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2014

November 2014

November 2014

Fellows Converge | The Moral of the Story: Sharing Inspiration          

Please join us Friday, November 21 from 7-9 pm for the opening of our group exhibition Fellows Converge, an annual exercise in which Hamiltonian Fellows contemplate and create based on the premise of a selected guest curator.

Fellows Converge enables an exchange that extends across all disciplines and summons a common challenge in an artist's ability to respond to an outside concept, and consequently reevaluate his or her learned studio practice. Curated by Klaus Ottmann, the Director of the Center for the Study of Modern Art and Curator at Large at The Phillips Collection, the Fellows Converge exhibition facilitates an original collaboration among the Hamiltonian Fellows.

In the Walter Benjamin essay, "The Storyteller," the author laments the waning art of storytelling in tandem with the rise of the novel, as well as a seemingly lost gift in listening. Inspired by this text, Dr. Ottmann reiterates this notion by emphasizing that the art of narration is truly about shared experiences and deep exploration. He elaborates upon this idea by inviting the artists to create a visual response to a literary story that, in turn, is reinterpreted by a fellow artist. This process mimics the oral tradition of storytelling as tales are passed down and retold. While innovation can often be a solitary process, the unique works of Fellows Converge, The Moral of the Story: Sharing Inspiration encourage mutual understanding and creative reciprocity through artistic development.

Hamiltonian is proud to present this vivid dialogue through the following sources of inspiration:

Jorge Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths"
Lydia Davis, "The Hand"
Nicole Krauss, "An Arrangement of Light"
Gordon Lish, "Women Passing: O Mysterium!"
Haruki Murakami, "The Ice Man"
Larry Cook, "Post-Racial Confusion"

Curator Bio
KLAUS OTTMANN is currently the Director of the Center for the Study of Modern Art and Curator at Large at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Dr. Ottmann has curated more than forty exhibitions worldwide. His most recent curatorial projects include Hiroshi Sugimoto: Conceptual Forms and Mathematical Models (The Phillips Collection, February-May 2015); Angels, Demons, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet (The Phillips Collection, February-May 2013; Parrish Art Museum, Summer 2013); Per Kirkeby: Paintings and Sculpture (The Phillips Collection, October-January 2012; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, March-July 2013) and Jennifer Bartlett: Place---A Survey of Paintings and Sculpture (The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, June-October 2013; Parrish Art Museum, Summer 2014).

Dr. Ottmann has written extensively on art for numerous museums including the Aspen Art Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum Serralves, Porto; IVAM, Valencia; and the Kunstmuseum Bonn. He has also contributed to leading periodicals, including Flash Art, Arts, Domus, Art on Paper, Art Press, Sculpture, and ArtNews. He is also the editor-in-chief of Spring Publications, Inc., a small publishing house based in Putnam, Connecticut that specializes in books on psychology, philosophy, religion, mythology, and art.

 

click here to download a copy of the press release

 

 

 

 

November 21 – December 20, 2014

Opening Reception:
Friday, November 21
7-9 pm

September 2014

September 2014

NEW. NOW.

Please join us Saturday, September 13 from 7-9 pm for the opening of our annual group exhibition new. now. in which we debut the work of our six new, distinguished Hamiltonian Fellows for 2014. We are thrilled to introduce:

Naoko Wowsugi (MFA, Virginia Commonwealth University)
Adam Ryder (MFA, School of Visual Arts)
Allison Spence (MFA, University of California, San Diego)
Nancy Daly (MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art)
Dane Winkler (MFA candidate, University of Maryland)
Dan Perkins (MFA, The American University)

The artists will conduct informal talks about their work throughout the course of the

exhibition:

Tuesday, October 7, 7pm Dan Perkins + Nancy Daly
Wednesday, October 15, 7pm Dane Winkler + Naoko Wowsugi
Thursday, October 23, 7pm Adam Ryder + Allison Spence

 

click here to download a copy of the press release

September 13 – October 25, 2014

Opening Reception:
Saturday, September 13
7-9 pm

Artist Talks:
Dan Perkins + Nancy Daly:
Tuesday, October 7
7pm 

Dane Winkler + Naoko Wowsugi:
Wednesday, October 15
7pm 

Adam Ryder + Allison Spence:
Thursday, October 23
7pm 

June 2014

June 2014

BILLY FRIEBELE | U STREET CHROMATIC (FOR DUKE)

Billy Friebele translates the bustle of the U Street corridor into abstract images and sound in U Street Chromatic (for Duke) with an opening reception on Saturday, June 28 from 7-9 pm. 

In U Street Chromatic (for Duke), Billy Friebele pays homage to Duke Ellington's Soda Fountain Rag, an improvisational piano composition inspired by the mechanical motions of a soda fountain machine. First played at the Poodle Dog Cafe on the 2000 block of Georgia Avenue, Soda Fountain Rag carried traces of what would become defining characteristics of Ellington's musical style: spontaneity, improvisation and the ability to translate impressions into sound.

On the 100th anniversary of the creation of Soda Fountain Rag, Friebele honors the jazz great with an interactive drawing and sound-making machine. Planted in locations along the U Street Corridor that were important to Duke Ellington's artistic evolution, Friebele's playful machine translates the motion of passers by into sound and abstract images using sonar sensors. The result is a 21st century interpretation of Ellington's DC roots in Friebele's hallmark style.

Billy Friebele is a multi-media artist working in the DC metro region.  A former musician, Friebele's artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally in locations including the Space and Flow Conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Open Source Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, the Orlando Museum of Art in Orlando, FL and Art Currents Institute in Chelsea, NY.

Billy Friebele | Artist Statement
I was born in this city; I have watched it change continuously over the course of my life. As transformations occur, new histories are created, and the past is covered over by time. We try to memorialize the important figures with murals and statues, but these frozen monuments do not tell the rich history of this place.

I often try to imagine what it would be like to walk this neighborhood before the riots, when it was affectionately called “Black Broadway.” Reading about Duke Ellington’s experience of the segregated city, the pool halls, the theaters, and the music made me think of the stories that exist under all of these new buildings. Time has a way of washing all of this away.

Duke Ellington has always been an inspirational figure for me. I was a musician before I became an artist, and I have always been interested in the way his compositions capture a fleeting impression of the people and spaces he experienced.

The work in this show was created using sonar sensors to absorb the current rhythms of U Street, translating them into mechanical beats and digital drawings. These rhythms are abstract, chance compositions that echo the rhythms of the street. I chose to honor Duke by creating ephemeral, time-based interactions not to hold onto the past, but to focus on the relentless passage of time and the transient nature of our city.

 

click here to download a copy of the press release

 

 

June 28 – August 2, 2014  

Opening Reception:
Saturday, June 28
7-9 pm

Artist Talk:
Tuesday, July 8
7 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Billy Friebele

May 2014

May 2014

Sarah Knobel + Amy Boone-McCreesh | Anything Sacred

Artists Sarah Knobel and Amy Boone-McCreesh invite visitors to enter their tumultuous, colorful and delightfully contradictory worlds in Anything Sacred at Hamiltonian Gallery from Saturday, May 17 – June 21, 2014 with an opening reception on Saturday, May 17 from 7 -9 pm. 

In Sarah Knobel’s newest body of photographic and video work Icescapes and Cycles, garish dollar-store purchases and contemporary detritus become mysterious and mesmerizing “faux-organic” landscapes. Suspending the synthetic flotsam of consumer culture in ice and water, Knobel’s photographs and videos capture the objects in states of flux, manipulating the visual read of the objects from beautiful to grotesque, familiar to foreign and miniscule to monumental. These self-contained universes become Knobel’s tongue-in-cheek commentary on the contradictory nature of the art object and the tensions between the natural and constructed world.

Amy Boone-McCreesh, meanwhile, continues her exploration of her celebratory aesthetic, creating an immersive installation with a preponderance of 2D and 3D visual media. Boone-McCreesh’s installation, which will cover the walls and floors, is filled with patterns culled and re-mixed from her already extant body of work: previously created drawings, paintings and collages are scanned, cut, re-pasted and combined. The result will be temple to visual excess: a colorful, maximal experience that immerses visitors fully in Boone-McCreesh’s visual lexicon through painting, sculpture and drawing.

 

click here to download a copy of the press release

 

May 17 – June 21, 2014  

Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 17
7-9 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Sarah Knobel
Amy Boone-McCreesh

April 2014

April 2014

Joshua Haycraft | 20XX Future Guaranteed
Ryan Hoover | ambi-mimetics

In 20XX Future Guaranteed and ambi-mimetics, artists Joshua Haycraft and Ryan Hoover ask viewers to imagine a future not unlike the present: a future replete with wonder and terrible possibility, a future in which biological materials are 3D printed and consumer products promise paths to spiritual redemption.

 Joshua Haycraft imagines the future through BHBITB, a virtual culture seven years in the making with a unique history, religion, and government system that is given form through animated video and sculpture. In 20XX Future Guaranteed Haycraft maps out the lifestyle of BHBITB through an Ikea-like showroom featuring the furnishings and material trappings of the average denizen. Outfitted with interactive entertainment, food products, and a space dedicated to spiritual reflection, Haycraft details the preoccupations, desires, and fears of a culture through its material products; a foreign futuristic culture that is eerily reminiscent of our own.  

 In ambi-mimetics, Ryan Hoover explores the intersection of science, technology and art through 3D printed objects that simulate nature. An extension of his work in 3D printed biological materials, Hoover's tree-like sculptures and drawings are given their physical form using a written algorithm that mimics natural growth patterns. This complex series of mimicry opens up a dialogue about collapsing and compounding simulations. Hoover writes, "As the limits to what we can make and manipulate fall away like calving glaciers, our ethical responsibilities and our need to imagine the future become even more profound." 

click here to download a copy of the press release

 

April 5 - May 10, 2014 

Opening Reception:
Saturday, April 5
7-9 pm

Artist Talk:
Tuesday, April 22
7 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Joshua Haycraft
Ryan Hoover

February 2014

February 2014

Milana Braslavsky| No Other
Lisa Dillin | Allogrooming Lounge

Artists Milana Braslavsky and Lisa Dillin share the intimacies of quotidian objects and grooming rituals at Hamiltonian Gallery from Saturday February 22 – March 29, 2014 with an opening reception on Saturday, February 22 from 7-9 pm. 

In No Other, Milana Braslavsky creates a portrait of a cherished subject through photographs of objects used in their daily life. China and knickknacks are veiled, creating delicate sculptural forms: the curvilinear shape of a vase is amended by a silk blouse or is swaddled in folds of fabric. In a minimal palette of off-whites, greys and blacks, Braslavsky’s delicately examined objects are sensitive vanitas images that allude to the transient nature of objects and the lasting nature of memory.

Lisa Dillin, meanwhile, offers willing participants a chance primp publicly in Allogrooming Lounge, an architecturally defined social space where hair grooming services will be provided. “Allogrooming”, a term used to describe the social grooming practices of primates, is used to reinforce and strengthen community bonds. Based loosely on the architecture of mall courtyards and apehouses, Dillin’s Allogrooming Lounge provides a venue in which the touch-based benefits of grooming will be provided by six hairstylists to willing participants in an effort to provide a time and a space to connect with one another.

click here to download a copy of the press release

 

February 22 – March 29, 2014  

Opening Reception:
Saturday, February 22
7-9 pm

Artist Talk:
Thursday March 13
7 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Milana Braslavsky
Lisa Dillin

January 2014

January 2014

Annette Isham | Woman and Landscape
Larry Cook | From an Eighth to a Key

Artists Annette Isham and Larry Cook debut their newest photographic and video work at Hamiltonian Gallery from January 11- February 15, 2014 with an opening reception on Saturday, January 11 from 7 - 9 pm.

In Woman and Landscape, Annette Isham depicts otherworldly landscapes in which she performs a Sisyphean traversal of physical obstacles. Experimenting with video collages and backlit photos, Isham plays with formal and narrative tensions, juxtaposing sublime and fantastic terrain with female figures that teeter on the brink of collapse. Humorous and beautiful, poignant and absurd, Isham’s newest works allude to the moments of splendor, humor and struggle that define the human experience.

Larry Cook introduces a new photo portrait series in From An Eighth To A Key, a hip-hop metaphor for success. By photographing young African American males in postdoctoral regalia and placing successful Caucasian males in front of urban party backdrops, Cook places his subjects in foreign circumstances that allow for an examination of race and gender stereotypes while simultaneously disclosing the complexities of the individual.

click here to download a copy of the press release

 

January 11 – February 15, 2014  

Opening Reception:
Saturday, January 11
7-9 pm

Artist Talk:
Thursday, January 30
7 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Annette Isham
Larry Cook