Newly Selected Artist: Dan Ortiz Leizman

Dan Leizman, NUKESOUND, 2023, film on television monitor, 9 minutes, 50 seconds

Dan Leizman, DESIRE.propoganda, 2023, stable diffusion, prints on paper, dimensions variable

Dan Leizman DESIRE.propoganda, 2023, stable diffusion, print on paper, dimensions variable

Dan Leizman, DESIRE.propoganda, 2023, stable diffusion, print on paper, dimensions variable

Dan Leizman, DESIRE.propoganda, 2023, stable diffusion, print on paper, dimensions variable

Dan Leizman, DESIRE.propaganda, 2023, stable diffusion, print on paper, dimensions variable

Dan Leizman, DESTRUCTION.cdc_nuclearfaq_2018 2022 sound on plexiglass 2 minutes, 50 seconds

Dan Ortiz Leizman
NUCLEAR
January 6 – January 28, 2024

NUCLEAR is an exhibition that explores queer pregnancy and nuclear pessimism in the context of late stage capitalism through digital media and installation. Central to this exhibit is NUKESOUND, a short documentary—style film which contains AI generated imagery and sound to depict a world where nuclear radiation triggers asexual reproduction. Complementing the film is an immersive floor-to-ceiling installation of street-style poster prints and a playable plexiglass record. The prints, inspired by AI generated prompts and containing propaganda and ads, immerse the viewer into a paradigm where asexual reproduction has become reality. The plexiglass record plays a reading of the CDC’s FAQ webpage for nuclear disaster. This installation invites viewers to consider alternative reproductive methods for the queer body and combines anti-war sentiment with pessimistic navigation strategies and queer world building

About the Artist:

Dan Ortiz Leizman is an artist, writer, and educator currently based in the DMV area. They are completing an MFA degree in the University of Maryland’s Department of Art and received their Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy and Studio Art from Goucher College. Recent awards include the 2023 Clarvit Endowed Faculty and Graduate Student Research Fund and the 2023 ArtsAMP Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Research Grant.

Oluwatoyin Tella, Rise of the Ancients, 2016, video installation, 3 minutes, 18 seconds, NFS

Oluwatoyin Tella, Ancient Future, 2018, oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on cavas, 20 x 20 in

Oluwatoyin Tella, Asobi (Ah-shoh-bee), 2023, oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 48 x 48 in

Oluwatoyin Tella, Expand, 2022, oil and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 in

Oluwatoyin Tella, God is on your side Devil is a lie, 022 oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 12 x 12 in

Oluwatoyin Tella, My grandmother told my mother it's Africa at work, 2022, oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 12 x 12 in

Oluwatoyin Tella, Rise of the Ancients, 2016, video installation, 3 minutes, 18 seconds, NFS

Oluwatoyin Tella, When the East is in the House, 2022, oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 12 x 12 in

Oluwatoyin Tella, Where I'm from nappy hair is life, 2022, oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas, 12 x 12 in

Oluwatoyin Tella, You a King, You A God, You a Holy EL Get out this hole and Give these M*F* holy Hell 2022 oil, acrylic, and gold leaf on canvas 12 x 12 in

Oluwatoyin Tella
Expansion of Oyo
January 6 – January 28, 2024

Expansion of Oyo is an exhibition of original paintings and a video installation. These works spotlight the continuous thread between
pre-colonial African aesthetic and contemporary Black aesthetic. Despite the trans-Atlantic slave trade traffic that included an insurmountable number of West Africans, the Yoruba culture of Oyo empire has expanded worldwide to the present day. From strongholds in Brazil, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, and the United States, the cultural influence of the Oyo empire keeps growing, and Oluwatoyin’s work contributes to that expansion. In the exhibition, Oluwatoyin transforms the gallery space through visual and auditory input. These multisensory components are extended to be multi-disciplinary, incorporating vessels and video.

About the Artist:

Oluwatoyin Tella is a creator with a unique affinity towards art and math. She received both her Master of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Howard University. Tella was born in Oyo, Nigeria to a Jamaican mother and Yoruba father. By pulling from a rural Nigerian childhood and matriarchal Caribbean home in New York, Tella incorporates a multi-layered perspective. Her diasporic lineage gives her a compelling point of view, which she is passionate about conveying. While Yo-Yo Ma is among her list of collectors, Tella has shown at various galleries and museums, most notably New York’s African American Museum. She is currently in residence at Red Dirt Studios in Mount Rainier, Maryland, and is a professor at Bowie State University.

George Lorio, Sustainable, 2019- 2023

George Lorio, Bough Breaks, 2020, found twigs and bark on constructed armature, 27 x 28 x 5.5 in

George Lorio, Dryad, 2020, found twigs and sticks on constructed armature, 50 x 25 x 7.5 in

George Lorio, Infolding, 2020, found twigs and bark on constructed armature, 28 x 27 x 6 in

George Lorio, Notch, 2019, found twifs on fabricated wood armature, 17 x 30.75 x 15 in

George Lorio, Shell, 2022, found bark attached to constructed wooden armature, 20 x 15 x 16.5 in

George Lorio, Stump, 2019, found twigs attached to a constructed armature, 29.4 x 17.5 x 9.25 in

George Lorio, Side by side 2021, found twigs and bark on constructed amrature, 13 x 17 x 8 in

George Lorio
Sustainable
January 6 – January 28, 2024

This current body of work is a commentary on ecological destruction and a proposed view of renewal. The works represent the significance of nature’s provision of trees. Several fabricated sculptures resembling stumps and logs are placed surrounded by commercially pressed wood pellets. On superficial inspection, the blanketed works appear to have a trompe l’œil direction; however, this concern for defining a context is not to fool the eye but to engage interest. Lorio wishes to physically convey the loss of trees as terminated in a billet of pellets. A variety of embedded sculptures include “Notch,” “Bough Breaks,” “Segment,” “Injury” and a few smaller stump pieces; “Pelletized” is a tall sculpture that rests atop the pellet-covered floor. The walls carry mounted sculptures of similar arboreal content but only protrude slightly from the wall, measuring two to four feet tall. They include “Side by Side,” “Bent,” “Dryad,” “Infolding,” and “Residual Limb.”

About the Artist:

George Lorio was born and raised, through his teenage years, in New Orleans. This area of the United States framed his vision of life. It was and continues to be a place of extremes: beauty and decay, religion and ritual, custom and iconoclasm. From that experience, Lorio acquired an excitement for visual matters: colors, forms, and even artifacts. Having lived on the border with Mexico for ten years changed his view of contemporary culture and our collective social responsibility. At the time of the “9/11” bombing of the Twin Towers, NYC, his sojourn as a professor at the University of Texas in Brownsville on the Mexican border altered his aesthetic. Viewing the ambient drug wars, the desperation of immigrants, a collapsing Mexican democracy, wealth, inequality, and the environmental decline in his nation, he changed the insular focus of his art to embrace more topical issues. He taught art at four colleges and universities in various parts of the US for thirty-three years. During that time, he aggressively pursued the development and exhibition of sculptures designed and produced at those venues.