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2009

December 2009

December 2009

Jonathan Monaghan | Rock Hard Weekend
Frank Hallam Day | Equatorial Beauties

Hamiltonian Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition of works by Washington, DC photographer Frank Hallam Day, and Hamiltonian Fellow, Jonathan Monaghan.  Whether through African mannequins, Christian imagery or heraldic symbolism, both artists present recontextualized notions of the West.

In Frank Day’s Equatorial Beauties, a series of photographs from a more extensive body of work taken in sub-Saharan Africa, the viewer comes face-to-face with images of women’s fashion mannequins from African marketplaces.  Each mannequin dons tattered wigs, outdated make-up and ill-fitting clothes, but the focus here is on their eerie, damaged faces, chipped noses and eyes that gaze out beyond the viewer.  These all-Caucasian mannequins represent the remnants of Western standards of beauty, and by extension, Post-Colonialism itself, all of which still very much affect Africa today.

In his latest body of work titled Rock Hard Weekend, Hamiltonian Fellow Jonathan Monaghan further explores the Christian notion of self-sacrifice with his computer-animated videos and images. Monaghan’s works, opulent in their use of slick, laser-cut acrylic frames and symbols of designer luxury, offer an updated, almost post-human version of biblical allegories and the survival of their lessons.

In Pelican, a fabricated red bird, with a head reminiscent of a quilted Moncler ski jacket and a beak tattooed in the Ferrari horse symbol, sits amongst Catholic architecture and sumptuous red carpets, as it feeds its baby chicks through visceral, venous tubes.  Pelican’s symbolism is sourced directly from the Bible, which tells the story of the pelican who tore her own breast to nourish her young when there was no food to be found.  Monaghan’s frequently used birds become stand-ins for Christ, and offer a stark counter to the indulgent decadence that surrounds them.

 

click here to download a copy of the press release

 

 

December 12, 2009 – January 16, 2010

Opening Reception:
Saturday, December 12
7-9pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Jonathan Monaghan

Guest Artist:
Frank Day

November 2009

November 2009

Anne Chan + Michael Dax Iacovone

Hamiltonian Gallery is pleased to present new works by Hamiltonian Fellows, Anne Chan and Michael Dax Iacovone. Although starkly different in their conclusions, both Chan and Iacovone observe and explore systems in which we move through familiar spaces. This photo-centric exhibition including installations will run from November 6 – December 5, 2009, with an opening reception on Friday, November 6, from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Drawing on the Situationists’ philosophy of drifting through urban space, Michael Dax Iacovone creates large-scale photographs of city intersections, to which he arrives by a random operation – a roll of the dice. Two images, one taken upright, one inverted, comprise each photograph and mark each point of crossing using Iacovone’s navigational equations. In changing the purpose and documentation of his “stroll,” Iacovone shifts the understanding and awareness of our common, pedestrian spaces.

Anne Chan meticulously and obsessively assembles installations using office products to reference the minutia of corporate culture, daily commutes, and mundane tasks. By implementing repetition and a limited depth of field, Chan creates architectural spaces where one cannot imagine an end to the infinite twists in the walls and turns in the roads. By placing an incalculable number of staples in her installation, Chan cleverly illustrates psychological confinement that results from the realization that we’re one among millions.

This exhibition will run from November 6 – December 5, 2009, with an opening reception on Friday, November 6, from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

In conjuction with FotoWeek DC, Hamiltonian Gallery will be hosting a panel discussion with Michael Iacovone and Anne Chan, moderated by renowned photographer Frank Day, on Thursday, November 12th, at 7:00pm, at Hamiltonian Gallery.

click here to download a copy of the press release

November 6 – December 5, 2009

Opening Reception:
Friday, November 6
6:30–8:30 pm

Artist Talk:
Thursday, November 13
7pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Anne Chan
Michael Dax Iacovone

September 2009

September 2009

Jon Bobby Benjamin | Beacon Puritanus
James Rieck | This Land is Your Land
Chad Yencer

Hamiltonian Gallery is pleased to present This Land is Your Land and Beacon Puritanus, an exhibition of new works by James Rieck, Chad Yencer and Hamiltonian Fellow, Jon Bobby Benjamin. Through meticulous installation, painting and sculpture, each artist muses on America – her landscape forms the mise-en-scène and her history becomes the lead.

In This Land is Your Land, James Rieck confronts the grand genre of history painting in his seven works, all comprised of two cropped female gures dressed in alluring costumes of American icons, who frame a poignant history painting, which becomes the backdrop behind them. As highfalutin’ as a 4th of July parade, this linear series is assembled in seven acts, each painting depicting periods in American history in which lands were con- quered and a subsequent shift in power occurred.

Chad Yencer quite literally takes on the petite genre in his twenty matchboxes, which, when opened, reveal tiny, ambitious landscape paintings, all sourced from snapshots of Yencer’s personal history and travels through the American Mid-West. The mundane and commercially produced matchbox preserves moments of escape into the sublime, and through this juxtaposition of high and low, the banal and the signi cant are bridged.

Beacon Puritanus delves into the roots of American cultural values in a two-part installation by Jon Bobby Benjamin. Benjamin intertwines imagery from Puritan New England, mid-20th century suburban development and contemporary post-industrial decay, and binds them all with the concept of American Exceptionalism. A large, wooden cargo ship carrying modular, little plaster houses through a sea of black ash, approaches the wooden shoreline of a community of sunken, abandoned structures. By isolating only the landscape and architecture, this installation tells the tale of a defunct society and mirrors the failed Puritan experiment that took place only a few centuries ago. 

click here to download a copy of the press release

September 19– October 31, 2009
 

Opening Reception:
Saturday, September 19
7–9 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Jon Bobby Benjamin

Guest Artist:
James Rieck

August 2009

August 2009

Echo Eggebrecht + Ken Fandell + Mike Dax Iacovone + Billy Friebele | almost surely, almost everywhere

Hamiltonian Gallery and curator Rebecca Jones are pleased to present “Almost Surely, Almost Everywhere”, a group exhibition featuring works by Echo Eggebrecht, Ken Fandell, Billy Friebele and Hamiltonian Fellow Mike Dax Iacovone. The exhibition runs from August 8 until September 12, 2009, with an opening reception on Saturday, August 8, from 7 – 9 p.m.

Each of the artists in this exhibition investigates the experiential nature of humankind’s existence within a world of immeasurable space, infinite possibilities and continual journeys. The terms “almost surely” and “almost everywhere” are encountered in probability theory where questions involving infinity are posed. Through the use of physical acts, mediated images and painterly expressions of the mysteries of intangible space and time in our physical world, this group of works presents attempts to approach the stability of “sureness”, the absolute encompassment of “everywhere” and the enigmatic results of these endeavors. Echo Eggebrecht’s psychological spaces are musings on subjects such as space travel and magic as well as representations of the myriad complexities of contemporary visual experience. The clues and symbols provided by the artist in her interiors suggest dark activity and possibly even phenomena related to the occult. Eggebrecht depicts imagery and uses a painterly technique that creates a distinct atmosphere highly obscured, though quite certainly familiar.

Ken Fandell’s multimedia projects explore both a dryly humorous and deeply resonant territory between the sublime and the vapid. As a viewer, one can clearly identify with his contemplations concerning everyday relationships to time, space and the concept of infinity, though the sensibility of Fandell’s images provide unusual perspectives and strange syntheses. In his video, The Most Important Picture Ever, Fandell sources the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, an image announced in 2004 by astronomers as the “deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind,” amalgamates it with a “significant” image from the artist’s own library, and backs the video to a slow, remixed track from the iconic rock band, “The Who.” In this piece, Fandell continues to seek to connect what he refers to as “the proximate and the infinite.”

Inspired by the Situationist’s concept of the derive, Mike Dax Iacovone and Billy Friebele work collaboratively in this exhibition to create a video documenting their physical experiment with “drifting and navigating” through a Philadelphian public urban space that neither artists are familiar with. Drifting, (or the derive as the Situationists called it) is an attempt at analysis of the totality of everyday life, through the passive movement through space. In the fist half of each journey, Friebele drifts through the space, without destination, dictated by the “walk/don’t walk” signals. The signals themselves are arbitrary, but act as the system of guiding through space, which facilitates the drifting. For the second half of each trip, Friebele navigates back to the beginning point based on expediency, and the knowledge of the space that he gained from the drifting.

click here to download a copy of the press release

August 8– September 12, 2009

Opening Reception:
Saturday, August 8
7–9 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Mike Dax Iacovone
Billy Friebele

Guest Artists:
Echo Eggebrecht
Ken Fandell

June 2009

June 2009

new.(now).

Hamiltonian Artists and Hamiltonian Gallery are pleased to announce “new. (now).” a group exhibition of the five new Hamiltonian Fellows.

Jon Bobby Benjamin
Magnolia Laurie
Katherine Mann
Jon Monaghan
Lina Vargas De La Hoz

On Saturday, June 20, 2009, at 7pm, Hamiltonian Gallery will open an introductory group exhibition of these five new Fellows. Each artist, incredibly distinct from one another and multidisciplinary, will be displaying the work with which they were accepted. The exhibition will run from June 20 – August 1, 2009. Please join us!

click here to download a copy of the press release.

June 20– August 1, 2009

Opening Reception:
Saturday, June 20
7–9 pm

May 2009

May 2009

Fellows Converge: Redefining the Environment

“FELLOWS CONVERGE: Redefining the Environment,” will run from May 9 – June 6, 2009, with an opening reception on Saturday, May 9, 2009, 7 – 9 pm.

Hamiltonian Artists and Hamiltonian Gallery are pleased to announce “FELLOWS CONVERGE: Redefining the Environment,” a group exhibition marking the culmination of the Hamiltonian Fellowship’s first year.

Curator and Mentor Artist, Helen Frederick, leagued all of the Hamiltonian Fellows together to contemplate associations they have built over the year, and to design a collaborative show across disciplines, media, content and colleagues. Comprised of all new work, this exhibition highlights their ability to converse and broaden their understanding of one another, thus allowing for new interpretations of their work to be created.

Acknowledging their resonance with the environment, both within the gallery and the changing U Street neighborhood, the Fellows have sought out new potential and perspectives. Whether directly sourcing the people or facades of the U Street area, using materials from the streets and buildings surrounding the gallery or studying the socioeconomic fabrics within the community, each artist has distilled the tenor of this neighborhood and reconstructed it with common threads they find in their own artistic vocabulary.

click here to download a copy of the press release.

May 9 - June 6, 2009

Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 9
7–9 pm

March 2009

March 2009

Lisa Brotman
Thomas Block
Michael Enn Sirvet

Hamiltonian Gallery and Hamiltonian Artists are proud to announce the opening of their fifth exhibition featuring the lush and emotional work of Lisa Brotman, the tumultuous second installment of Tom Block’s series exploring mysticism in our post-religious age, and Michael Enn Sirvet’s sculptural work exploring the complex dualities of the natural and fabricated world. Disparate as the work may appear on the surface, each of these three artists endeavor to embolden the viewer to reevaluate the relationships of three overlapping realms through the filter of our modern-day sensibilities; namely, the world around us, the world within us and the world we cannot see.

Lisa Brotman’s paintings of women are part of an outgoing series that she began in the late 1970’s. Brotman creates an environment full of slightly curious women and colorful, repetitive flora that teeters between familiar reality and phantasmagoria. This interplay of iconographic elements begets metaphors and emotions, which in turn provoke visual and psychological investigation.

Twenty-five large, chaotic, mixed media panels wrap around the back of the gallery and together as a whole compose “Conference of the Birds,” an installation by Tom Block. The artistic process of this installation, as well as the symbols and imagery it contains, is modeled after a historic allegory of the spiritual quest of a mystic, also called, “Conference of the Birds.” Block’s technique of reworking, stripping and overworking the vibrant paintings echoes his own spiritual quest – realizing the mistaken ideals of classical mysticism, he then replaces them with a contemporary understanding of spirituality.

Michael Enn Sirvet’s prolific sculptural works ask more from the viewer than solely a formalist response. Sirvet dismantles, alters and reassembles manmade objects, or natural objects reshaped by man, to retell the stories of archetypal forms. His sculptures bridge the natural world with the industrial, and evoke questions of existence and man’s dominion.

click here to download a copy of the press release

March 21– May 2, 2009

Opening Reception:
Saturday, March 21
7–9 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Michael Enn Sirvet

Guest Artist:
Thomas Block
Lisa Brotman