernon. Opening Reception with the Artist on Saturday, April 14, 6-8 PM and the exhibition runs through May 19, 2007.

Also in DC, 52 O Street Artist Studios will be hosting its annual Open Studios on Saturday, April 14 and Sunday, April 15 from 11am-5pm. Sixteen artists, in one building, working in a wide range of media and styles open their studios to the public. This free event provides the visitor the opportunity to purchase artwork and meet the artists in a relaxed, inviting atmosphere. Occupying 28,000 square feet, over four floors, 52 O Street Studios is one of the largest and oldest buildings dedicated to the practice of fine arts in Washington, DC.

Still in DC, the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop has "A Comedy of Errors," a collection of works in all media by Capitol Hill Art League members, opening on Saturday, April 14, 2007, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. and juried by my good friend J.W. Mahoney. "Not What You Think", an a cappella ensemble affiliated with the Gay and Lesbian Chorus of Washington, will present two brief sets of music during the opening. Through May 4, 2007. And the Randall Scott Gallery has the opening of "The Living Room" (a marriage of comtemporary art and modern furniture) with an opening reception on Saturday, April 14th from 6-9pm.

Finally, on Saturday April 14, 2007 a whole bunch of openings and lectures are happening in galleries and art spaces all over DC and the DC suburbs as part of the ColorField.remix celebration of painting. More than 30 Washington area museums, galleries, arts organizations and businesses are participating. The event honors the 1950s and 1960s Color Field visual art movement and the Washington Color School, which put Washington, DC on the art world map. Details and schedules here. More on this project later.

Ethereal Heist in Baltimore

This is an incredibly busy week for art in the region, but I wanted to make sure to highlight Ethereal Heist, which is part of the MFA Exhibition - MICA Graduate Thesis Show at the Maryland Institute College of Art Decker/Meyerhoff/Fox 3 Galleries in Baltimore.

The opening reception is Friday, April 13th, 5pm - 9pm and running through April 22, 2007.

As savvy collectors know, keeping an eye on graduate students' work is key to beginning or continuing an art collection. Details here. Work by Elizabeth Wade, Michael Sandstrom, Kelly Egan, Wonsun Shin, Nathaniel Rogers, Ramsay Barnes, Stuart Jackson, Jodi Lieburn, Jackson Martin, Lesly Deschler Canossi, and Michael Hurst.

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow?

The Mexican Cultural Institute, located in one of Washington's most beautiful buildings and boasting a really good exhibition space, as well as really good Mexican munchies for their openings, has an opening reception on Wednesday, April 11, 7pm for artist Beatriz Ezban titled "Unified Field: The Border" (Campo Unificado: La Frontera).

The exhibition is free, but you must R.S.V.P. to (202) 728-1675. In addition to the opening, George Washington University’s Ballet Folklorico and Los Quetzales Mexican Dance Ensemble will perform live music and will show you how to dance zapateado as they do in Veracruz. “Voces Veracruzanas,” which is a group of young musicians from Veracruz, will be performing Son Jarocho and Latin-American folkloric music

The exhibit will be held through April 29, 2007. The Institute is located on 2829 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009.

The arts and Real Estate connection

It is a well known phenomenom of the real estate business, that the fine arts are kind of an antihistiamine or antibiotic for neighborhoods that are infected with crime and empty, vacant buildings.

Because crime ridden or boarded-up neighborhoods usually get very low rents, they become a magnet for artists looking for cheap studios and small, unique restaurants looking for affordable spaces.

So picture Old Town Alexandria a few decades ago, with an abandoned old shell of a building where torpedoes were manufactured during WWII, and many empty boarded up buildings up and down King Street. Or perhaps imagine, just a few years ago, the 14th Street area in Washington, DC, pretty much in the same malignant state.

And thus after quite a few truckloads of trash were removed from the Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria, and a few brave artists and then art galleries opened up around the 14th Street, these areas began to attract people - both to the arts and to the restaurants.

And this in turn, began the vicious cycle of real estate, because now the national chains begin to become interested in the once dying neighborhoods, and rents begin to rise, and soon the artists and the galleries, and the small unique restaurants, have to start looking for a new place to go to, unable to pay the same rent scales as the chain restaurants and the national stores.

And so they begin migrating to yet another desperate neighborhood, like a revitalizing force of art and food.

This is apparently what is happening now in the area along West Broad Street in downtown Richmond, VA.

A First Fridays gallery walk was institutionalized there in 2001, soon after galleries and artists began to occupy the once vacant (and cheap) buildings in the area.

As Joe Macenka and Olympia Meola report in the Richmond Times Dispatch:

The event started in 2001 with about 17,000 visitors on a schedule that began in the fall and ended in the spring. Last year, attendance swelled to about 50,000. This year, First Fridays has expanded to a 12-month schedule.

It has become a linchpin for a renaissance along the West Broad corridor. What began with a few artists taking over vacant buildings along the stretch has blossomed into a movement with new restaurants, galleries, shops and apartments.

This is great news!

But now a word of warning: As I mentioned earlier, there will be soon a point where the same folks who braved the early days and set up galleries, shops and restaurants in this area, and made it blossom with its own unique character, will face escalating rents, and come to the attention of the trade giants of the food and retail industry. And when the rents go up, the artists and small restaurants will leave.

And unless the Richmond city fathers understand the vicious real estate cycle and make special accommodations for the original brave new gallerists and artists and chefs, etc., with them will leave the people, who after all, came to the area attracted by its own uniqueness, rather than a cookie-cutter downtown area full of Mickydees, Banana Republics and even chain pubs and chain galleries. And when the people stop coming, the chains' profits decrease and before you know it, they're gone, and buildings get boarded up, crime rises, and the whole cycle starts again, as a new generation of artists and chefs begin to move in.

Note: That's our own Rosetta DeBeradinis in the photograph illustrating the article!

Art-O-Matic Countdown

AOM opens this coming weekend in Crystal City at 2121 Crystal City Drive, and the exciment to one of the nation's most energizing artist-driven events is already building up as artists design, paint and create their spaces, and artneocon critics sharpen their journalistic fangs in their galvanized minds, and gallerists open their eyes to try to find the emerging star in this year's version of AOM.

Held regularly since 1999, Artomatic is the region’s one-of-a-kind multimedia art extravaganza, featuring more than 600 regional artists and performers. The free five-week event, to be held April 13–May 20, will feature nearly 90,000 square feet of paintings, sculptures, photography and cutting edge videos, computer and even self-creating artworks. And as AOM veterans know, a ton of parties and fun.

As DC ubercollector Philip Barlow eloquently pointed out in this letter to the WCP, many of today's top DC artists have Art-O-Matic in their resume: Manon Cleary, Dan Steinhilber, the Dumbacher brothers, Renee Stout, Tim Tate, Michael Clark, Richard Dana, Graham Caldwell, Judy Jashinsky, Richard Chartier, and many, many others, including online superstar and multi best-selling author: Frank Warren of Postsecret.

During the last AOM, I asked a variety of curators, gallerists, collectors and other artsy folks to email me their top 10 lists of their favorite ten AOM artists. The lists were then published here, and eventually they generated a variety of separate art shows in several DC, VA and MD commercial galleries and even catapulted some artists into solo shows.

So this year we're going to do it again, and if you sent me a Top 10 List during the last AOM, consider yourself invited and please email me your Top 10 once you visit AOM this year.

Artomatic will open to the public at 3pm, Friday, April 13, 2007.

Wanna be a DC art critic?

DCist is looking for a visual arts writer. Details here.

Katie Tuss Interviews Anne Ellegood

Today is the last day left if you don’t want to miss the Hirshhorn Museum’s current exhibition Refract, Reflect, Project: Light Works from the Collection, which is on display through this Sunday, April 8, 2007. Katie Tuss recently spoke with Hirshhorn Associate Curator Anne Ellegood, who organized the exhibition, about the seductive nature of light and some of the highlights in the current show.

Katie Tuss: The show covers light works from 1959 to the present and numerous art movements are represented. How is the use of light developing differently than painting and sculpture?


Anne Ellegood: Well I think that one thing that happens, and that has been happening for several decades, is that contemporary artists don’t feel like their work needs to be rooted in illusion or representation. Often times they want to remove that intermediate step, so that whatever they are making has a direct relationship to the material. Spencer Finch’s piece Cloud H20 talks about this. He doesn’t want to make a painting of the sky. To him it has already been done, and done very well. He wants to create something more direct. And light does that, even if it is artificial light. You may or may not think of a cloud and it doesn’t really matter, but you are probably going to have some sense of the kind of feeling you have when you look at a cloud.

KT: Yeah, that piece almost moves.

AE: Actually it does physically move with wind currents in the gallery. If there are enough people in the space, it will respond. The installation isn’t rigid.

KT: What are the opportunities for using light moving forward?

AE: With young artists, and what I have noticed with Olafur Eliasson and Ivan Navarro, they want a capacity for intimacy with an object and to establish a type of familiarity with the object, but easily weave in historical, social, and scientific aspects as well. They aren’t interested in completely formal investigation like Dan Flavin. They want to add back in a kind of content, but are still enamored with the directness of the light as a material.

KT: In Navarro’s piece Flashlight: I’m not from here, I’m not from there, is that a random man or the artist in the accompanying video, pushing the wheelbarrow made of fluorescent light tubes?

AE: It is a friend of the artist.

KT: There is a sense of intimacy the man has with the wheelbarrow as he physically pushes it around and this piece is immediately juxtaposed in the first room of the exhibition with Flavin’s “monument” for V. Tatlin.

AE: It is really great that we have the opportunity to put the Flavin with a work like Navarro’s. These are two artists with totally different backgrounds and different agendas, but Navarro’s generation is very aware of Flavin’s generation. Navarro’s piece is built from his knowledge of art history, with a desire to acknowledge his own background, life, preoccupations, and concerns. He has picked up on Flavin and given it his own twist. It is exciting that we have the ability to show the two works side by side. We are trying to do more of this so that histories don’t look like they are operating separately.

KT: It is helpful to know the precedence and then actually be able to see the precedence.

AE: If you pick up neon, you have to grapple with Flavin. It makes you think about how materials shift and your comfort with them as an audience. When Flavin was starting out with fluorescents, it was pretty radical. You didn’t use industrially produced elements in your artwork. We don’t think of this as radical anymore. For Navarro it isn’t radical. It becomes a conversation literally about power in a more ideological sense.