The four participants in “Beyond Surface,” a new exhibition at Pazo Fine Art, begin with the language of painting and drawing but extend that language into the third dimension. The resulting works can be smooth or jagged, tightly enclosed or free-form. But they all speak fluently to one another, a sign that Pazo Fine Art was smart to bring together these artists, three from Washington and one from Baltimore.
Both Joanne Kent and Giulia Livi draw from color field painting, but their work is also sculptural. Kent’s rectangular pieces are essentially blocks of a single hue. The artist complicates the format by applying oil paint in thick clumps that produce swells and shallows, and sometimes by adding additional hues that are close to the dominant ones but not identical. The paintings’ mesmerizing depths are at once illusory and real.
Most of Livi’s sculptures jut out about as far from the wall as Kent’s, undulating in regular curves. Made of painted tiles, four of the pieces curl neatly, one into a partial tube and another whose ripples shift from pink to lilac. Livi’s other creation is made of painted foam that bulges gently within hard-edged contours. As with the Baltimore artist’s other sculptures, the effect is to freeze movement serenely in space.
Both Ara Koh and Kristina Penhoet draw lines of tangled strands that seem to dangle and pool. Koh’s sculptures resemble stacks of ribbons, the hues subtly darkening toward the bottom of the pile. But the threads are in fact ceramic, so their apparent softness is a clever deception.
Penhoet’s works, which are truly fluid, are made primarily of off-white wool woven and knotted to varying thicknesses. Two of the pieces hang from ceiling to floor, evoking trees, vines, or Rapunzel-length locks, casting shadows whose movements emphasize the way the fibers sway. Of these artists, Penhoet is the only one to forgo color, but she makes the most energetic use of movement.
Beyond the surface Through August 3 at Pazo Fine Art, 1932 Ninth St. NW (entrance at 1917 9½ St. NW). pazofineart.com. 571-315-5279.
The sunny side
The three artists featured in African Art Beats’ “The Bright Side” come from different regions of Africa and employ different styles. But all the men, who go by a mononym, share an enthusiasm for composing and transforming. Their work is made of everyday things, both celebrated and transfigured.
Cheerful collage paintings are the specialty of Soul (Souleymane Konaté), who depicts wide-eyed humans, animals and hybrid creatures. The self-taught artist from Ivory Coast places his subjects amid patterns, often flowers, so that the cartoonish creatures seem to emerge from, or blend into, their colorful surroundings.
Diamas (Serge Diakota Mabilama) takes a similar approach, but with sculptural paintings that incorporate recognizable objects like a pan and Sprite bottle caps. The former serves as a metal canvas for a painting of a faceless figure, while the latter are strung into streamers that decorate another circular image. The artist, who lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, uses car paint and found objects to create ironically titled pieces like “Unbreakable,” a portrait rendered on a partially broken black board to which Diamas has playfully attached a battered spoon.
More traditional subjects are rendered in industrial substances by Doff (Apollinaire Guidimbaye), a Chadian artist who also has no formal artistic training. His foraging for seemingly worthless scrap materials has earned him his nickname, Wolof for “fool.” But there’s nothing ridiculous about his relief sculptures of flowers and market scenes, interpreted in such unexpected materials as bullet casings and melted plastic. Doff’s simple imagery is deepened by his complex textures, urgent ecological implications, and sheer inventiveness.
The sunny side Through August 15 at African Art Beats, 3501 Lowell St. NW. africanartbeats.com. 202-766-2608.
From wood to paper and back again
The title of Adah Rose Gallery’s “From Wood to Paper and Back Again” references pieces like Jessica Drenk’s sculpture in which dozens of concentric layers of paper, pressed tightly together, mimic the rings of a tree trunk. The wide-ranging group show, curated by Mary Freedman and Lisa Rosenstein, includes several other works that highlight the qualities of their materials. Among them are Rosenstein’s own oval collages made from torn paper and Christian Tribastone’s “High/Low,” which playfully elevates mundane brown cardboard by partially coating it with gold leaf.
The majority of the entries, however, are simply drawings, paintings or prints, usually on paper. The figurative works include Freedman’s expressionistic charcoal drawings of tulips and Nathan Loda’s realistic but slightly ghostly oil paintings of sylvan scenes; considerably more mischievous are Gregory Ferrand’s pencil drawings of people in Batman costumes. Floral motifs rather than tree motifs are dissected and layered in prints by Susan Goldman, a screen-printing virtuoso. As naturalistic as they are abstract, Goldman’s prints shift from blossoms to geometry and back again.
From wood to paper and back again Through August 10 at Adah Rose Gallery, 3766 Howard Ave., Kensington. adahrosegallery.com. 301-922-0162.
Eat Wondemu again
Local photographer Redeat Wondemu travels back home to Ethiopia often, where she shoots portraits of women that begin with interviews to create a connection between artist and subject. Wondemu takes a much less documentary approach to the self-portraits in “Phoenix Series,” six of which are on view at IA&A in Hillyer. These five-foot-tall photographs feature softly defined images and emphasize movement over character; the artist’s face appears in only two of the photos, and even in those, the face is blurred and shadowy.
The photographs in the “Phoenix” series are printed using the blueprint-like cyanotype process of digital negatives on watercolor paper. Long exposure times smear Wondemu’s fluttering clothing in white stripes, reminiscent of a bird’s plumage. The blurred figures are framed by deep blue planes that become mushy at the edges, as if the background is melting. The poses suggest a dance toward various freedoms, including a liberation of photographic credibility. Because Wondemu imitates a bird, the photographs almost turn into paintings.
Wondemu: Phoenix Series Re-Eating Through July 28 at IA&A in Hillyer, 9 Hillyer Ct. NW. athillyer.org. 202-338-0680.
