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May 9 through June 14, at Civilian Art Projects
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craigslist
Civilian Art Projects
craigslist explores how four artists utilize this renowned community
web site as a conceptual component in their artistic practice. The exhibition
features works by the artist team Joseph Dumbacher & John Dumbacher,
Jason Horowitz, and Jason Zimmerman and is co-curated by Jayme McLellan,
Director of Civilian Art Projects and Andrea Pollan, Director of Curator's
Office. An opening reception is scheduled for Friday, March 21 from 7
- 9 pm. An essay by Andrea Pollan will accompany the exhibition.
2007
Alumni Juried Exhibition: Recent Graduates 2002–2006
Corcoran Gallery of Art: Gallery 31
The alumni of the Corcoran College of Art + Design featured in this exhibition
were chosen by their Administrative Chairs. This select group of graduates
submitted one piece of artwork to be juried by Molly Donovan, curator
of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery of Art. All media
are represented in the final collection of works, showcasing the burgeoning
talent of our recent graduates.
Janet & Walter
Sondheim Prize Exhibition at MICA
Decker and Meyerhoff Galleries
Fox Building, Maryland Institute College of Art
1303 Mount Royal Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
Thirty-seven semi-finalists were selected in the first round of the Sondheim
Prize. This exhibition expands on the finalist exhibition at The Baltimore
Museum of Art by showing the broad range of artists whose work was reviewed
in depth in the second round of the Sondheim review.
Artists:
Seth Adelsberger (Baltimore MD) ~ Chul-Hyun
Ahn (Baltimore MD) ~ Lillian Bayley (Baltimore MD) ~ Heather Boaz (Towson
MD) ~ Mark Cameron Boyd (Beltsville MD) ~ Edward Brown (Salisbury MD)
~ Lynn Cazabon (Baltimore MD) ~ Mary Coble (Washington DC) ~ Kathryn
Cornelius (Washington DC) ~ Neil Feather (Baltimore MD) ~ Shaun Flynn
(Baltimore MD) ~ Steven Frost (Washington DC) ~ Dawn Gavin (Baltimore
MD) ~ Susannah Gust (Baltimore MD) ~ Maren Hassinger (Baltimore MD) ~
Sam Christian Holmes (Baltimore MD) ~ Jason Horowitz (Arlington MD) ~
Courtney Jordan (Baltimore MD) ~ Brian Kain (Emmitsburg MD) ~ Avish Khebrehzadeh
(Washington DC) ~ Magnolia Laurie (Baltimore MD) ~ Joey P. Mánlapaz (Washington
DC) ~ Jeanette May (Alexandria VA) ~ Lisa Moren (Baltimore MD) ~ Brandon
Morse (Takoma Park MD) ~ Jeremy Rountree (Baltimore MD) ~ Erik Sandberg
(Washington DC) ~ Molly Springfield (Washington DC) ~ René Treviño (Baltimore
MD) ~ Jason Zimmerman (Washington DC)
Jason
Falchook, Contours & Detours
Jason Zimmerman, Natural Acts
CIVILIAN ART PROJECTS:
Essay by Andy Grundberg
The recipe for creating a contemporary art scene is
not hard to intuit. Take some innovative, eager, personable young artists,
add a few hip commercial galleries and artist-run spaces, some saavy
collectors, at least one critic of enthusiasm and intelligence, a pinch
of media outlets for such criticism, a nearby museum with a contemporary-art
curator, and your choice of a welcoming restaurant, bar, or coffee shop
where all these people can meet, and then mix well. Voila! Who needs
New York?
The reality is a bit more complicated. Plenty of cities have the minimum
daily requirements for an art scene but don't quite pull it off - San
Francisco, say, or Boston. That's because art is ultimately about something
else: imagination, talent, risk taking, having something to say.
In Washington, D.C., an art scene is taking shape today. That's as much
testament to the imagination and risk taking of the people who choose
to show contemporary art as of the artists who make it. Civilian Art
Projects is a great example of a grass-rooted, arts-community based,
independent minded showplace for art that complements the city's other
innovative enterprises, from the late, lamented Fusebox to Transformer
to the Hirshhorn Museum. The list could go on.
Civilian Art Projects is the brainchild of Jayme McLellan, a co-founder
of Transformer and a contemporary of many of the artists she now represents
as a commercial galleryist. Her vision is sympathetic to a broad mix
of media and styles, she believes in the importance of her generation
of artists, and her timing is impeccable. With this, Civilian's first
show, she gives us a glimpse of what these young artists have to say.
Jason Falchook's color photographs depict unprepossessing, unpopulated
urban spaces lit with the enervating glow of mercury vapor lights. They
have the isolated eeriness of surveillance pictures, but the corrugated
fences and shutters and stark buildings are their own protagonists. The
time is night or nearly so, and without the intersession of the photograph
we probably would not linger long to examine the scenes in detail. Falchook
calls the series "Contours & Detours," but we might also
add a coda, "Places We'd Just as Soon Avoid." Still, the bright
light sources give off what passes for warmth, and one suspects that
beyond the terror we are made to feel lies a sympathy for a present that
seems equally to speak of the past and the future.
Jason Zimmerman's series "Natural Acts" continues his photographic
exploration of incidental evidence supplied by the physical world. Like
Falchook, he positions nature and humanity in a tenuous balance, but
while Falchook's pictures read as surveillance Zimmerman's appear forensic.
Whatever the word "documentary" means when applied to the camera,
it has traction here, in images of chipped china and gooey aluminum foil
and other frayed objects, but for no imaginable uplifting social purpose.
Call it Documentary Degree Zero, a collection of evidence for which there
is no crime.
Taken together, and in company with the other artists on the roster of
Civilian Art Projects, Falchook and Zimmerman are sniffing out similar
aesthetic territory, fashioning a discourse that tempers inevitability
and loss with possibility and wonder. Without seeming cynical or hectoring,
their work steers us toward considering art as a critical instrument
that embraces feeling and subjectivity as crucial to its meaning.
The debut of a new gallery that celebrates local talent is always a cause
for celebration and optimism, in part because it signals the viability
of a new aesthetic point of view. In this case, the cause for optimism
is even greater since there is an assumption that this viewpoint has
a market - that collectors and curators will support these artists and
this gallery. Based on the evidence of this first show, they should.
----------
Andy Grundberg is a critic, curator, and educator who has written about
photography for more than 25 years. His writings for the New York Times
and other publications are collected in the book Crisis of the Real (Aperture).
Civilian
at G
CIVILIAN ART PROJECTS ROVES TO G FINE ART
Ken Ashton · Breck Omar Brunson · Lily Cox-Richard · Jason
Falchook · Erick Jackson · Michael Johnson · Nilay Lawson · Noelle Tan · Jason
Zimmerman
Please join us in building a collector and community base of support
for this talented group of artists represented by Civilian, a new Washington,
DC gallery.
www.civilianartprojects.com · 202-607-3804
www.gfineartdc.com · 202-462-1601
Civilian
Art Projects Presents: Dynamic Field
Featuring: Ken Ashton, Breck Omar Brunson,
J Carrier, Lily Cox-Richard, Frank Hallam Day, Jason Falchook, Erick
Jackson, Michael Johnson, Nilay Lawson, and Jason Zimmerman.
Dynamic Field is an exhibition uniting a talented group of under-represented
American artists for the launch of Civilian Art Projects - a new gallery
based in Washington, DC. Promoting a program of exhibitions and events
to increase recognition and support for its roster of artists, Civilian
will operate as a roving, commercial gallery, without a physical home
base. It will work in partnership with creative spaces nationally and
worldwide to present work and promote artists. The website www.civilianartprojects.com is
the centralized resource of information on the gallery.
Video still from Spotting, 2006
Freewaves
10th Biennial Film, Video, and New Media event:
Too much Freedom?
UCLA Hammer Museum
The Demolition was exhibited at the UCLA
Hammer Museum at part of Freewaves 10th
Biennial Film, Video, and New Media event, Too much Freedom?
Installation view of The Demolition in the main lobby of the
UCLA Hammer Museum.
Photo: Freewaves, 2006