Reviews

The continued fascination with the sociopolitical concerns that have come to prominence around and since the 2016 election is explored in America Is… on view at Touchstone Gallery. Artists explore, ask and answer: "What is America today?". Here, the curatorial lens is focused on the way our recent political choices reverberate through the tenuous fabric of a multi-cultural society and is more concerned with broader issues such as racism, homophobia, gun violence and income inequality Read More

In Identity, Dominican artist Yoce Ramírez presents three discreet series of paintings linked by common subject matter addressing, as the title suggests, national and racial identity in her native country. Read More

Works by Nancy Sausser and Madeline Stratton, now on view at IA&A at Hillyer, provide an ideal laboratory for discovering affinities between artists using dissimilar media to uncover those hidden memories or experiences that connect the individual to the world around them. While their bodies of work may have parted at a fork in the road, the paths they travel run remarkably parallel. Read More

Flesh + Bone III, now on view at IA&A at Hillyer, presents a cross-section of approaches to capturing the human physique. Though national in scope (works come from as far away as Georgia and Oregon), half of the artists selected hail from the DMV area, giving viewers a sense of how our region’s artists participate in contemporary dialogues regarding the intersection of abstraction and realism in modern, figurative work. Read More

In Deep Space Jordann Wine finds healing through an exploration of patterns and movement at Honfleur Gallery. Read More

The numbers are staggering. Americans use approximately 35 billion plastic bottles and containers each year. Since its invention, which completely transformed consumer culture, we have only increased our plastic footprint, particularly since major plastic production began in the 1940s and 1950s. We need to do something about this now, and Kirsty Little is trying to draw our attention to this inalterable fact by creating a work that calls the viewer to recognize the problem. Read More

At Studio Gallery, Pam Frederick and Veronica Szalus explore various themes prevalent in urban environments. Frederick creates photographic collages while Szalus employs found materials to discuss the interaction of building and decay, as well as the distinction between human memories against factual documentation. Read More

A small group of standing bronze sculptures by sculptor Squire Broel is currently in the outdoor sculpture area at American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center. At significant distances from one another, there is a strong sense of loneliness in this installation. In the bright sun, with angled shadows from the building, totems in the American desert may come to mind, although the aesthetic seems more universal, potentially recalling various primitive or prehistoric sources. Read More

Strictly Painting 12, the title of McLean Project for the Art’s current exhibition is something of a misnomer. A more apt title for the 63-work exhibition might well be Strictly Color 12. Jurist Adah Rose Bitterbaum has selected 56 artists whose approach to color (or even its creative absence) defines the visual forms displayed on canvas and paper. Read More

At HEMPHILL Fine Arts, Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi examines the complexities of cultures clashing through her vibrant works, incorporating both Persian and American influences. Read More

Through innovative cross-disciplinary gallery programming at the Greater Reston Art Center, the playfully compelling objects made by Stephanie Williams are visually engaging on a personal and a metaphorical level. The artist investigates themes of identity through individual objects hung on the wall in a collective grouping that may look like specimens in a lab. Working with throwaway objects and remnants, Williams’ objects are unsettling and sensually alluring. Read More

Gallery B in downtown Bethesda is hosting the finalists of the annual Bethesda Painting Awards competition. This year’s selection exhibits a pronounced showing of painting, in the traditional sense, both figurative and abstract. It’s been some time since we’ve seen such a strong feeling of hand is in the works represented, that is, of paint on surface, made into recognizable or abstract imagery. Read More

The retrospective exhibition of the work of Venetian artist Jacopo Robusti, known as Il Tintoretto, is still on view at the National Gallery. Although Tintoretto was enormously successful in his own time and place, he remains relatively unknown to the general public. The reasons for this are many. Not least among them are the many myths that stubbornly follow the artist’s reputation portraying him as an outsider, a rebel, a difficult and bizarre personality, and perhaps most problematically: a Mannerist. Read More