Last Friday
I went to a couple of openings in Georgetown. First I dropped by Addison Ripley, now and for many years one of the best galleries in our area, and where a large crowd was leaving a lot of red dots behind as they were picking up the paintings of John Borden Evans.
Evans' paintings depict farm animals (chickens, cows, sheep, hens) as well as ordinary landscapes. The artist likes to float between scratchy, airy paintings (mostly the landscapes) and thicker, impasto works, such as in some of the paintings of cows.
In some of these thicker paintings he has crossed a debatable line. Let me explain.
In a few of the cow paintings, Evans has built up enough paint so that the two dimensional painting crosses into a third dimension (in these cases usually the head of a cow), so that the head of the animal sticks out, making the painting become a sculptural bas relief piece.
Were Evans an abstract painter, building thick, three dimensional goops of paint on canvas (as we all did in art school to create a response to an assignment that we left to the last minute), it is considered texture, or adds dimensionality to the dialogue.
But in the already fragile art world where representational painting has to defend itself everyday, and when an artist chooses a representational subject of such plebian character as a cow, and then goops on the paint to have the cow's head stick out of the canvas, warning bells begin to ring.
And I know that this is perhaps unfair to Evans, clearly a talented and skilled painter, but the cow's heads sticking out of the two dimensional plane, is just too overpowering for me, and makes me forget the rest of the show; not a good thing.
Almost across the street from Addison Ripley, the inaugural exhibition of art at the furniture concept store called "Space" was going on, and I went in.
Space was packed!
The owners, Tami Iams and Francesca Oriolo (pictured on the left), were by the door greeting everyone as they walked in, and I noticed that some of the cream of the DC gallery-art-opening world, and strangely enough, none of the grubs (for some strange reason they didn't know about this opening) were there.
And case after case of good Champagne flowed through the night, as more and more people came in, making the viewing of the artwork quite difficult.
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