Creative Alliance: Cindy Mehr in the Amalie Rothschild Gallery
Jan 4 – January 25, 2013
Opening January 4, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Cindy Mehr is intrigued by the way random elements link together in the subconscious in a way that make perfect sense. She states, “in a dream there’s a connectedness between everything and a rationale for the existence of seemingly arbitrary groupings.” Her intention is for the viewer to partake in the process of making these associations – “connecting the dots,” so to speak — “and my ‘dots’ are scraps — pieces of a fragmented universe, by-products of information smog, and archetypal remnants.” Mehr received her MA from Millersville University and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. The Creative Alliance is proud to host her first solo exhibition.
Gallery hours 11am-7pm, Tue-Sat.
www.creativealliance.org
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SEE THROUGH: Mary Anne Arntzen @ D center Opening Reception
January 5 – January 27, 2013
Closing Reception Saturday, January 26
The Opening Reception for SEE THROUGH, a solo show of paintings by Mary Anne Arntzen, will be held at the ICA’s temporary home at D center Baltimore, 16 West North Avenue. Arntzen is a California native working in Baltimore. She graduated from MICA’s Mount Royal School of Art in 2010.
Gallery hours are 12-4pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
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EPIPHANY: BACKSTORY, NEWS COVERAGE AND PAPAL IMAGES OF THE CONGOLESE EMBASSY TO ROME IN 1608
Sunday, January 6, 2013, 2-3 p.m. FREE.
Please join University of London Professor Dr. Kate Lowe for the last public lecture in conjunction with the special exhibition Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe.
The Congo was the first sub-Saharan African country to be Christianized. However, it wasn’t until the early seventeenth century that an indigenous Congolese ambassador, Ne-Vunda, personally visited Rome. This lecture will examine the media frenzy that greeted Ne-Vunda’s arrival in Rome, his death in Rome and his memorialization by Pope Paul V and later popes.
Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe closes on January 21st.
http://thewalters.org/exhibitions/african-presence/
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Steven Cushner: The Shaped Paintings, 1991-1993
January 12–March 9, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 12 6:00–8:00pm
Steven Cushner: The Shaped Paintings, 1991-1993, revisits a body of work by an artist who has become one of Washington’s most successful and respected talents. Over an intense three-year period, Cushner forcefully limited himself to an abbreviated palette and a set of simplified organic and gestural elements derived from earlier work. As Cushner neared the completion of each piece it became clear to him that the work could not be contained by a traditional rectilinear format and that the imagery naturally dictated the perimeters of the paintings.
HEMPHILL 1515 14th Street NW Washington DC, 20005
www.hemphillfinearts.com
GALLERY HOURS Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00am–5:00pm, and by appointment.
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Kini Collins: Anamnesis
Members’ Gallery
January 11, 2013-March 9, 2013
Opening reception, January 11, 2013, 6-9pm
School 33 Art Center is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new works by Lotta Art 2012 Best-in-Show winner Kini Collins.
“Anamnesis is a figure whereby the speaker, calling to mind matters past, whether of sorrow or joy, doth make a recital of them.” J. Smith, Mystical Rhetoric, 1657
In this body of work, the artist is grappling with memories, both forgotten and remembered, memories that arise bidden or unbidden. Collins’ work over the past several years has been an attempt to use memory cascades to make sense of her life experiences. By remembering and reciting the sorrows and joys of her past, she seeks to understand the whole from the related and unrelated parts. This recitation encompasses a single body of work with many components created with tissue paper, ink, wax, charcoal and fire.
http://www.school33.org/index.cfm?page=exhibits§ion=Past&exhibitID=69
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Texture: The Person and Nature Curated by Jan Hanvik
Main Gallery
January 11, 2013-March 9, 2013
Opening reception, January 11, 2013, 6-9pm
Artists: George-Ann Bowers, Jenny Zoe Casey, Erin Fostel, Mia Halton, Sandra Jane Heard, Magnolia Laurie, Kenneth Yee
School 33 Art Center is pleased to present Texture: The Person and Nature, a group exhibit curated by Jan Hanvik, Executive Director of the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Hanvik selected artists for this exhibit who emanate multi-texturalities, which alternate between the ineffable and the visceral. All surprise. All bring pleasure. Some sneak up. Some assault. Some express, as one artist statement said, the lack of self-consciousness of a toddler’s mark. Some required obsessive repetitive, probably conscious, maybe painfully conscious, mark making. Yet all, individually and cumulatively, merge the nature that is inside the human with the nature that is outside the human, yet not really outside.
Image courtesy of Erin Fostel, A Skulk of Foxes, 2012, ink, white charcoal and colored pencil on paper, 25.5 x 38 inches.
http://www.school33.org/index.cfm?page=exhibits§ion=Upcoming&exhibitID=67
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Liberti(n)es at Open Space
Opening: Saturday, January 19th, 2013
Closing: Saturday, February 23rd, 2013
Artists: Benjamin Bellas, Ross Iannatti, Rosy Keyser, Rose Marcus, Jonathan Marshall, Jeffrey Scott Mathews, Reid Ramirez, Peter Sutherland
with performances by: Nuclear Power Plants, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, Keith J. Varadi, Edward Steck, Eric Amling
Curated by Keith J. Varadi
As humans, we are granted certain liberties. As citizens, we often take these liberties for granted. It is assumed that we have control (agency) over these liberties. But what happens when we lose this control or surrender this agency, willfully or not?
Many times, we find ourselves confronted with a situation that necessitates an extreme reactionary decision: do we take the limits of these liberties too far, or not far enough? But then, isn’t the greater question: what is too far, or not far enough? And in the aftermath, we are faced with a secondary confrontation—the repercussions of our initial decision, typically one made in the confusion and conflation of emotions and reason, morals and ethics.
A libertine is easily thought of as someone who cheerfully neglects emotions, reason, morals, and ethics. A libertine is classically defined as an individual who tends to ignore the behavior generally accepted, or at the very least, tolerated, by society at large. The artists, poets, musicians, and performers gathered for this exhibition and presented here do not ignore society’s rules, nor do they necessarily break them; rather, they question them (with authority and autonomy).
Particularly, in American society, individualism is clung onto with such pride that it can become something like a crutch, constructed of balsa wood. Many stances are held up by flimsy arguments that can be snapped if leaned on ever so slightly, one way or the other. However, going beyond simply questioning society’s rules, these particular “libertines” presented at Open Space acknowledge the faults of extremism and moderation. It could be argued that they use extremism in moderation, which is not only a metaphor for an alternative to such precarious “bigger picture” problems, but art in itself.
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The duplicate LeBron James wall graphics Benjamin Bellas had printed by the Fathead Corporation, which he then repurposed and recontextualized, do not take the popular stance of disdain towards the NBA superstar, nor do they make any attempt to redeem him after the madness of The Decision. By using LeBron’s image as a Cavalier (one could claim to be the opposite of a libertine, and a pun on the Cleveland team’s name), Bellas exposes the absurdity of The Decision and the aggressive public outrage that followed one of the NBA’s premier players.
Similarly, Ross Iannatti’s paintings composed of salvaged, stitched, and stretched airbags don’t make any accusatory statements about reckless driving, nor do they claim Nader-like endorsements for vehicular safety. Much like Warhol’s Death Series, they mostly mutter, “Yes, this does happen” and transform tragedy into beauty in an unexpectedly simplistic gesture. These paintings aren’t merely some shrug of the shoulders. By repurposing airbags into mesmerizing portal planes in which to gaze, Iannatti welcomes viewers to consider their prerogative to defend their freedoms as so many Americans and painters claim to do, while spotlighting the boring cyclical and now academically digested notion of painting’s death and resurrection.
The works that comprise Liberti(n)es are what makes this middle-ground area of extremism in moderation what it is; they are not joy rides, they are not car chases, they are slow strolls down back alleyways, revealing realities we often ignore, deflect, or suppress.
2720 Sisson St.
Baltimore, MD 21211
www.openspacebaltimore.com
For more information, contact [email protected]
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The Artist’s Compass: Drawings and Paintings by Philip Koch
Katz Gallery, Friends School of Baltimore
January 2 – February 15, 2013
Reception Wednesday, Jan 16 from 6-7 pm
4113 N. Charles Street
