The two artists’ photos are generally, but not solely, monochromatic. Smith’s are white-on-black drawings of basic styles on stained linen whose undercoats sometimes reveal brighter colours. Brugnoli’s are drawn and painted atop black-and-white monitor prints on Mylar, and all are in shades of grey and black, conserve for a person streaked with gold pigment.
The central photos in Brugnoli’s performs seem to be derived from pictures and are hence far more in-depth, even when partly submerged beneath sumi ink, white charcoal or other resources. The motifs consist of electrical power traces, tree groves and train tracks, all spindly but conveying a sense of motion or relationship. Smith presents flatly abstracted renditions of what glance to be this kind of commonplace objects as cups and boxes, though her statement likens just about every variety to an “internalized landscape.” Smith pulls closest to Brugnoli’s territory with “Track,” a rendering of a couple of tough strains that parallel or overlap.
Wherever Smith’s items resulted from family members journeys to Syracuse and again, Brugnoli’s have a extra somber impetus: the 2021 loss of life of her father. Of the artworks’ recurring styles, the artist’s statement describes, “I repeat to don’t forget. I demolish to reimagine. I bury to unearth.” The cables, tracks and trunks in Brugnoli’s photographs symbolically website link earlier and present, warm memory and cold truth.
Nikki Brugnoli and Anne C. Smith: Forces Fleeting As a result of April 17 at the Athenaeum, 201 Prince St., Alexandria.
Compact Scale Web page Certain Sculpture Present (SSSSSS)
Most gallery proprietors offer you artists a white home in which to screen their function. Artist-entrepreneurs Nancy Daly] and Rex Delafkaran went further more at the new place of their pop-up, But, Also. They outfitted the room with white secondhand household furniture and other fixtures, including a partial shower enclosure. Then they invited nine artists to include their individual touches to complete the “Small Scale Web-site Particular Sculpture Exhibit (SSSSSS).”
Some of the artworks are conspicuous. Brian Michael Dunn littered the desk with monitor-printed facsimiles of dollar expenditures, their visuals as well degraded to prompt prices of counterfeiting. Kevin Kao lined the walls all-around the shower with mini-cabinets whose bulbous designs counsel the overall body but whose reflective surfaces serve as mirrors. J. Alex Schechter suspended from 1 wall a ramshackle array of terrariums whose factors incorporate artificial crops, metallic vises and fuchsia LEDs.
Other parts are at the very least considerably hidden. Hannah Spector positioned an etching and a online video-enjoying digital pill inside a drawer. Yan Jin tore 6 web pages from a Jorge Luis Borges e book and stuffed them inside balloons, which cling beneath the nailed-down tome. Emily Francisco outfitted a medication cupboard with small metallic containers loaded with healing animal seems. In this idiosyncratic dwelling products keep, some of the most attractive goods is ephemeral.
Small Scale Site Particular Sculpture Exhibit (SSSSSS) By way of April 9 at But, Also, 1418 N. Capitol St. NW.
In their influential 1972 e-book about postmodern architecture, “Learning From Las Vegas,” Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour distinguish between two creating varieties: “ducks,” which assume distinctive designs, and “decorated sheds.” D.C. photographer Philip Taplinis a duck hunter. The photographs in “AmerIcons,” his Photoworks exhibit, memorialize constructions these as Lucy, the 6-tale wood-and-tin elephant in Margate, N.J. Also pictured are El Gran Toro, a cow-shaped carryout with glowing purple eyes and, yes, a setting up — the Massive Duck — in the type of a major white duck.
But some of the structures Taplin pictures are just elaborately embellished sheds. The entrance to Orlando’s Gatorland is a set of monumental eco-friendly jaws, but they direct into an everyday rectangular framework. That the pics of these areas don’t glance standard owes significantly to Taplin’s very careful timing. The photographer typically shoots at twilight, when pink and purple skies incorporate a fantastical aspect to the compositions. “AmerIcons” files a vanishing era in American highway architecture, but its illustrations or photos seem to exist eerily out of time.
The photographs in Jennifer Sakai’s “Hillover Street,” also at Photoworks, are a distinct wide variety of getaway snapshots. Motivated by a Long Island property that has served 4 generations of a household, the venture contains sunny pics of the seaside, the sky and tiny professional buildings. Some of the pictures are inside near-ups, emphasizing the dramatic participate in of mild on house objects. Two sequence shot in between 2008 and 2021 — just one of the facade of a regional motel and the other of driftwood pylons erected quickly in the sand — mark passing time. That factors change just underscores “Hillover Road’s” perception of continuity.
Philip Taplin: AmerIcons and Jennifer Sakai: Hillover Road By April 10 at Photoworks, Glen Echo Park, 7300 MacArthur Blvd., Glen Echo.
Wood walkways traverse miniature sand dunes heaped on the floor of Cody Gallery, beneath a flower-festooned archway and a sculpture of a palm tree. The clear intention of Dave Eassa’s “People and Sites You Don’t Know How to Know” is to get readers on some sort of journey.
The path meanders into the Baltimore artist’s household record. Descended from immigrants from Syria, Palestinian territories and Lebanon, Eassa has reimagined his past, motivated in portion by a 5-week residency in Jordan in 2021. He led art workshops for young skate boarders while acquainting himself with local tradition.
The show centers on four huge paintings that depict Eassa’s grandparents and other relatives. Every single has a band of bouquets — jasmine, poppies, tulips and purple roses — across the bottom to symbolize the Arab entire world. The images combine sketchy outlines and daring colors to counsel a mix of classic crafts with American graffiti and Pop artwork. As recounted here, Eassa’s life story includes a lot more than a little bit of city Baltimore.
Dave Eassa: Individuals and Sites You Never Know How to Know By means of April 14 at Cody Gallery, Marymount College Ballston Centre, 1000 N. Glebe Rd., Arlington.
