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Sometimes the twist is just in subject matter. Larry Preston paints black-background still lifes in the manner of a 17th-century Dutch master, but one of his pictures portrays several stacks of sticky-looking iced doughnuts. (A snack for the members of Rembrandt’s “Night Watch”?) Andreas Claussen paints astronauts (or perhaps cosmonauts) after splashdown, with details that are alternately playful or ominous: One spaceman is buoyed by an inflatable pink-flamingo pool toy, but another dog-paddles past a nuclear explosion’s mushroom cloud.
Stylistic variations invigorate the many vignettes of city life. Christine Lashley’s treatment of an oft-depicted view, across Paris from Montmartre to the Eiffel Tower, crackles with neo-impressionist verve. Valerio D’Ospina adds Futurist-style locomotion to a moment in which a car speeds through a darkened city, so that not only the vehicle but also the entire scene seems to be rushing at the viewer.
The looser efforts include Geoffrey Johnson’s study of seven people (and a dog) reduced to elongated silhouettes in a mist-cloaked city and a Jeff Erickson seascape that verges on color-field painting. Among the most precise is Alejandro Rosemberg’s portrait of a pensive young woman, rendered in shades of gray. The color scheme appears to acknowledge photography while also challenging it. In the age of mechanical reproduction, adept painting can still have exceptional power.
30th Anniversary Exhibition Through April 22 at Principle Gallery, 208 King St., Alexandria. principlegallery.com/alexandria. 703-739-9326.
Until 2020, Zofie King assembled found-object sculptures that generated uneasy vibes while posing tantalizing queries about human thinking and feeling. The Northern Virginia artist is now making two-dimensional artworks, but they have a similar effect. The surreal mixed-media pictures in “Metamorphic Reverie,” King’s Fred Schnider Gallery of Art show, graft animals into architecture as they integrate drawing, painting and photography.
The primarily black-and-white pictures are drawn with ink and liquid charcoal, supplemented with watery monochromatic painting. Inserted into them are photos of windows, stairs and other structural details in blueprint-like cyanotype. Metallic-gold accents set off the blue, much as the mottled washes contrast the hard-edge renderings of arches, filigree and jewellike structures.
In some of the larger pieces, buildings and rooms nestle within the partly folded wings of large bats that hang upside down. Even when there’s no bat, things go topsy-turvy: “Apparition” centers on a tree whose roots enclose an inverted Gothic structure seemingly buried in the earth. Above ground in the tree’s trunk is a shield-shaped golden window that contains an array of gesturing human hands. The portal is inviting, but — as was true of King’s sculptures — there’s a sense that entering might not be a good idea.
Zofie King: Metamorphic Reverie Through April 21 at Fred Schnider Gallery of Art, 888 N. Quincy St., Arlington. fredschnidergalleryofart.com. 703-841-9404.
While many of its entries are computer-generated or -assisted, “Newbodies/Nobodies” also includes simple pencil drawings. The latter depict passengers, some masked, on subway trains, presumably in Seoul. The exhibition at Montgomery College’s King Street Gallery was organized in conjunction with South Korea’s CICA Museum, which is simultaneously exhibiting art by Montgomery College faculty and staff.
Hyemin An’s subway sketches aren’t high-tech, but they reflect some of the themes explored by the other 21 artists: the relationship between humans and machines, anatomies transformed by technology, and the culture shock of the pandemic. The riders become units of a larger mechanism, much like the body parts in Soeun Bae’s sculptures, one of which places a glass model of a human ear at the center of a sort of Zen garden. Musician-sculptor Sori Choi takes a different approach to the ear, producing craggy relief sculptures by drumming on metal sheets.
The array includes many videos, several on a topic that’s been common since 1960s pop art: the treacherous allure of commercial marketing. Chaeyun Kim’s satirical advertisement touts a pill that chemically induces romance, while Maddy Lee’s minute-long 3D animations spin through glittery jeweled objects. Dho Yee Chung and Jin Kwang Kim’s large photo-collages stitch furniture, clothing and electronic machines into Frankenstein’s monsters of consumer desire. The artists’ methods may be cutting-edge, but the lust to acquire is classic.
Newbodies/Nobodies Through April 19 at King Street Gallery, Montgomery College, 930 King St., Silver Spring. montgomery.edu. 240-567-5821.
The colors are vivid in Carol Barsha’s depictions of flower-filled meadows, but the boldest thing about her compositions is the positioning of the blossoms. Red, pink and yellow flowers, often larger than life-size, claim the foreground of the local artist’s mixed-media drawing-paintings. The effect is to make visitors to Barsha’s “A Piece of Magic” feel more like participants than spectators.
Barsha titled the Gallery Neptune & Brown show after her former teacher Philip Guston’s description of painting: “an illusion, a piece of magic.” Like Guston, Barsha flattens and simplifies forms and downplays perspective. Behind the abundant flowers are lime-green hillocks and powder-blue skies, but they’re rendered with little sense of depth. Even occasional collaged elements, such as the cherries that float in midair in “Paradise,” barely break the near-level picture plane.
Her work represents “highly personal voyages of loss and joy,” according the artist’s statement. Yet metaphorical darkness is hard to discern in these artworks — even in the only nighttime scene, “Midnight,” whose sky is a deep but luminous blue. To gaze into Barsha’s pictures is to be thrust into realms of dreamlike color and sensation.
Carol Barsha: A Piece of Magic Through April 20 at Gallery Neptune & Brown, 1530 14th St. NW. galleryneptunebrown.com. 202-986-1200.
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