That the artworks are current could also be extra instantly apparent to viewers of the Cushner works. The D.C. artist’s allover canvases, closely labored and patterned with seemingly botanical motifs, have been proven typically in native venues resembling Hemphill Artworks. (In 2014, Cushner even did a stint in a retail house at 1700 L St. NW, the place work might be seen in course of.) The Toronto-born Rotenberg is much less identified to D.C.-area audiences, though she lived in Baltimore for 20 years earlier than shifting to Israel in 2015.
Rotenberg works primarily in wooden, supplemented by particulars in metallic and solid concrete. The surfaces are typically partly painted, or lined in gold leaf. However the colours and textures of wooden, principally cedar, are distinguished. This endows the sculptures with a organic high quality that’s bolstered by kinds that counsel eggs, tendrils and inside organs. But sure elements of the items, together with their sheer scale, counsel heavy equipment.
The strain between natural and industrial is dynamic within the choice’s tallest sculpture, which stands within the three-story house exterior the lower-ceilinged gallery that holds the remainder of the present. The towering piece consists of eight wood globes stacked atop one another, supported by a four-pronged pedestal. The six darker orbs are notched, with curved kinds inside every slot; the 2 lighter ones are unnotched.
With such meticulous schemes, Rotenberg expresses her mastery over the fabric. (Remarkably, the artist fabricates her items with out the assistance of studio assistants.) She’s a machinist as a lot as anybody who makes useful metallic units. But her attraction to wooden’s pure qualities is obvious. She values cedar for its look and, it seems, for its attainable evocation of the human physique. Far faraway from the timber that offered their lumber, Rotenberg’s sculptures nonetheless really feel by some means alive.
The Cushner present gained’t startle anybody who has adopted his profession, nevertheless it provides a couple of twists on his customary loops, spirals and fan shapes. The 34 artworks embrace a number of woodcut prints, and whereas they’re inevitably upstaged by the massive canvases, printmaking does appear to tell work resembling “Mirror Mirror.” These current footage give a brand new emphasis to line, separating the central motifs from their backdrops extra strongly than in Cushner’s earlier work.
The place foreground and background had been as soon as interrelated and infrequently intertwined, they’re now extra distinct. A few of the footage overlay figures rendered with black strains atop fields of soppy, drippy daubs in a rainbow of hues. There’s even a portray punctuated by 4 circles of unpatterned, near-white blankness. These voids — uncommon if not unprecedented — come as a gentle shock in one of many artist’s intricate work. Maybe Cushner means to offer a couple of pathways into his profusely flowering imagery.
Rachel Rotenberg and Steven Cushner By means of Dec. 10 on the American College Museum, Katzen Arts Middle, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW. american.edu/cas/museum. 202-885-1000.
A digital camera lens is a portal, a kind of window onto moments that may be self-evident or enigmatic. For “Reflection Unknown,” Fred Zafran pointed his digital camera at openings, whether or not precise or figurative. The A number of Exposures Gallery present is “an allegory of doubt and inquiry,” in accordance with the photographer’s assertion.
Essentially the most anticipated topics are home windows and doorways, literal portals that turn into metaphors for discovery, transition and hidden depths. Zafran’s shade footage, a lot of that are overwhelmingly black, gaze into unknown interiors. In a single picture, there’s somebody on the opposite facet of the glass, peering outward by means of a financial institution of curtained home windows. Extra attribute is an image of an individual at an entrance, a second rendered in a whoosh of movement that provides a sci-fi really feel. A easy step by means of a doorway seems to be occurring in hyperdrive.
Not all of Zafran’s topics are actually enterable. He additionally portrays shadows, lights, mist and our bodies of water, from puddles to oceans. The liquid is reflective, like glass, however trickier. One image of the moon over the ocean depicts the pure satellite tv for pc — additionally a reflector of sunshine — and two white patches on the floor under. The three small illuminated areas are openings within the darkness, however they aren’t truly entrances. Zafran exhibits us visible paradoxes: issues that seem permeable however truly supply no approach in.
Fred Zafran: Reflection Unknown By means of Nov. 19 at A number of Exposures Gallery, Torpedo Manufacturing unit, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. multipleexposuresgallery.com. 703-683-2205.
A lot of the work in Irene Pantelis’s “Of Water Too Are the Grasses” are strongly vertical and semiabstract renderings of foliage that stretches above and under a layer of earth. But, because the Studio Gallery present’s title signifies, these elegant footage have a liquid high quality. The native artist achieved this by brushing paper with water after which making the picture on the moist floor with watercolor, sumi ink and different substances. The pigments combined with the water, yielding imagery that’s mushy and seemingly fluid.
In response to her assertion, Pantelis was initially impressed by the lawns of her suburban Maryland neighborhood, however she later considered her childhood summers in Uruguay’s grassy pampas. But, with their muted or all-gray palettes, the images aren’t particularly summery. They’re extra autumnal, though “All Alongside” depicts a nest of bulblike kinds beneath a slim strip of brown filth, suggesting the promise of rebirth when the climate warms.
The present, which additionally features a single wire sculpture, depicts grass and its roots on a near-epic scale. A few of the work are massive, and even the smaller ones amplify easy stalks and roots into parables of ecological peril and promise. In her watery microcosms, Pantelis finds one thing all-encompassing.
Irene Pantelis: Of Water Too Are the Grasses By means of Nov. 18 at Studio Gallery, 2108 R St. NW. studiogallerydc.com. 202-232-8734.
