ON THE EDGE: A GUIDE TO WASHINGTON GALLERIES
by Kriston Capps
Washingtonian Magazine
April 2008
The area's contemporary-art galleries, many with bold spring shows, feature some of the brightest work on today's art scene.
It's not Chelsea. It isn't Culver City. But Washington is no art-world backwater. In almost any part of the region, you can find art galleries exhibiting the brightest entries from local, national, and international artist communities. Curators from around the country look to commercial galleries and nonprofits here to find new talent. Taken with museums like the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian, and the National Gallery of Art, the area's galleries represent a significant art destination.
The local art community is different from those in cities like San Francisco or Chicago. The galleries and artist communities are spread across DC, Virginia, and Maryland with no true center. You need to cover a lot more ground to see the top shows in any given month. What follows is a survey of the area's galleries that deal in contemporary art, often cutting-edge art. You may not find a quiet still life to hang over your fireplace, but you're sure to see mixed-media work and the latest trends in the art being made today. Here's a look at five gallery "precincts" across the area with notes on must-see events for the spring-and places to refuel with coffee, cocoa, or cocktails.
DC's 14th Street | Dupont, Penn Quarter, and Beyond | Arlington | Bethesda | Alexandria and Beyond
Art Walks and Fairs: Bethesda
Is Bethesda a bona fide arts district? It certainly has the galleries. There's even a Bethesda Art Blog devoted solely to tracking gallery happenings in Bethesda. The scene is just beginning to add an element of hip to its happenings. And the suburb's close cluster of galleries more often plays host to art walks and craft fairs than to late-night openings for the gallery-going set.
Heineman Myers Contemporary Art (4728 Hampden La.; 301-951-7900), for one, is trying to change that. In late February, the two-year-old gallery hosted the coolest event Bethesda has seen in recent memory. From 10 pm to 10 am one Saturday to Sunday, graffiti artist Tim Conlon and his collaborators painted a 16-by-7-foot surface in a courtyard outside the gallery.
In April, Heineman Myers will show a group exhibit called "Stimulating Consumption," a show investigating consumer culture. Artist Jonathan Stein will show inedible "cakes" parodying public figures from Barack Obama to Britney Spears. Another artist in that show is Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette, whose impressive sculptures involve massing colorful common materials-from zippers to magnetic alphabet letters to twisty ties-into larger sculptures.
Heineman Myers isn't the first to bring street art to the suburbs. Fraser Gallery (7700 Wisconsin Ave.; 301-718-9651) has shown work by Mark Jenkins, a popular artist who frequently uses packing tape in his public projects. Jenkins is one of a new generation of street artists who are growing up in gallery spaces, but that hasn't prevented him from receiving attention from groups such as the Wooster Collective, which recognize the best in urban vernacular art.
The Fraser Gallery will show new work by John Winslow April 11 through May 31. Winslow's paintings skirt the real and the surreal; he paints realistic representations of unlikely or impossible scenes, which often appear to take place on a stage. Some elements look quite lifelike-people or settings within the scene-while some appear to be apparitions superimposed upon the scene.
Founded by Elyse Harrison five years ago, Gallery Neptune (4901 Cordell Ave.; 301-718-0809) shows artists almost exclusively from the Mid-Atlantic region. The comically cartoonish paintings of Lisa Montag Brotman, on display May 7 through June 7, combine a Warner Brothers-illustrative aesthetic with naive depictions of nudes and other flat figures. The work is reminiscent of some paintings by David Hockney. The gallery's flat file is always available to browse; included are small-to-medium-size works by artists such as Marie Ringwald, who is showing at the gallery through April 5. The other show running in April highlights black-and-white photography by Beatrice Hamblett.
Outside Bethesda, the near Maryland suburbs don't have the galleries that Virginia's suburbs do. The great exception is Pyramid Atlantic (8230 Georgia Ave.; 301-608-9101) in Silver Spring, a nonprofit contemporary-arts center that hosts artist residencies, temporary exhibits, classes, and other activities. Charles Cohan's architectural prints will be the subject of an exhibition at Pyramid Atlantic through April 20; the artist's work is showing at Curator's Office through April 5.
Other Bethesda galleries to check out include Osuna Art (7200 Wisconsin Ave.; 301-654-4500): sculpture by Joan Danziger, April 12 through May 31; and Waverly Street Gallery (4600 East-West Hwy.; 301-951-9441): photographs of Italy by Richard Lasner and new works by gallery artists, April 8 through May 3.