Image of “Not Even Unalterable Limitations,” by Firelei Baez, courtesy of Irvine Contemporary

As the title of the show implies, this is the sixth year that Irvine Contemporary is presenting their BFA/MFA survey. Unlike Conner’s Academy 2010, which surveys local art schools, Introductions6 is meant to be national in scope, although this year’s selections skew heavily toward the Washington/Baltimore region. The show features work by students from some of the area’s usual suspects — MICA and American University (Steven M. Cummings; Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi and Brendan Loper) — as well as from New York and California (Firelei Baez and Wafaa Yasin). Even Georgetown University, usually absent from the local art scene, gets thrown into the mix (Claire Callagy). Perhaps not so surprisingly, the academic pecking order is noticeable, though the successful pieces are exciting enough to make you forget about the ones that are less inspired.

The highlights of the show are Baez and Ilchi, both of whom were born abroad (the Dominican Republic and Iran, respectively) and raised in the United States. In their separate works, they present cultural narratives of their homelands that are natively fluent, even though their observations are made through the prism of a western perspective, removed from the constraints of the cultural processes that they depict. In this regard, their work is neither ethnographic nor political; rather, globally informed reinterpretations of regional mythologies and traditions.