SEPTEMBER
Arlington Arts Center
FALL SOLOS 2009
3550 Wilson Boulevard
Tue-Sat 11am-5pm
September 11 – November 7, 2009
Twice a year, the AAC surveys the finest cutting-edge contemporary art from across the Mid-Atlantic region. For this year’s second installment, FALL SOLOS 2009, six artists were chosen: Christian Benefiel, Jenn Figg, Cynthia Hron, David Page, Roxana Perez-Mendez, and Pamela Phatsimo-Sunstrum.
Athenaeum
From Here 2 There / The Best of the Torpedo Factory
201 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA
Th, F, Su 12-4pm; Sat 1-4pm
September 10 – October 4, 2009
A juried show featuring the best of the Torpedo Factory, this exhibit celebrates the art center’s 35th anniversary. Having toured independent art centers around the country, From Here 2 There is on display locally for the first time. Juried by Jenine Culligan, Senior Curator for the Huntington Museum of Art.
Civilian Art Projects
CARA OBER: Love Letters and NIKKI PAINTER: Debriscapes
406 7th Street NW
Wed-Sat 12-6pm
September 11 – October 17, 2009
Ober layers drawing, painting, and printmaking into mixed media works that examine and reinterpret sentimental imagery. Intricate and funny, Love Letters explores the relationship of the artist to image, word, and personal meaning found in the exploration of secret fantasy and expressive interlude. Nikki Painter exhibits new drawings and a site-specific installation that explore — in bright neon colors, pencil lines, and various materials — the relationship and continuum between the built and natural worlds.
Conner Contemporary Art
CONVERSATIONS IN LYRICAL ABSTRACTION: 1958 – 2009
1358-60 Florida Ave
Wed-Sat 11-5pm
September 17 – October 31, 2009
Morris Louis, Alma Thomas, Howard Mehring, Jeremy Blake, Leo Villareal. Breathing luminous color and varying in media from stain paintings to digitally controlled light emitting diodes, this select gathering of abstract images showcases Lyrical Abstraction as a vital impetus in American art.
Curator’s Office
Patrick Wilson: Slow Food
1515 14th St NW Suite 201
Wed-Sat 12-6pm
September 12 – October 17, 2009
Entitled Slow Food, the five paintings on exhibit encourage the viewer to recommit to the pleasure of carefully looking at and savoring the elements of an abstract work of art, allowing for deep aesthetic nourishment. A sophisticated colorist, Wilson displays mastery in creating rectilinear layered spaces through line, layers, pigment densities, variegated light, and textures.
Flashpoint
Bradley Chriss: Visions from the End of the World
916 G St NW
Tue– Sat 12–6pm
September 3 – October 3, 2009
Bradley Chriss’ small, apocalyptic watercolors are situated at the unlikely interstice between the sentimental and the nightmarish. The intimate scale and seductive colors cajole and beguile the viewer into confronting the sinister reality that humanity is ultimately powerless within its own environment.
Freer and Sackler Gallery
Moving Perspectives: Shahzia Sikander/Sun Xun
Jefferson Drive at 12th Street, SW
10am to 5:30pm
July 18–November 8, 2009
Shahzia Sikander (b. 1969, Lahore, Pakistan) deftly reinterprets miniature painting by isolating and abstracting formal compositional elements often found in this densely layered and intricate art form. The dynamism of her paintings is set in motion in her video works. Sun Xun (b. 1980, Fuxin, China) creates hundreds of paintings and drawings by using old newspapers or entire blank walls. Filming his hand-drawn images, he transforms clocks, magicians, words, and insects into animated symbols that flicker across the screen.
The Fridge Gallery
DECOY Exhibit
516 8th St SE
call for gallery times 202 664 4151
September 19-October 10, 2009
DECOY aka Alicia Cosnahan grew up abroad on a U.S. military base. This experience allowed her and her family to visit some of the most beautiful churches in the world, churches which provide a fundamental inspiration for her efforts to rework iconic religious symbols.
G Fine Art
Jefferson Pinder and José Ruiz: El Museo Del Ghetto
1515 14th St NW Suite 200
Tue-Sat, 11am-6pm
September 26 – October 24, 2009
Museo del Ghetto at once deepens and exceeds the constellation of issues—about history, narrative, and identity—explored with various intensity in Pinder’s 2006 solo show at G Fine Art, and subjects them to the sly, deadpan humor evident in Ruiz’s own previous solo shows, in 2005 and 2007.
Gallery Plan B
Paintings by Kevin H. Adams
1530 14th Street
Wed-Sat 12pm-7pm Sun 1pm-5pm
September 9, 2009 – October 18, 2009
Kevin is actively participating in “The Arts for Embassies Program” by having several of his painting travel throughout the world being displayed in various U.S. Embassies. Just recently Kevin began a new chapter in his life when he and his partner opened a bed and breakfast in Washington, Virginia. The new surroundings in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains away from the hustle and bustle of the city life afford Kevin more time to paint as well as endless visuals to create those paintings.
Hamiltonian Gallery
This Land is Your Land and Beacon Puritanus
1353 U Street NW
Tue-Sat 12pm-6pm
September 19 – October 31, 2009
An exhibition of new works by James Rieck, Chad Yencer and Hamiltonian Fellow, Jon Bobby Benjamin. Through meticulous installation, painting and sculpture, each artist muses on America – her landscape forms the mise-en-scène and her history becomes the lead.
Hemphill Fine Arts
John Dreyfuss, Enigma
1515 14th St. NW
Tue–Sat 10am–5pm
September 12 – October 24, 2009
Hirshhron
UP7TH
Gallery Place China town metro stop
Fall 2009
Three massive high-resolution LED screens debut new work by graphic artist David Polonsky (b.1973, Kiev, USSR) just up 7th Street from the Hirshhorn. The project was developed in collaboration with Orange Barrel Media, an Ohio-based, cutting-edge firm specializing in digital communications.
Honfleur Gallery
East of the River Group Exhibition
1241 Good Hope Rd. SE
Tue-Fri 12–5pm Sat 11am-5pm
August 1st – September 26th
thematically based on “Beauty and the Beast.” The show intends to not take a literal view at the theme, but a conceptual and often used play on light & dark, sweet & sour or any interpretation thereof.
Irvine Contemporary
New Realisms
1412 14th St., NW
Tue-Sat 11am-6pm
September 12 – October 24, 2009
Prominent painters who have opened up a new dialog about the role of painting in a post-photography, post-digital, and “post-everything” visual culture. The artists in the exhibition are all their 30s, and have already made a mark by developing their own distinctive arguments for the role of realist and figurative painting today.
National Musuem of Women in the Arts
Telling Secrets: Codes, Captions, and Conundrums in Contemporary Art
1250 New York Avenue, N.W.
Mon-Sat 10am-5pm Sun 12pm-5pm
October 9, 2009 – January 10, 2010
This exhibition of 39 paintings, photographs, drawings, and prints from NMWA’s collection invites viewers to consider multiple interpretations and inscribe their own ideas and experiences onto each image.
National Portrait Gallery
Portraiture Now: Feature Photography
Eighth and F Streets
11:30am-7pm
November 26, 2008 through September 27, 2009
Six photographers who, by working on assignment for publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire and the New York Times Magazine each bring their distinctive perspective on contemporary portraiture to a broad audience.
Project 4 Gallery
Relatively Epic: Raymond Uhlir
1353 U Street NW
Wed-Sat 12pm-6pm
September 19 – October 24, 2009
Smith Farm Center Gallery
NO DREAM BEYOND REACH
1632 U St NW
Wed-Fri 11am-5pm Sat 11am-3pm
September 10 – October 31
Living with the insidious pain of a spinal disease and unable to continue as a professional architect, Andrew Reach took a life-altering turn away from a successful career towards art as a way of dealing with his disease. The result was an inward journey that revealed a wealth of creativity within his subconscious. His computer-generated works of art express hope and perseverance and tell a story that he hopes will inspire others in difficult circumstances to overcome great obstacles.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009
1661 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. (at 17th Street)
11:30am-7pm
August 7, 2009 – January 3, 2010
Monumental installations that transform castoff materials into elegant expressions of identity and community.
Transformer Gallery
Ink Storm
1404 P Street
Wed- Sat 1-7pm
September 18 – October 31, 2009
This exhibition highlights how artists CHEN Shaoxiong, DAI Guangyu, and Paula TSAI, incorporate ink into their work, ink, and how each individual exploration offers compelling contributions to contemporary art discourse.
