FOUND Magazine has a knack for revealing the beautiful underbelly of America, the forgotten parts of our everyday lives. Highlighting things like the hateful note you left the person parked in your precious parking spot, your laundry list of to-dos, that love note you didn’t find the courage to send, or those rejection letters that you didn’t want to hold onto, FOUND is the curated hamper for everything not worth collecting. That is unless you…

His works are frequently found in museums all over the world, but right now you can get the first glimpse of ten new works by famed artist Chuck Close right here in D.C., at Adamson Gallery. Although the prices of these new works put them out of touch for most of the population, they are easy to be engulfed by. As always, Close’s thought-provoking work compels his viewers to pay “close” notice not only to…

Renee Stout, a very cool D.C. resident and assemblage artist, has a new collection of works on view at Hemphill Fine Arts — Journal: Book One. Walking into this cabinet of curiosity, you are greeted by a large, accurately painted advertisement for the corner psychic. By putting on the airs of alter ego Fatima Mayfield, Stout is able to role play as a fictitious herbalist/fortuneteller who enters the arena of the shadowy and strange….

This playful, irreverent melodrama, a splendid performance of the 2007 Capital Fringe Festival, is a presentation of Solas Nua, the nonprofit dedicated to presenting the contemporary works of Irish artists to better acquaint the District with modern culture of the Emerald Isle. Tom Murphy, the play’s celebrated playwright, has created this modern adaptation to reflect Irish politics of the Land League and tenants rights. As you might imagine, The Drunkard is fraught with Irish stereotypes,…

This Digital Life: Basic Instructions for Coping with the 21st Century, a presentation by Truffle Pigs as part of the Capital Fringe Festival, points at the strange role the Internet can play in our daily lives. In a wired world where artificial identities are easy to acquire and where people ironically sit alone in front of their computer screens trying to connect with people, this play draws attention to how endless access to information leads…

Frida Kahlo: Public Image, Private Life. A Selection of Photographs and Letters, on view at The National Museum of Women in the Arts, reveals Frida’s public passion for life and her private suffering. The life and times of Frida Kahlo is a complicated story of love, tragedy, and unwavering beauty. The exhibition celebrates her 100th birthday. The photographs in Frida Kahlo: Public Image, Private Life chronicle the artist’s quintessentially Mexican beauty. Starting as young as…

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…

If you’ve ever wondered about what lay behind closed doors, BUILDING, now on view at Project 4 Gallery, gives you a glimpse of just how big that universe can be beyond the boarded windows and padlocked gates. A small, unassuming brick building in Belfast, Northern Ireland ran the city’s electricity for nearly half a century. Once wild with rippling currents and responsible for channeling energy to all of residential, domestic, commercial, and industrial Belfast, the…

Open your mouths and say ahhh for that appetizing pill that is seriously experimental art. Thanks to the folks at Washington Project for the ArtsCorcoran, you can get your fill tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. in Corcoran’s Hammer Auditorium when they conclude their Experimental Media Series with Night #3. It’s difficult to exaggerate just how far from the canvas we have come, and somewhat serendipitous that WPAC has chosen to present experimental media as…

Mingering Mike: The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar is something that you just have to see to believe. The story of Mingering Mike, now on display at Hemphill Fine Arts, is an unforgettable one, crammed with baffling outsider art, obsessive imagination, and music-induced parallelism. The District, during the 60s and 70s, serves as its backdrop. It follows a Washington, D.C. man and his drawn-out fantasy of being a famous musician. Mike’s story was…