Pauline Jakobsberg, Lake Titicaca, solarplate etching, 6 x 8, 2011.>> Washington Printmakers Gallery artist Pauline Jakobsberg opens her latest show Haven on Saturday afternoon at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center from 1 to 4 p.m. These muted, multi-layered, heavily-textured prints incorporate etching, collage and monotype techniques, among others, to describe her father’s escape from Nazi Germany for a new life in Bolivia.
>> Inter-Net, a Washington Project for the Arts‘ Coup d’Espace Project by Michelle Lisa Herman, examines technology’s impact on our interpersonal communications, driven by our inherent need for connections, and the increasingly impersonal nature of these fabricated mediums that often lead to an increasingly personal likeness of ourselves, all the while decreasing personal contact. The opening reception and artist talk is this Friday from 6 to 8 p.m.
>> Artists from Arlington’s sister city Aachen, Germany, are in town at Artisphere this week as part of Project 2011: Face to Face, an international cultural exchange program. The one-week residency culminates on Friday with a reception, artist’s talk and tour of the completed works in the Works In Progress Gallery from 7 to 9 p.m. Drop in during the week to watch the artists in action and maybe even ask them a few questions.
>> The Smithsonian Associates have your Friday night covered. Mingle at the Museum with Portraits After 5: Asian 2 American at the National Portrait Gallery. View the current exhibit, Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter and have your own portrait drawn by Corcoran College of Art + Design students, which will then be projected on the walls of the Kogod Courtyard. DJs Yellow Fever will provide the tunes while you pose and nom. General Admission tickets are $25.
>> Anthony Dortch Jr.’s Privilege Series overlays vivid ink and brush strokes over photographs to create dream-like interpretations of individual connections to each other and their environment, while providing a surreal peak into “what it means to be socially and financially above others.” Touchstone Gallery hosts the opening reception on Friday from 6 to 8:30 p.m., with live models, featuring fashion and hair designs by The House of Canney and Tim Cabell, bringing the images of the privileged to life.
>> Chris Bishop continues his Pretty Girls and Robots series with colorful, cartoonish, bored and apathetic women and the robots who love them — or, devise their demise (these robots have been weaponized). Art Whino invades Northside Social‘s second-floor Wine Bar for the opening on Saturday from 8 to 11 p.m.
>> Victoria F. Gaitán and Patricia Piccinini have teamed up for a power-packed duo photography show opening at Conner Contemporary on Saturday. Gaitán’s Scenes of Mild Peril blend soft femininity with surprising elements in specifically-styled situations like a nest of birds or a coyote situated a little to close to a perfectly-painted face or potential choking hazards, like a mouthful of roses, providing each scene with a faint sense of panic. Piccinini, on the other hand, doesn’t waste time with subtlety, throwing out troll-faces, talons and non-human figures with really effed-up feet right out there into the open with her nightmare-inducing The Welcome Guest. See the two solo shows in person at the reception on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.
>> Happy 90th Birthday to The Phillips Collection! Drop by their celebration on Saturday and all of you get the presents! Enjoy extended hours and free admission (including Degas’s Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint) from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., free cupcakes until noon, hands-on art, gallery talks, musical performances and ballet performances throughout the day, rounded out with a cash bar from 4:15 to close. And, it’s all FREE!
>> Hamiltonian Fellow Elena Volkova’s graphite drawings bring attention to light through the use of shadow and contrast, and totally mess with your perception of what’s on the paper, what’s coming off the paper, and what is In Between. The series opens with a reception on Saturday from 7 to 9 p.m., with an artist talk starting at 6 p.m.
>> The Fridge hosts Above the Radar II, a travelling exhibition of work by over 70 graffiti and street artists, with an opening on Saturday from 7 to 11 p.m. On Sunday, Luna George, the exhibit’s curator, and several artists will hold a mural workshop at The Bridge Spot in Garfield Park on Capitol Hill from 2 to 4 p.m. Mark your calendars for a curator’s talk on November 13 from 2 to 4 p.m. at The Fridge. Free.
>> On Thursday, The Corcoran Gallery of Art presents 30 Americans artist iona rozeal brown in 30 Americans: A Conversation on Art and Community with iona rozeal brown, a panel discussion on the role artistic community plays in their artwork and process, presented in partnership with Washington Project for the Arts, followed by a viewing of 30 Americans. Tickets for non-members are $20. 7 p.m.
>> If you haven’t yet made it over to the Hirshhorn for Andy Warhol’s complete set of Shadows, make a day of it on Sunday and catch Ric Burn’s four-hour documentary Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film. Bring your friends, or your family, and spend the rest of the afternoon arguing whether Warhol was the greatest artist of the second half of the 20th century. The film runs from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. with a one-hour intermission, with part two getting underway at 2 p.m. Free.
>> Or, take a walk across the Mall to the National Gallery of Art‘s East Building Auditorium for their free weekend film-fest which features Warhol’s Afternoon, a series of the artist’s 16 mm films, at 1 p.m. At 3:30 p.m., see Florence: Days of Destruction (Per Firenze), a documentary about the Florence flood of November 1966 by Italian director Franco Zeffirelli. On Sunday, Georges Franju’s 1959 Eyes Without a Face will bring those claustrophobic tendencies to the surface. Get the gallery’s entire schedule here.
>> If you’re still wondering what an artist residency is, maybe you should plan to attend Hamiltonian Gallery’s latest installment of their Professional Development Speaker Series, Artist Residencies: Where to find them, what to get out of them. Hear perspectives from an emerging artist, an established artist, and a director of an artist residency program. Free, but please RSVP. Tuesday, 7 to 9 p.m.
Art Notes:
- Transformer launched Storefront Video featuring works from Hirshhorn Museum’s ARTLAB+. Video by the artists in the teen design program will play continuously, 24/7, through December 4.
- Home & Design magazine profiled four of Washington’s newest galleries.
- Raise your glass to the city’s latest art endeavor, ARTS@1830, opening on 14th Street. Check the place out on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m. at an open reception.
- Marsha Mateyka Gallery opens Harry Callahan: Photographs, a series of heavily-contrasted photographs, on Saturday.
- Reyes + Davis presents a reception for Andrew Christenberry’s Tete a Tete on Sunday from 4 to 7 p.m.
- Zenith Gallery has extended Visual Voices, which features artists profiled in new book, 100 Artists of the Mid-Atlantic by Ashley Rooney, through November 26.
- University of Maryland’s Stamp Union Gallery’s HONG SEON JANG: SUGAR HIGH, a site-specific sculpture and reception with artist talk, happens Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m.
- Work by photographer Caitlin Teal Price will be on view at the private residence of Trish Hoppey (1324 T Street NW) this weekend, with an opening reception on Friday from 7 to 10 p.m.
- Contemporary Wing announced their new location, in the heart of the District’s 14th Street gallery row, at 1412 14th Street NW.
