Kirk Zamieroski, Self Portrait, 2012

Melinda Diachenko, Dropping a Qualia Mug Adrian Parsons Left in My Rental Car, (The Silence/Foreskin of Adrian Parsons is Overrated), 2013

Lindsay Rowinski, Circle of Friends, 2013

Eames Armstrong, You're like my internet (I can't live without you)

Ian McDermott, Alopēsoap Samples (1-10), 2013

Sviatoslav Voloshin, Familiar Faces, 2013

July 2013

Complexities: Nuvo-Avant-Garde

The Nuvo-Avant-Garde represents synthesis, and dwells in the synthetic. As the twenty-first century moves through a kind of puberty, parts of culture are progressing at a rate that society can’t quite reconcile. The N-A-G manifests just such a growth spurt in comceptual art. Through thinly veiled acts of manipulation, the curatorial/authorial impulse gives way/meaning to the works on view.

The site of exhibition itself is uncertain. Through pervasive and atmospheric destability, truth participates in a fog/system of ambivalence. The distinction, were it ever clear, between mediation and meditation is now lost in the aether.

We find meaning in disintegration. The fleeting significance of our dynamic images/actions are disjointed, we embrace chaos. Alone, we snuggle our technologies. The Nuvo-Avant-Garde is no more or less miserable than our ancestral vanguards, but maybe we care a little more/less. Our hearts bleed/tweet for the promise of ambiguity. Our bad jokes shadow your longing and the shortcomings of human expression.

The Nuvo-Avant-Garde dreams in screen savers and intuits when to ford the river or to caulk the wagon and float. They had the internet before they had their period. It is through that very disambiguation that the Nuvo-Avant-Garde is united, that they post, like, and follow.

Featuring Eames Armstrong, Melinda Diachenko, Amanda Lineweber, Ian McDermott, Lindsay Rowinski, Sviatoslav Voloshin, Justin Zamieroski, Kirk Zamieroski.

Soapbox is a performance arts series aimed at promoting this critical, yet underrepresented, art form in Washington, DC. Soapbox’s mission is to cultivate emerging talent and showcase the best that performance art has to offer. Soapbox is a platform for performance artists to present their work in an intimate setting that allows the audience to fully appreciate the artist’s work. Click here to learn more.

Installation

Rofi, Heard, Seen, Believe, 2011

Rofi, Speak Your Mind, but Mind Your Speech, 2012

Rofi, Ampuh, 2012

Rofi, Sinking, 2012

Rofi, A Storm Brewing, 2012

July 2013

Psyche

Rofi enjoys painting faces and figures. More than mere portraits, the faces in his paintings are metaphors for personifying issues relating to identity, society, spirituality and socio-political affairs. In the Asian world, the concept of face embodies dignity, honour and reputation. By extension, the face idiomatically conveys a map of one’s life. If the eyes are a window to one’s soul, then the expression, the smile, the slight twitch of the nose, the hair casting a shadow – the symmetry or lack thereof – does more to reveal the lives and stories within, going beyond face value.

In this show, Rofi embarks on a psychological study of the face. He paints faces of people caught in a myriad of circumstances, metaphorically conveying a man struggling in stormy seas, a society oppressed, a woman empowered, a public deluged by mass media and the courage of a community.

He depicts his subjects bold and strong but renders them sensitively to draw out the vulnerabilities of each character. This is accentuated by a mix of materials and aesthetics to add to the symbolism in each work.

Using the interplay of colour and texture, Rofi deconstructs forms into bold, well-defined strokes using palette knives. Acrylic is his preferred medium as its fast-drying quality makes it suitable for his style of building images with layers of paint. This technique also adds a sculptural quality to the surface of Rofi’s canvases.

Visit his website at www.rofizano.com

Marley Dawson, Slow Burn (full circle), 2013

Marley Dawson, Untitled (tumbleweed again), 2013

Marley Dawson, Sign (landscape/constellation), 2013

June 2013

Big Feelings (going nowhere)

In Big Feelings (going nowhere), Dawson slows things down. Hapless symbols of movement – a Mid-Western tumbleweed, a 1979 Motobécane moped, and a series of decommissioned road signs – are employed in sculptural meditations on progress and the passage of time.

In Slow Burn (full circle), Dawson castrates a moped, bypassing its petrol engine and employing a geared-down electric motor to force it into an endless, quiet and impeccably circular burnout. In Untitled (tumbleweed again), a Mid-Western tumbleweed is caught in a balletic approximation of its natural wanderings. The series of road signs, which during the term of their official life were broken, bent or shot at, are presented super polished and stripped of their official markings.

Dawson’s technical dexterity partners spectacle with subtlety, stillness with motion, and utilitarianism with purposeless in a series of works that coalesce the contradictory yet aspirational nature of contemporary America.

Dawson has exhibited extensively in Australia and has presented work internationally in group exhibitions in Paris, Hong Kong and Washington D.C. He is currently undertaking studio-based research in Washington D.C. supported by an Australia Council for the Arts Skills and Arts Development grant.

Marley Dawson (b. 1982, Australia) works across sculpture, installation and performance and employs simple physics, chemistry and sophisticated D.I.Y. fabrication techniques in his constructed situations and machine sites.

Santiago Rios, Orquesta Filarmonica Eslovaca, 2010

Santiago Rios, Flamenco Singer and Guitarist, 2008

Santiago Rios, Flamenco Singer, 2007

June 2013

Living Music

This exhibition aims to show Santiago Rios’ drawings and paintings in relation to music. Rios creates his work while attending concerts; using ink and watercolors he works directly on sheets of music or programs from the concert.

The works in this exhibition are grouped by music: classical, jazz, and flamenco. Because the works are made in situ during the concert Rios’ is confined to create intimate works on portable medium. In some cases Rios digitally modifies his drawings and prints them on paper or canvas then incorporates color into the work using watercolor or oil.

For the past decade Rios has been working off of the inspiration he draws from musicians. The more engaging the musician the better able he is to interpret the feeling from the music. This exhibition aims to provide a visual reference to the beauty of the music.

J.J. McCracken, Thirst and the Martyr, 2012/2013

June 2013

A Recursive Lens

This vignette attempts to hone in on what it was to be inside of the 7-hour endurance performance, Thirst, and the Martyr, originally performed during the (e)merge Art Fair in 2011: The weight of water in pottery and gourds strapped to the backs of two women; the force of the other’s pulling; the dead, dry grass underfoot; the dry, cracked clay on skin. Water is present but the body is denied access. Thirst, and the Martyr was a polar struggle between two characters tethered together and unwilling to compromise. J.J. McCracken says of the project:

“The Martyr is at once a hoarder and a provider. She may be viewed as opposing sides of the same character, at war with each other. Or, she is two individuals at odds, refusing compromise and unable to work together. By examining actions of self-service, self-sacrifice, and selfcenteredness, Thirst, and the Martyr questions the availability and distribution of resources critical to our survival on this planet. Hope is challenged but never fully extinguished as the struggle continues.”

J.J. McCracken received a B.A. in Anthropology from The College of William and Mary in 1995, an M.F.A. in Studio Art from The George Washington University in 2005, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2012. McCracken is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, recently including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, and a grant from the Puffin Foundation.

J.J. McCracken teaches at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. and has exhibited at venues across the United States. She is currently building large scale projects with the generous support of a position as Artist-In-Residence at Margaret Boozer’s Red Dirt Studio in Mt. Rainier, MD.