Friday Openings: DC

Meat Market Gallery; Friday

Lucy Hogg’s installation of a large scaled equestrian painting, digital prints, and video is a meditation on the end of painting.

THE LAST PONY

The Last Pony project is a meditation on the end of painting, at least the end of it for Lucy Hogg. Her image of a horse poised at the edge of a cliff is based on Whistlejacket by George Stubbs (c. 1762). Stubbs, at the request of his original patron, had left the background blank. Into that void Hogg has inserted the landscape from an earlier equestrian painting by first name Velasquez, his Phillip IV on Horseback (c. 1634). The Spanish monarch’s reign has striking similarities to the second Bush administration. Riderless, the horse is about to plunge into the unknown. The figure represents either the epitome of autonomous action or a fearful flight.

Hogg’s longstanding photographic interests are now merging with painterly ones that are receding. Working with a scan of a photograph of her equestrian painting, she realized the wide array of color schemes she could have used for the original. The computer, that is, provided options – “colorways” to use a term from commercial textile production that were unavailable in a traditional studio.

Once photographed, the white elephant of the museum-scaled history painting becomes artefact, documented in its last natural habitat of the studio, before it is unstretched and rolled away for storage. As a digital scan it becomes still further reproducible and customizable; the formerly unique object, already twice removed from its original authors, Velesquez and Stubbs, is domesticated for democratic consumption.

Civilian Art Projects; Friday

Waves

This group exhibition features photographs depicting an obsessive crush on military generals by Lisa Blas, 4′ by 5′ photographs of waves by Peter Garfield, a formal take on glass and other wave like forms by Michele Kong, and undulating rainbow colored paper sculpture and drawings by Jen Stark.

PROJECT SPACE:

Matthew Spahr
big guns, hollow shields and other bouyant desires

A site-specific, mixed-media installation by Richmond, VA based artist Matthew Spahr exploring surf culture, secret societies and nautical history as modes for developing masculine identity.

“Paint By Blunders” Corcoran makes cover-story in City Paper

hmmm…. very interesting. Thanks for bringing attention to the Corcoran, Kriston Capps.

Capps also wrote up on the WPA’s OPTIONS and the current Feminist show up at the Women in the Arts Museum. Click here.

Kate Moss on Vanity Fair

Ok, I will be the first to break the ice and throw some work up. Hopefully you guys will follow my lead. I’m doing paintings of Vanity Fair cover girls but adding some pounds to them. This is Kate Moss.

Rachel Fick, Corcoran, ‘09

Let’s Start an Emerging Artists Community!

Colleagues and Friends of George Washington MFA, American MFA, and Corcoran BFA,

Let’s start a community of Washington’s finest emerging artists! We will work together to promote ourselves and push each other artistically further. …How?

1) Blog:
We will all have access to a blog (I will buy the website) and we can blog about any shows we see (kinda like artifice), talk about visiting artists, and post images of our work and works in progress. Hopefully others will leave comments, thoughts, concerns, compliments, and criticisms. With contacts from LA, NYC, and Chicago joining, it will help us be informed with what is going on in other art communities. Yes, alumni can participate too! It’ll keep you on your feet to continue making art post school. And alumni can help future generations of artists that join with their own knowledge and experience. Kinda’ the way sororities and fraternities use their alumni to help the youngsters get jobs, internships, and networking connections.

2) Beginning this spring semester, once a month we will have open critiques.
Say its the last Sunday of every month.
-There is a host school and 2.5 hours of the evening.
-The host school decides how the critique will run and which artists from the school will be displaying work.
-The works can be finished or unfinished. We’ll bring beer, wine, maybe some homemade cookies. And we know a little booze can bring out the best “critiquer” in all of us.
-The atmosphere will be very laid back and inviting.
-We will also send invitations to any art socialites and gallery owners we want to come. Maybe each session we will have a different set of guest artists/galleriests come to join us. It will be a nice informal way to get to know these people on a more personal level.
-But really, anyone can participate/come! Your teachers, friends, the general public, your mom, your cat, etc. etc. etc.
Why do we want to do these open critiques? Because in school we are constantly be critiqued by the same students and teachers. We need more exposure, sources, and it allows us to network with each other.

3) DIY “One Night Stand” Shows
Anyone that has an idea for a themed show can propose it to the group on the blog. If it sounds good, we will set a date and work to put it together. Washington does not have enough cool curatorial group shows except for Project 4. Let’s think up some cool ideas and work together to throw a bad ass show that everyone’s gonna want to see. This will also build our resume and professional skills: putting a show together, curating, having to work with other artists (sometimes thats the most difficult, ha)

SO! What do you think? Are you down? We can all be friends (how niiiiice). Maybe pull MICA and VCU in one day if this works out. It is a pretty simple idea, but I am sure it will be beneficial for all of us. If you like the project and want to take part, spread the words tell your friends and colleagues: forward this email. People are already doing this kind of thing here in NYC, it’s about time Washington got in on the program.

Best,
Rachel