Matthew Smith

August 09, 2012, 8:20am

Guns, Art, and a Project by Ryan Carr Johnson and Samuel Dylan Scharf

There’s a long history of guns in contemporary art, from Chris Burden’s Shoot to Sophie Calle’s ballistic treatment of her lover’s letter in Take Care of Yourself to a myriad points in between. And the connection between guns and painting is no less direct.

Listed under: DC, Review

July 04, 2012, 12:15pm

David Ostrowski and Jack Henry at Nudashank

David Ostrowski’s intuitive marks -- mistakes, he calls them -- aggregate on the canvas like layers of paint. “It’s a constant failure,” he says in reference to his painting process, which is deliberately fast and intent on producing gestural imperfections. Indeed, there’s very little hand wringing here, as the artist’s trust in his mark making becomes palpable in the lines that he makes.

Listed under: Review

May 24, 2012, 8:30am

Contemporary Wing Opens in D.C.

A few months prior to opening her new storefront gallery, Lauren Gentile  organized the group show Next Generation in a raw warehouse space in downtown D.C. It was timed to coincide with the Rubell Family Collection’s 30 Americans at the Corcoran last winter, and it tapped a few art stars from the Rubell show to select a batch of up-and-comers they viewed as the next generation of great artists.

Listed under: DC, Q&A

May 02, 2012, 12:30pm

The Baltimore Contemporary Print Fair at BMA

Last weekend the Baltimore Museum of Art hosted its bi-annual print fair, bringing together a group of exciting printmakers for a small two-day event that featured an artist talk by Trenton Doyle Hancock.

Listed under: Art Fairs, Art Market

May 01, 2012, 8:35am

Painted Diplomacy: Tomokazu Matsuyama Speaks at AU

Thematic arts programming abounds during the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

Listed under: Art World

April 13, 2012, 8:15am

Of This World: Tom Green at Curator’s Office

“Time is of the essence now.” Most of us will never fully grasp the weight of Tom Green’s words when he spoke to the Washington Post last December.

Listed under: DC, Review

March 22, 2012, 8:15am

Paper Trail: In the Studio with Steven Riddle

Steven Riddle’s paper collages are additive. They’re layers and layers of material that slope past their underlying surfaces in gentle relief. They’re also subtractive, just as much the result of recursively eliminating elements. And they’re practically alive. A single composition is often an amalgamation of pieces produced more recently mixed with others from two years prior. They’re like living, breathing documents of the artist’s extended studio history, all of it cumulatively recorded in the bins of scrap paper in his studio -- blank paper that’s been air brushed, silkscreened, brushed over with gouache, monotyped , and that’s just for starters.

Listed under: Interview

March 07, 2012, 8:15am

Masquerading Fiction: Dawn Black at Curator's Office

Dawn Black’s second solo show at Curators Office in Washington, D.C. doesn’t veer too far from her first go in 2009.

Listed under: Review

February 29, 2012, 8:15am

Another place and time: Ian Whitmore at G Fine Art

It wasn’t long ago that Ian Whitmore was selling out multiple shows in Washington, D.C. before his paintings were even hung for opening night. It may have been a sign of the times -- those shows at the now-defunct Fusebox gallery in the mid 00s were smack dab in the middle of the so-called great contemporary art bubble.

Listed under: Review

February 24, 2012, 8:15am

Le Sigh: Gina Beavers at Nudashank

There’s no escaping the physicality of Gina Beavers’ paintings. Culled from the unremarkable -- quotidian moments and bits of cultural flotsam -- her work is grounded by the immediacy of her source material. Despite the occasional abstraction, these representations aren’t meant to veer far from their physical subjects; they’re tethered to experiential moments that are as concrete as the sculptural reliefs on her canvases. Indeed, borrowing from the pictorial language of naive painting, Beavers’ works suggest redemption for what’s unheroic among us.

Listed under: DC, Review

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