Wanna Ask John Currin a Question?

Do you want to interview John Currin? Is there something you'd like to ask him?

With Flash Art, now you can.

This spring, Flash Art is giving you the opportunity to interview John Currin. Flash Art is now soliciting questions from anyone, the readers of Flash Art and the Flash Art newsletter.

They will present the best of these questions to John Currin, and he will respond to them in an exclusive interview published later this year.

Please e-mail all questions to Matt before the deadline - Wednesday, 4 May, 2005.

Gopnik on Steinhilber

Gopnik doesn't pay too much attention to DC galleries, so make sure that when he does, we do as well... read it here.

Jenkins on Steinhilber

Guest Review by Mark Jenkins

I work beside Numark Gallery and have been passing by this exhibit daily and so thought to contribute a brief piece about my reaction to it in this blog -- just for fun.

The first work that grabbed me in this show is a large canvas on the ground tilted against the wall with a small orange ball centered on its edge that seems to light up the wall behind it. The friend I was there with wondered if it was a light as I’m sure many will.

I won’t ruin the secret of it, but if you can jump as high as me -- I barely dunked a basketball some years ago, but that was some years ago -- you’ll see it too. It was this act -- perhaps a reward for my effort and for not caring if I looked a little bit like a fool -- that enabled me to begin to understand the way Steinhilber’s mind enjoys reality. He does so by creating or uncovering simplistic enigmas of the everyday item.

I remember in one of the Dune books Frank Herbert said something about a character The Changer: "He illuminates the banal in a way that terrifies."

While Steinhilber hardly terrifies he certainly illuminates the ordinary in a way that gets you thinking. The caterpillar made from forks and plates, the cardboard boxes that seem like a family of acrobats, the sorrowful kite riled by a fan like a chained canary, and a small tape metropolis with one tower deconstructing itself, all share this Changed spirit.

One other thing to mention or rather advise -- go to the show on a full stomach or you’ll find yourself seriously considering taking a bite out of the giant cheeto.

Kirkland on Steinhilber

JT's review can be read in DCist here.

For next week...

Creating from Within by Tricia Ratliff, Silvia Santiago and Shannon Chester is an exhibition of original paintings, collage and photography to create awareness about EP's innovative public art project- Synergy!

The opening is this coming Wed. April 27 , from 6-8 p.m. at Karma Lounge (19th and I Street in DC). Artwork will be on view through May 14th.

This showing is a fundraiser for Synergy. With each purchase, you'll receive free ($40) tickets to The Artists Reality Show, a very unique performance event to be held on May 14, at The Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum, in Bethesda, Maryland.

Tickets and information about The Artists Reality Show will be available at the opening.

Katzen Arts Center

American University's Katzen Arts Center is about to open, and it includes a new gallery with 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, which is certain to become one of the key exhibition venues in the whole Eastern seaboard.

This will be a great new addition to our area's art scene, and lucky for us, it will be guided by a steady and experienced hand in the person of Jack Rasmussen, who as most of us know, is a highly experienced arts professional with a very deep knowledge of the DC area and Blatimore area art scenes.

And Jack steps into the new job with a brand new BLOG! Is that cool or what?

Visit the new BLOG here.

The Thursday Reviews

In the City Paper, Louis Jacobson reviews Barbara Probst at G Fine Art and also Maria Friberg at Conner Contemporary.

In the WaPo, Jessica Dawson has her usual third Thursdays set of mini reviews. Also in the Post, Jacqueline Trescott has a story on The National Endowment for the Arts' "scaling back" their initiative to "send the best of American culture around the country and is starting with only a tour of visual arts." Trescott reveals that the "NEA announced yesterday that it is giving the Phillips a grant of $100,000 to support a traveling exhibition of 20th-century painter [and my former art professor] Jacob Lawrence."

In DCist, Kirkland reviewed Victor Schrager at Adamson and JT tells me that later today DCist will have his review of Dan Steinhilber at Numark.

In the Gazette, Karen Schaffer has an article on Sandra Pope's Colour Art Studio and Gallery, a new art space in Silver Spring.

Also in the Gazette, a byline-less article discusses that as part of the Montgomery College annual Holocaust Commemoration program, Montgomery College Professors Jon Goell and Brian Jones, former Montgomery College students John Hoover and Susan Maldon Stregack, and Holocaust survivor Nesse Godin will discuss their participation in the exhibit "Portraits of Life."

Goell and Jones acted as project leaders and chief photographers of the exhibit, photographing and interviewing local Holocaust survivors in their homes. The professors were assisted by Montgomery College adjunct faculty member Rollin Fraser, students and former students, who acted as photo assistants, interviewers and photographers. Jane Knaus, the college's creative services director, designed the exhibit and coordinated its production.

More than 30 Holocaust survivors have been photographed for "Portraits of Life," creating a lasting legacy of their lives and their stories of survival.

The "Portraits of Life" photography exhibit will be on display at the college's Communication Arts Technologies (CAT) Gallery. It will officially open at the Holocaust Commemoration event and will remain on display through the end of April.