At the Arlington Arts Center until March 28,Collectors Select illustrates the varying perspectives and preferences not only of the D.C. area’s most prominent art collectors, but of all art viewers. Eight collectors — Philip Barlow, Julian Fore, Philipa Hughes, Daniel Levinas, Heather & Tony Podesta, and Henry L. Thaggert — curated individual spaces of the AAC, with each collector’s space representing the ideas that drive their personal collections and their interest in art. By seeing contemporary art through these eight pairs of eyes, viewers experience a variety of work – work that is geometric, gritty, mysterious, beautiful, calculated, orderly and disturbing.

Daniel Levinas selected Argentinean artist Leon Ferrari, who recently won the coveted Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale. Ferrari creates the world’s largest mail art –unfolded burgundy-inked blueprints hung with black binder clips. The work is intended to be copied, folded and mailed worldwide. “Bairro” depicts a neighborhood viewed from above, complete with gardens, bedrooms, furniture, and people milling about among linear and curved wall divisions. The blueprints, which represent the political and military oppression in 1980s Argentina, appear innocent from afar. However, the details reveal oddities. In one area, approximately fifty seated men and women watch an empty bed surrounded by a horseshoe of panelists. In other areas, individuals walk in single file with little interaction, winding through mazes of bathtubs, beds, desks, kitchens, cars and toilets. While the artist is depicting a particular historical period, the work also relates to the seemingly aimless but orderly nature of humans as we go to work, obey traffic laws, drive en masse, and conform to societal rules.

Photo of Leon Ferrari’s Heliographs courtesy of Hatchets and Skewers.