Linkmania

I'm not really sure what the cause is (perhaps it was the TV story last week), but suddenly today, according to Technorati, DC Art News has links to it from over 500 blogs around the world, making it the 3,370th highest ranked blog on the planet, not bad considering that Technorati is currently tracking 51.8 million blogs.

Woohoo! First time that DC Art News has broken into the 4-digit ranking neighborhood. Not sure how long this will last, as these "rankings" tends to float up and down quite prodigiously.

Still a long way from PostSecret's amazing 11,659 blogs that link to Frank Warren's wondrous blog, but if I may toot my own horn, methinks (at least for the day), way ahead of any other DC area based arts blog.

And it's all still just about the Greater DC area visual art scene.

If you don't get it, you don't get it.

All Members Show at Multiple Exposures Gallery

Last week I found my way to Multiple Exposures Gallery on the second floor of the Torpedo Factory, to see their All-Member Show, juried this month by Matt Mendelsohn.

I was immediately attracted to a photograph by Peggy Fleming titled "Pam Taylor," which shows a view of (I assume) Pam’s toes floating from the edge of her tub, securing in my mind the vision of Frida Kahlo’s “What the Water has Given Me.” As a card-carrying Kahlophile since 1977, it was a winner for me.

Danny Conant’s pigment print "Tower in the Clouds" and "Trees and Water," as well as Grace Taylor’s "Japan" and Barbara Southworth’s “Downstream” complete the usual well-balanced and superb show that is part of the exhibition tradition that has made Multiple Exposures (formerly Factory Photoworks, which I liked better as a gallery name) one of the best stops for high quality fine arts photography in the Mid Atlantic.

The show runs through August.

Arts Commission Display Racks

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has two large display racks that they "display" outside their office building on 8th Street NW. They get a great deal of foot traffic as people go to lunch and walk to work. People are always checking the rack out and grabbing any brochures or postcards about upcoming arts activities.

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities will gladly display any brochures or promotional materials that you have for upcoming projects. If you are interested, please deliver the materials to the DC Arts Commission offices at 410 8th Street NW, 5th floor, Washington DC, 20004 to the attention of Jose Dominguez. Deadline for drop off of materials is September 8th.

Visions from Russia at Target Gallery

A few days ago I visited the Target Gallery in Old Town Alexandria to see the current "Visions from Russia" exhibition, and while there I chatted briefly with the gallery’s new director Mary Cook: welcome to the job Mary!

The exhibition itself includes work by Iskander Ulumbekov, Vladimir Zorin, Yuri Bondarenko, and Evgeni Vereschagin.

Over the last few years I have been lucky to have been exposed to the work of many gifted Russian and former Soviet Empire artists through Georgetown’s Alla Rogers Gallery, which focuses a lot of their exhibitions upon artists from that part of the world, and it never ceases to amaze me how these diverse lands offer so many gifted artists and refreshing visions.

There's no doubt that the rigid approach to teaching employed by former Communist countries, when applied to art produces technically-gifted artists who truly know how to execute and push their medium to whatever limits technical skill can offer. This is a skill often lacking from most American art schools, not all, but most. And so, most of these artists are superbly technically gifted - there's no question about that.

Having said that, "Visions from Russia" was slightly disappointing to me, as most of the work was so firmly anchored on a traditional view of the subject matter, that it colored the entire exhibition under a sort of a dated sense of painting (which most of the pieces are, except for a few nice bronzes).

And yet there were some standouts in the show.

Two pieces from Iskander Ulumbekov are as far away from traditional Russian painting as they can be, and suddenly offer a bridge to a somewhat surreality of contemporary ironic-ism that makes them stand out in my opinion.

Let me tell you why.

In both “Morning in the Forest” and “Evening in the Forest,” Ulumbekov has produced two very traditional and somewhat 18th century-looking landscape paintings, even to the dark tonality and hue to the paint. Except that he has introduced two most unusual characters into the middle of these paintings: in one there’s an almost Romantic Mickey Mouse (I almost want to call him Sir Michael Rodent, as he seems almost like an English gentleman strolling through his private forest in a Landseer painting) and in the other a cute (and huge) Teddy bear.

It is such a contradiction of visual references, that makes these two pieces stand out from the rest of the works, much like a Ron English painting of the same subject would do in the middle of a Vermeer retrospective.

The exhibition runs through August 27, 2006.

Fine Art Adoptions

NYC Artist Adam Simon has come up with a brilliant idea in the Fine Art Adoption Network (FAAN). This idea, and this effort, is precisely what we need more of!

Per the site's main page:

FAAN is an online network, which uses a gift economy to connect artists and potential collectors. All of the artworks on view are available for adoption. This means acquiring an artwork without purchasing it, through an arrangement between the artist and collector. Our goal is to help increase and diversify the population of art owners and to offer artists new means for engaging their audience.

So far, Transformer is the only DC area arts venue "collaborator" that I recognize (and the site is a little fuzzy as to exactly how a collaborator participates, or is made a collaborator, etc.), but I see great things in the future for this effort and idea, and even some potential collaborators in our area!

The artists in the project are so far mostly New York artists, with one notable local exception.

Styling

Today's WP has a really good piece by Jessica Dawson on the Ledelle Moe's heads installed at the 14th and Church streets NW empty storefront. Dawson writes:

This street-level exhibition is the blessing of a sluggish economy. Metropolis Development Corp., owner of the storefront and the condo building encasing it, awaits a retail tenant for the space. Until then, Moe's installation, certainly one of her most effective to date, serves the Metropolis brand.

A signal of aspiration and good taste, art provides Metropolis -- the firm behind a handful of brand-new, loft-style condominium buildings around the intersection of 14th and P streets NW -- with a strategic dose of cachet. John Grimberg, a consultant to Metropolis and the man who suggested installing art in the storefront, says the impromptu exhibition helps Metropolis remain on the neighborhood radar. Grimberg says the company's aim was "to use the space to create a presence" for the firm's brand. As Grimberg phrased it, showing art is "in keeping with the Metropolis aesthetic."

More than just a review, this piece is more like a really good art column on this installation, the artist and the landlord.

Read the column here.

P.S. to Dawson: What "sluggish economy?" Read the financial section once in a while.

Elsewhere in Style, Lavanya Ramanathan, who likes to use the imperial "we" in writing (and I sorta, kinda like that)... ah, writes:

The sentiment behind all the exhibitions of recent grads' work this summer is not lost on us: Forward-looking, progressive galleries that recognize fresh viewpoints and encourage local artists make up the bedrock of the arts.

But we have to admit, we've been nearly glassy-eyed trying to make sense of the wide range of voices -- and talent -- represented.

From some shows, including Irvine Contemporary's "Introductions 2" (bachelor's and master's grads), we've been able to embrace only a piece or two. Is it that the rest weren't any good? Not at all. It's just that few were able to rise above the yard-sale curation.

Lavanya Ramanathan!

Yard-sale curation! Harsh words to use in describing a show by one of our top area galleries.

At first I was a little shocked at the description (and I haven't seen this show yet, but I will next week), and then I realized that we should applaud Lavanya Ramanathan for using tough, passionate opinion in writing about art instead of the usual wishy-washy art writing that we've all become used to. I do however, also hope that Lavanya Ramanathan will use equally strong positive adjectives and passion when the artwork or show in question deserves it from Lavanya Ramanathan's perspective and opinion.

Lavanya Ramanathan also reviews "15 Minutes" at Project 4 in the column. For a different perspective on "Introductions 2," read Jeffry Cudlin's review in the CP here.

And it is a good thing to see a different WaPo writer writing about our galleries once in a while.

PS #2 - The other current show of students and recent grads, Academy 2006 at Conner Contemporary, also gets pommeled by Kriston Capps in the CP. Read that review here.

Dutch Treat

The Royal Embassy of the Netherlands is planning an exhibition of photographs and paintings of New Orleans to commemorate the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The exhibition will open next week in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The exhibition, titled "Seeing is believing, Seeing is Healing," includes works from artists Marsha Ercegovic, Elizabeth Kleinveld and David Rae Morris, who documented the suffering and determination of the hurricane survivors. The exhibition runs from Aug. 21 through Sept. 1.

The Netherlands sent a frigate to help in hurricane relief efforts last year and arranged for Dutch specialists to visit the city to give advice on rebuilding the levees. With much of the Netherlands below sea level, the Dutch have a long history of holding back the sea and fighting floods.