Exhibitions and Reviews
THE LATEST ROUNDUPS
MULTIPLE POTENTIAL PAIRINGS AT HEMPHILL ARTWORKS, DOWNBEAT "VIBES" AT OTIS ST. ARTS PROJECT, AND BRASH COLORS AT FALLS CHURCH ARTS GALLERY
Mark Jenkins | December 10, 2024
The math is a bit more complicated in "Two X" than the Hemphill Artworks group show's title suggests. The selection presents 14 artists (six of them deceased) paired as seven duos. Several of the contributors, however, are represented by multiple works. Also, some of the pieces -- all made between 1960 and 2024 -- speak articulately to ones to which they're not officially linked.
Wayson R. Jones's "Kinshasa," for example, is an abstract 3D painting, rendered in two tones of blue, that's offered in dialogue with an untitled Leon Berkowitz picture whose soft, flat hues flow from blue to red to yellow. But the craggy relief forms in Jones's painting suggest the wave and criss-cross patterns in two white-on-white Robin Rose sculptural pictures. And Rose's icy palette harmonizes with the minimalism of a Ruri Yi painting that neatly arrays 12 lozenges in close shades of white and off-white.
HEMPHILL ARTWORKS
TWO X
November 9 – December 21, 2024
Washington, DC - HEMPHILL is pleased to announce the group exhibition TWO X, opening on Saturday, November 9, 2024, from 4 – 7 p.m. The exhibition will remain on view through December 21, 2024.
TWO X
BENNY ANDREWS & MELVIN L. NESBITT JR., LEON BERKOWITZ & WAYSON JONES, FRANCIS CRISS & KEVIN MACDONALD, JOSEPH MILLS & SHAUNTÉ GATES, NORMAN LEWIS & ROBIN ROSE, ALMA THOMAS & JULIE WOLFE, OTHO BRANSON & RURI YI
Merit Award: Whole House, Contemporary
HOME & DESIGN 2024 Excellence Award
Drysdale Design Associates
Featured on the cover of the Home & Design DC Special Edition
October, 2024
Henrimag
By Paul Goodman
6 June 2024
The co-curators of the event, MONDRIAN80, were gallerist Jason Andrew and artist Max Estenger. Together they recalled this anniversary to address the pure idealism of Mondrian’s utopian vision. The affair began with a trip to Mondrian’s humble gravesite. Those gathered there enjoyed a contemporary dance piece performed by Julia Gleich and two male colleagues, who moved gracefully and gestured intensely amongst the rows of headstones which line this potter’s field. Following the performance, Estenger invoked Mondrian’s example and made an impassioned plea for abstraction, namely its call for realization free of any vogue for didactic political art.
MONDRIAN80
Curated by Jason Andrew and Max Estenger
Jun 1 - Jul 6, 2024
Norte Maar, Brooklyn, NYC
It’s been 80 years since Mondrian, a pioneer of abstract art, was buried in a pauper’s grave in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn. From early landscape paintings of trees to geometric grids made up of colored lines and syncopated rhythms, Mondrian was rigorous. Pushing past references and influences, he was committed to creating a clear, universal aesthetic language.
So what’s changed in the field of abstract painting now that generations have ingested, consumed, devoured, and regurgitated the art of Mondrian? Does the purity he sought still exist? In a celebration of Mondrian’s legacy, this exhibition attempts to find out.
ARTISTS INCLUDE:
Amanda Brazier, Sharon Butler, Jacob Cartwright, Paul Corio, Mark Dagley, Peter Demos, David Diao, Leonardo Drew, Max Estenger, Mary Heilmann, David Horii, Norman Jabaut, Mary Jones, Gwenael Kerlidou, Imi Knoebel, Harriet Korman. Sono Kuwayama, Margrit Lewczuk, Russell Maltz, Tom Martinelli, John Mendelsohn, Brooke Moyse, Mario Naves, David Rhodes, Tariku Shiferaw, Andy Spence, Andrew Szobody, Li Trincere, Greg Wall, Marjorie Welish, Jocko Weyland, Ruri Yi, Mike Zahn
The Capital One Collection
Capital One Headquarters in Tysons, Virginia
Acquired in 2023
THE WASHINGTON POST
IN THE GALLERIES: RURI YI
MARK JENKINS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
February 17, 2023
The capsule-shaped forms in Ruri Yi’s hard-edge abstractions are arranged so methodically that the occasional deviation can appear dramatic — or comic. In her Hemphill Artworks show, the Korea-born Baltimore artist stacks or lines up identically shaped tablets of various flat, bright colors on white backgrounds with machine-like precision.
HEMPHILL ARTWORKS
January, 2023
HEMPHILL is pleased to announce its representation of Ruri Yi.
The gallery will present a selection of the artist's paintings in a self-titled exhibition, opening January 14, 2023.
Eq.012, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 66 x 54 inches
HEMPHILL ARTWORKS
Solo Exhibition
January 14 - February 25, 2023
Opening Reception: January 14, Saturday, 6-8pm
Hemphill Artworks
434 K Street NW
Washington DC, 20001
http://www.hemphillfinearts.com/exhibitions/ruri-yi
Eq. 003, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 66x54 inches
PAZO FINE ART
21 MAY - 7 JULY 2022
THE SPACES IN BETWEEN
RURI YI & DON VOISINE
Curated by Paul Corio
PAZO FINE ART
4228 Howard Ave Kensington, MD 20895
An installation view of “The Spaces In Between.” (Gregory Staley/Pazo Fine Art)
THE WASHINGTON POST
VOISINE & YI
MARK JENKINS, THE WASHINGTON POST, JULY 1, 2022
The affinity between Don Voisine and Ruri Yi is right there in black and white — and their sparing use of color. The two artists, paired in Pazo Fine Art’s “The Spaces in Between,” are of different backgrounds and generations. But both paint hard-edge geometric abstractions whose occasional irregularities are carefully calculated.
Voisine is a Maine-born New Yorker whose designs were initially derived from the floor plans of apartments where he worked on renovation crews. The works in this selection, all made between 2011 and 2020, mostly center on large black forms that are bracketed at top and bottom by brightly hued bands. The compositions appear formal and stationary, yet have a swooping energy and are enlivened by color contrasts that range from subtle to emphatic.
All but one of Yi’s paintings in this show arrange lozenges on white fields. The Seoul-born Baltimorean varies the 2019-2022 pictures by rendering a few of the identical shapes in various colors other than black, and by occasionally allowing one to slip out of alignment. In one of her pictures, for example, a line of black forms is gently disrupted by a purple one that nudges the upright one to its left. The effect is quietly comic, and also a statement of artistic control. Yi can arrange her paintings with precise predictability, but she doesn’t have to.
Softcover, Dimensions: 8x10, Pages: 44
THE SPACES IN BETWEEN
An exhibition catalog with text by Paul Corio is available through Pazo Fine Art.