Results tagged “irvinecontemporary”

Phew, it's a busy week for artlovers. If you dig political art, graphic design, or street art, head to cloud nine, and stay there all weekend. As evidenced by our spotting of him in Logan Circle near his newly created mural, Shepard Fairey (most famous for his Obey Giant insignia and accompanying graphics) is in town, his calendar is booked solid, and we're all invited.

Provisions Library, D.C.’s learning laboratory for the arts and social change, which opened its doors in September of 2001, launched a new initiative this past summer, BrushFire. By staging socially-minded public art events nationally, BrushFire aims to promote discourse about democracy, including key political and social issues such as the war in Iraq, immigration, the environment, the economy and health care. The highest concentration of BrushFire events is in the D.C. area, with over a dozen arts organizations holding events in the months leading to the November elections, and several of these exhibitions open this weekend. We touched on a few of them in yesterday’s Arts Agenda, but get out your calendars, because here’s the full run-down.

As a recent MFA graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Sebastian Martorana has found a calling in stone. A sometimes over-looked medium, Martorana creates work that is often somber and other times light in emotion. This fresh face in the art world is still finding his way as a sculptor as his style progresses, but he's one to keep your eye on. You can see a sample of his work at Irvine Contemporary's Introductions4 and online. DCist was able to catch up with Martorana on the heels of a residency in Vermont to chat about his work.

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.

James Marshall, or Dalek, has been a fixture in the urban art scene for ten years. Best known for his "Space Monkey" characters, Marshall brings this influence to Irvine Contemporary in his solo show, Overweight.

Violent, bloody and chaotic; these are the images that come to us from Iraq on a daily basis. But in My Baghdad, now at Irvine Contemporary, local photographer Phil Nesmith presents another view of Iraq, one that captures the quiet moments of the every day.

If you're a regular reader of the Arts Agenda, be sure to check out yesterday's summary of the benefits of becoming a member of one of the local arts venues in D.C. Right after we put that online, we heard that WPA is relaunching their online database ArtFile (one of the benefits of becoming a WPA member is a free artist profile on the site, where you can store images of your work). Visitors can browse the site for free and save "lightboxes" with work of their favorite local artists.

Artistic duo Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick have a specialty matched by few contemporary artists. They create worlds — historical yet relevant, real yet fantastical — and document those worlds through staged photography, installation, and found objects. This is intellectual art at its best. Kahn and Selesnick’s most recent creation, Eisbergfreistadt, is on view at Irvine Contemporary until December 8, and tells the story of the post-World War I Baltic port town of Lubeck,...

Last week a little dose of relief came to the city's art lovers and critics, as the National Gallery of Art announced they've filled the position to head up their department of modern art, vacant for around six months now. Harry Cooper comes to the NGA from the Harvard University Art Museums, and Washington City Paper's Jeffry Cudlin does a good job putting it in perspective. In other museum news, camera-in-cell-phone technology is officially history....

At Irvine Contemporary is Introductions3, a group exhibition featuring works of thirteen recent MFA grads from art schools across the country. According to Gallery Director Martin Irvine, Introductions3 is the first show of its kind at a commercial gallery, since similar shows stick to regional artists; instead Irvine branched out and reviewed 300 emerging artists nationwide. The selections were narrowed to 60 before a panel of art collectors committed to the final 13 emerging artists,...

>> Earl Cunningham's America, which opens this Friday at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, features 50 paintings by one of the foremost folk artists of the 20th century. Known for his use of space and brilliant colors, Cunningham juxtaposes the ordinary with the unexpected and puts familiar subjects in unfamiliar settings. The result is an insightful commentary on American life and culture. >> Those looking for something new will have the chance to make their...

Kerry Skarbakka & Marla Rutherford: Re-Presenting the Portrait, now on view at Irvine Contemporary, features a fantastic pairing of photographers, whose works are extraordinarily similar in theme. Both artists are working with the photographic image as performance – all carefully staged and performative in execution. In Kerry Skarbakka’s series The Struggle to Right Oneself, the artist stages scenes that dissect the concepts of control and perception of balance. He casts himself in the leading role...

Is it terrible to say that one of the reasons I love long weekends is that the entire town empties out, and while my friends are all stuck in traffic on the way to the beach, I can roam the blissfully quiet streets of D.C.? For those of us inclined to stick around town to enjoy the peace, or maybe because we're just plain broke, take the chance to fill your Saturday night dance card with an art opening or two.

>> Welcome to March and another First Friday in Dupont Circle from 6 to 8 p.m. Find the gallery locations here. >> We've all got our old movie favorites. If you pop in Gone with the Wind everytime you're home sick, or channel surf for old episodes of I Dream of Jeanie on a Sunday afternoon, you're just the person Mark Bennett is drawing for. His India ink draftings of the fictional homes used in...

>> Where, oh where, to get your art and beer this week? There may not be many openings around town, but all you need is one big one, and Dr. Dremo's is command central for the weekend's launch activities. More than an art show, the Counter Culture Festival has music, dancing, and food to keep your creative side abuzz all evening. The festival is organized by DC Conspiracy, a group of comic creators, artists and...

What's that you say? You have nothing to do Saturday? Fear not, art lovers, we've found so many events for you this Saturday that you'll have to practice your wind sprints in order to make it to every one. >> Fourteenth Street NW is a good home base for your gallery hopping on Saturday, as three galleries will be hosting parties. The Randall Scott Gallery is celebrating its grand opening with a reception for No...

>>H Street is already doing well as our new go-to for beer and good music; now they're adding some art to the neighborhood. Dissident Gallery officially opens its doors this weekend with a reception tonight at 7 p.m. Check out Kid Flash's textile and paint explorations of gender and class, Valentina Loi's photo transfers that use childhood games as metaphors for relationships, and works by Piero Passacantando.

Continuing our brief series on the new and shiny members of the art community, we move from the chaotic to the highly structured, with recent Maryland Institute College of Art, MFA recipient Courtney Jordan. Smitten with art and mostly self-taught, Jordan's paintings and ink drawings breathe new life into the architecture we've stopped seeing for all its designed beauty. Having grown up in New York, she's drawn to bridges and industrial creations. Irvine Contemporary was...

August is harvest time for the yearly crop of new art grads. Irvine Contemporary, Conner Contemporary, and Project 4 are each hosting shows featuring the ripest of the bunch, their walls, ceilings, and floors strewn with the efforts of these Bachelor and Master of Fine Art recipients. DCist couldn't resist grabbing a basket of our own, so over the next few weeks we'll be tracking down the Up and Comers, those we think are especially...

Though the galleries are usually slow in the summer, we still get the occasional rainstorm during the drought. And what better weekend to take a walk outside and sooth your overheated body than this one, which looks to be the blessed fever break from our soul-crushing heat wave? When you're ready to hit the cool(er) Friday evening air, many of the city's galleries will be open and waiting with heaven-sent A/C and thirst quenching libations....

If the heat and dung aura of the National Zoo is keeping you away from its fated elephants and panda parties, there's a better venue out there — this one offering delicious A/C and, for the right price, the option to take home some cuddly animals. Irvine Contemporary's new show Animalia gives us bears, lizards, and giraffes, in one of those nice clean galleries to boot.

.

Out With the New: Irvine Contemporary gallery is officially moving into the old Fusebox space on 14th St. NW as of May 1, but in the meantime they have their last show at the old Connecticut Ave. space, with new paintings by Susan Jamison and Robert Mellor opening Friday, opening with a reception on April 7 from 6 to 8 p.m. Mellor's Gracile is at right. Other Dupont Circle galleries will also be open since...

DCist will be at the Hirshhorn Museum and Scultpure Garden this Thurs. night at 7 p.m. (book signing starts at 6 p.m.) to hear celebrated Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto give an artist lecture about his new exhibition at the Museum, a retrospective of his 30-year career, which opens the same day. Sugimoto is well known for his attempts to convey a sense of time in his still photography, like in his Theatre series (5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle, 1997 is shown at right), where the artist photographs an entire motion picture until all that's left is an eerie glow that shows the elapsed time of the film.

Kick off the New Year by checking out some of the plentiful new exhibits around town.

>> Irvine Contemporary opens two solo shows on Thursday, by artists working in extremely different styles and techniques. On the one hand are Sean Foley's creepy, colorful paintings and works on paper. (At first glance, the image on the gallery's homepage conjures up images of old Ren & Stimpy episodes.) On the other are haunting new photographs by Gina Brocker of a family of Irish migrants. Chat up the artists about their work at the...

>> This month marks Irvine Contemporary's second anniversary. Help celebrate by checking out their exhibit, "Christine Kesler: New Directions," opening Friday (reception 6-8 p.m.). Work on display includes multi-media collages by the MICA graduate.

Jammed packed with cells in various stages of development, Teo Gonzalez’s minimalist paintings are something of an obsessive pursuit. Fortunately for Gonzalez, his meticulous efforts have recently been rewarded by his work being acquired by major museums on both coasts (MoMA, LACMA and NGA). D.C. art enthusiasts have until Saturday to catch Gonzalez’s current solo show at Irvine Contemporary Art in Dupont Circle and see for themselves what all the fuss is about.