Viewing entries in
2016

November 2016

November 2016

[RECOMBINANT] FELLOWS: RA | 
CURATED BY CAMILO ÁLVAREZ, SAMSØÑ

This year’s encounter, titled [recombinant] fellows: RA, is curated by Camilo Álvarez of Samsøñ, a gallery and artist residency in Boston, MA. Samsøñ creates and presents programs that explore the diversity of cultures and voices that continually shape contemporary art and ideas today, introducing emerging and under-recognized artists as well as re-contextualizing established artists.

June 2016

June 2016

 Christie Neptune | She Fell From Normalcy

Hamiltonian is pleased to present the Washington, DC debut of artist Christie Neptune in She Fell From Normalcy, an exhibition that will run from June 25 until July 30, 2016. The exhibition will open with a reception on June 25 from 7 - 9 pm; the artist will be in attendance. 

She Fell From Normalcy is the third and final installment of Christie Neptune’s multi-media series Eye Of The Storm, a body of work that examines how constructs of race, gender and class limit the personal experience. Working across photography, film and new media, Neptune challenges the hegemonic system of whiteness that shapes our definitions of the “self”, and in She Fell From Normalcy, places particular emphasis on its effect on the emotional and mental health of people of color. 

In She Fell From Normalcy, Christie Neptune uses sound, installation, original writing and video throughout the gallery to build a world stripped of the limitations of race, gender and class. As subject, Neptune employs two females trapped in a sterile, white environment in which they are controlled by an unseen presence; it is only after a cataclysmic break in the system that the females are granted clarity and self-recognition.

 

click here to download a copy of the press release

June 25 – July 30, 2016

Opening Reception:
Saturday, June 25
7-9pm

Artist Talk:
in conversation with Rhea Combs, PhD, Curator of Film + Photography Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture
Tuesday, July 12
pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Christie Neptune

photos by Michael Schiffer

May 2016

May 2016

Dan Perkins + Alejandro Pintado | Material/Ethereal

Hamiltonian is pleased to present "Material/Ethereal", an exhibition of new works by artists Alejandro Pintado and Dan Perkins. 

In "Material/Ethereal", Baltimore-based painter Dan Perkins and Mexico City-based artist Alejandro Pintado dissect and re-contextualize the visual and social histories that surround depictions of constructed and natural spaces from the 19th-century to the present day. Pintado and Perkins interrupt Romantic landscapes and interior spaces with luminous geometric forms, graphic patterns and trompe l'oeil effects, creating destabilized, artificial spaces where materials and forms morph and shift. By reversing hierarchies of foreground and background and making incongruous compositional choices, both artists upend pictorial conventions and invite viewers to consider painting's inherent falsity while acknowledging its potential as a catalyst for communication and ideation.

In his newest works, Alejandro Pintado immerses viewers into the hermetic private collections of the 19th century's great thinkers. Within the dusty confines of the studies and libraries of Humboldt, Sir John Soane and Darwin, Pintado places shimmering incandescent geometric forms and solid objects that hover in space. These foregrounded objects, metaphors for the pursuit of knowledge, break the two dimensional picture plane and serve as a bridge between Pintado's painted depictions of a fading modern past and the present day.

Dan Perkins newest works question painting's ability to communicate notions of the sublime in the contemporary era. Using digital screen interfaces, flat graphic patterns and geometric design forms to interrupt luminous, expansive and seductive depictions of landscape, Perkin's fractured compositions create stirring interactions between image and context, figure and ground, subject and content.

Alejandro Pintado holds a bachelors in Fine Art from La Escuela Nacional de Pintura Escultura y Grabado la Esmeralda in Mexico City and a Masters in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College in London, England. A recipient of awards both nationally and internationally, Pintado has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries both in the Americas and in Europe; notable recent exhibitions include The Clearest Skies at Post Box Gallery, London (2015); When The Rational Seems Abstract, Galeria Arróniz Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City (2015) and Trayectoria del Conocimiento / Path of Knowledge at the National Museum of Art in Mexico City (2013).

Dan Perkins holds an MFA in painting from American University. Perkins has exhibited throughout the region and abroad: recent exhibitions include Alone In The Woods at Hamiltonian Gallery, Washington, DC (2015); Dweller at Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA (2015) and Salon Zurcher with Curator's Office at Galerie Zurcher in New York, NY (2014). His paintings are held in the collection of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Katzen Museum at American University and several private collections.

 

click here to download a copy of the press release

May 14 - June 18, 2016

Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 14
7-9 pm

Artist Talk:
Tuesday, May 17
7 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Dan Perkins

Guest Artist:
Alejandro Pintado

photos by Michael Schiffer

April 2016

April 2016

ALLISON SPENCE | SPREAD
JIM LEACH | HOT WATER

Hamiltonian is pleased to present two new bodies of work by artists Allison Spence and Jim Leach. The exhibitions will run concurrently from April 2 – May 7, 2016 with an opening reception on Saturday, April 2 from 7–9pm. 

Allison Spence presents an installation of paintings, archival matter, and video in her latest exhibition Spread. Drawing parallels between Tomie—a Japanese horror manga with an infinitely regenerative femme fatale as its protagonist—and Pando—a prodigious and clonal forest colony in Utah that revitalizes itself in the wake of wildfires—Spence considers the potential for destructive acts to give rise to additive, creative, and infinite forms. Operating in a fluid space that confounds medium, language, and planarity, Spence’s work overlays reality with a gloss of its abject and sinister undercurrents. 

In Hot Water, Jim Leach retraces common presumptions of artistic value and cultural worth through a new body of sculptural diptychs and readymade assemblages. Leach excavates the various echelons of creative output through a visceral questioning of meaning and morality. In traversing themes of philosophy, literature, and art history, these works posit new understandings of subjectivity, social unknowing, and ethical hierarchy veiled in an anarchic order.

 

click here to download a copy of the press release

April 2 – May 7, 2016

Opening Reception:
Saturday, April 2 from 7–9pm. 

Artist Talk:
Jim Leach in conversation with curator Robert Thurmer, Wednesday, April 13, 7 pm


Allison Spence in conversation with science writer Sam Kean, Tuesday, April 26, 7 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Allison Spence
Jim Leach

photos by Nicole Dowd

February 2016

February 2016

NARA PARK | BETWEEN MILLIONS OF YEARS
DANE WINKLER | HOMESTEADING

Hamiltonian is pleased to present two new bodies of work by artists Nara Park and Dane Winkler. The exhibitions will run concurrently from February 20 – March 26, 2016 with an opening reception on Saturday, February 20 from 7-9pm and an artist talk on Wednesday, March 9 at 7pm.

In Nara Park’s latest site-specific installation “Between Millions of Years”, the artist stacks and arranges clear plastic boxes to create a dizzying analog of monumental stone gorges. Inspired by her travels in Western Australia’s Karijiny National Park where towering layers of rock stand testament to millions of years of shifting geologies, Park translates these natural forms into a modular ravine straddling mass-production and aesthetic re-interpretation. Coupled with a selection of new sculptural wall pieces, Park questions and undermines the assumed permanence of natural resources to nuance our understandings of temporality, mortality, and authenticity.

Dane Winkler activates Hamiltonian’s back gallery with a host of new sculptural work that approximates a dystopic farmyard in “Homesteading”. Across this installation, Winkler contrasts heavy industrial machinery with straw, sheep’s wool, and mud in three sculptures that imply self-sufficiency, survival, and the fulfillment of one’s most basic needs. At the same time, Winkler’s contextualization of pastoral materials within the white cube gallery space foregrounds moral issues of subsistence amid our urban and cosmopolitan surroundings.

Nara Park is a graduate of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Park has been included in solo and group exhibitions at the Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA (2015); Honfleur Gallery, Washington, DC (2014); the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, New Orleans, LA (2014); and Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ (2013).

Dane Winkler is an MFA candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. His work has been featured in various group and solo exhibitions including an upcoming solo-exhibition at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE (2016) and previous shows at the Workhouse Arts Center, Lorton, VA (2015); the Socrates Sculpture Park, New York, NY (2014); and Rosalux Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (2013). In addition to maintaining an art practice, Winkler plays drums in the New York-based rock band Lovesick Nomads.

 

click here to download a copy of the press release

February 20 – March 26, 2016

Opening Reception:
Saturday, February 20, 7–9 pm

Artist Talk:
Wednesday, March 9, 7pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Nara Park
Dane Winkler

photos by Joseph Shaikewitz

January 2016

January 2016

Rob Hackett | Mode(s) 
Kyle Tata | Asleep in the Factory

Hamiltonian is pleased to present two new bodies of work by artists Rob Hackett and Kyle Tata. The exhibitions will run concurrently from January 9 – February 13, 2016 with an opening reception on Saturday, January 9 from 7-9 pm. 

Sculptor Rob Hackett explores the subtle complexities of space, architecture, and the body in Mode(s). Through sculptural installations, Hackett deploys formally restrained and geometrically discrete motifs to consider the visual and corporeal reception of our physical surroundings. In turn, the works spur a re-consideration of our constructed environment through relatively simple yet familiar shapes, materials, and means. 

Through his newest series of black-and-white photographs, Asleep in the Factory, Kyle Tata collages scenes of darkroom contrivances, stock image booklets, and invention patents to create fictive workspaces filled to capacity with layers of clutter. Tata’s isolation and examination of analog photography’s pedagogical eccentricities – obsessively detailed diagrams from darkroom manuals, sexually fraught stock imagery - convey a human presence while proposing a re-evaluation of pictorial logic altogether. 

Hackett received his MFA from the University of Maryland and has been featured in recent exhibitions at museums and galleries including Hillyer Art Space, Washington, DC (2015); VisArts, Rockville, MD (2015); Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ (2015); and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA (2013). He lives and works in Washington, DC. 

Tata received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has written for numerous art blogs. His work has been featured at galleries and institutions including Spudnik Press & Gallery, Chicago, IL (2014); The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD (2014); Current Gallery, Baltimore, MD (2013); and Furthermore Gallery, Washington, DC (2013). Tata was a 2014 Walter & Janet Sondheim Artscape Prize Finalist and is currently on the faculty at the Baltimore School for the Arts.

click here to download a copy of the press release

January 9 – February 13, 2016

Opening Reception:
Saturday, January 9, 7–9 pm 

Artist Talk:
Wednesday, January 20, 7 pm

Hamiltonian Artists:
Kyle Tata
Rob Hackett

photos by Joseph Shaikewitz