Becky Alprin's High Altitude City, courtesy Irvine Contemporary

Over 250 artists from across the country were evaluated for Irvine Contemporary's "MFA annual" group show, Introductions4. Each of the artists were chosen by a selection panel of collectors of early-career artists through studio and exhibit visits along with open submissions. The chosen nine, Becky Alprin, Reid Bingham, Christina Empedocles, Adam Frezza, Andrea Land, David Linneweh, Sebastian Martorana, Jimmy Joe Roche and Matthew Woodward, represent an interesting cross section of the graduate art world, displaying work inspired by material, the intersection of people and nature, and memorial.

The show has a little bit of something for everyone, showcasing a diversity of mediums including sculpture, photography, video and painting. The artists also represent a diverse geographic mix with degrees from San Francisco Art Institute, Rutgers University, Southern Illinois University and three from Maryland Institute College of Art.

Becky Alprin and Christina Empedocles show their different interpretation of man's interaction with the natural world. Alprin creates undulating raw wooden landscapes dotted with white plexiglass cityscapes (High Altitude City, pictured). The small cities, showing human construction, and sometimes encroachment, are dwarfed by the wooden landscape. The wood is smooth and natural, engulfing the pointy edges of the cities.

In contrast, Empedocles explores this theme with paint and paper. Inspired by Audubon bird renderings, Empedocles shows a deteriorated memory of nature, emphasizing our separation from the environment in her paintings and drawings. In one interpretation of this theme, highly rendered and accurate birds are drawn on paper and cut out to reveal their silhouettes. They are then clustered together on the wall, where the paper naturally curls and bends, revealing the blank underside of the paper. It is a visual cacophony with each individual bird struggling for survival and your attention.

For a more soothing visual experience, David Linneweh's minimal modern architectural paintings are ideal. Simple and elegant line drawings of suburban homes grace his canvases. Selected areas of the drawings are rendered with blocks of colors to show shadow and light. It is very reminiscent of paint by numbers, giving his paintings a hint of nostalgia.

Sebastian Martorana's Ode to Ice Cream: Group of 6, courtesy Irvine Contemporary

The highlight of the show is Sebastian Martorana's Un-commissioned Memorials. Martorana straddles the need to memorialize the dead and important historical events with the need to celebrate the little things that make life worth memorializing in the first place. A stark crib containing a bed with an empty blanket carved from stone, projects the hopeless feeling of a generation removed by the Holocaust. It is a heavy topic that drains the viewer and elicits raw emotion.

On a lighter note, Martorana creates memorials of ice cream pints made from stone (Ode to Ice Cream: Group of 6, pictured). Wanting to memorialize the quiet happy moments of life like sharing a pint of ice cream at the end of the day with his wife, he carved various flavors and consistencies of ice cream, asking "isn't that important too?" The realistic pints exude these emotions and while not as raw as the memorials to the dead and unborn, are just as heartfelt.

Introductions4 is on display through September 6, 2008. Irvine Contemporary is located at 1412 14th St NW and is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.