Press Release
Press Release
Source: Akridge
New Exhibit Debuts at Carroll Square's GalleryFriday November 30, 4:16 pm ET
Artwork is showcased in gallery of trophy-class office building
WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Akridge and Seaton Benkowski, in collaboration with Hemphill Fine Arts, are pleased to announce that the art gallery at Carroll Square will debut its second exhibit, You Catch More Flies with Honey…, on Friday, November 30, 2007. The opening reception will be from 6:00 – 8:00 pm and is open to the public. The Gallery is located at 975 F St., NW and features art exhibits that rotate quarterly throughout the year.
The You Catch More Flies with Honey… exhibit will run from November 30 through February 22, 2008. It will feature work by the following artists:
Laurel Farrin
Todd Johnson
Isabel Manalo
Valerie Molnar
Denise Tassin
You Catch More Flies with Honey… is the first annual OPTIMA exhibition, which showcases a selected group of artists whose work has inherent connections or forms dynamic relationships when viewed together.
Curatorial Statement
The old cliché, “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” implies that flattery and sweetness win more favor than hostile confrontation. The artwork chosen for this exhibition offers an initial experience that is inviting, even seductive, but has a more caustic subtext than immediately experienced with graphic, colorful textures, technical trickery, shifts in scale, whimsy, and humor, the viewer is lured into the artists’ web of visual, emotional, and conceptual stimulation. None of the artists or their works, however, rest in the satisfaction of superficial pleasures.
Isabel Manalo’s abstracted landscapes, painted in a candy-coated palette, are compositions derived from disasters as captured by photojournalists. Her pursuit is a constant investigation and exploration of the complex human condition.
Employing the illusionistic techniques of trompe l’oeil, Laurel Farrin “tricks the eye” as her paintings both transcend a chaotic and duplicitous world and mournfully–sometimes humorously–portray it.
The photographs by Todd Johnson and sculptures by Denise Tassin utilize scale shifts to re-present objects. Johnson’s isolated images of duck decoys, fishing lures, and handkerchiefs emphasize the pattern, form, and familiarity of the objects, softening their more ominous and original purpose of luring and capturing prey. Tassin compulsively collects miniature figures and objects, organizing and arranging them into environments or tableaux to suggest a narrative. These miniatures are comforting in their preciousness and nostalgic suggestion, and yet unsettling–even eerie–in their stillness and contrived compositions.
By using yarn and knitting as the primary elements of her pieces, Valerie Molnar conjures the warmth of handmade blankets. Despite their attractive, tempting qualities, these sprawling constructions remain untouchable due to their placement within the context of a formal gallery setting.
About Carroll Square
Carroll Square is a magnificent trophy-class commercial development in the heart of downtown Washington. Located at the corner of 10th and F Streets next to historic St. Patrick’s Church, Carroll Square masterfully integrates office, retail, and arts uses. The 170,000 square-foot, 10-story structure—designed by SmithGroup—includes the classic facades of seven historic commercial structures, a defining architectural cupola, and a distinguished new structure accented with iron, brick, and natural stone. Building Clients include law firms Dewey LeBoeuf LLP and Fitzpatick, Cella, Harper & Scinto; media and automotive services company, Cox Enterprises; global biotechnology leader and Merck affiliate, EMD Serono, Inc.; and Kraft Foods Global, Inc. For more information, visit http://www.carrollsquare.com/.
About Hemphill
Hemphill Fine Arts opened in September of 1993 as a commercial gallery and has set the standard for the representation and exhibition of contemporary art in Washington, D.C. The gallery’s exhibition schedule features contemporary art ranging from emerging to mid-career to established artists. In addition, the gallery mounts exhibitions of contemporary artists, historically significant artwork, and socially relevant subjects. Hemphill Fine Arts offers advisory and consulting services to corporate and private clients, providing assistance in the consideration, acquisition, and presentation of fine art. Hemphill Fine Arts is located at 1515 14th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 am - 5:00 pm and by appointment. For more information, visit http://www.hemphillfinearts.com/ or call 202.234.5601.
About Akridge
Akridge is a comprehensive real estate services company that provides acquisition, development, construction management, asset and property management, leasing and consulting services. For seven of the last eight years, Akridge has been ranked the number one real estate firm in the country, among firms of similar size, for Client satisfaction by CEL & Associates and BOMA. Akridge is also recognized as a “Great Place to Work” by Washingtonian magazine and the Washington Business Journal. Since 1974, the company’s projects have encompassed over 10 million square feet of space in the greater Washington region. For more information, please visit http://www.akridge.com/.
About Seaton Benkowski & Partners
Seaton Benkowski & Partners, North America Inc. provides real estate investment and management services for clients around the world. Domestically, it specializes in the placement and management of endowment, trust and pension fund money. Locally, the firm has invested in over two million square feet of prime office space, emphasizing government and credit tenants with long-term leases. The firm is currently seeking additional investment opportunities in this market.
write up from DCist http://dcist.com/2007/12/04/you_catch_more.php
December 4, 2007
You Catch More Flies with Honey…@ Carroll Square
While the name might promise simple sweetness and pleasantries, the exhibit You Catch More Flies with Honey…, now on display at Carroll Square Gallery, is not simple or superficial. Curated by Hemphill Fine Arts, the exhibit features five artists in the first annual OPTIMA exhibition, which showcases artists whose works have natural connections and form dynamic relationships when viewed together.
Bright color infuses the gallery as each artist uses a cheerful color palette to hide complex meaning and subject matter. This is most prevalent in the mixed media canvases by Isabel Manalo. At first her compositions seem to form uncoordinated landscapes. Upon closer inspection, familiar natural forms start to emerge. You can tell that each blob of color or bright blown ink spot is very deliberate and makes her compositions tight, drawing your eye easily around the canvas. The joyful colors and pretty patterns clash with the dark subject matter of works named Death March (pictured) and After Chernobyl.
The exhibit also plays with scale, as Denise Tassin's miniatures snake through the floor space of the gallery providing an interesting contrast to the large pieces displayed on the walls. Her work is intimate and invites you close to consider its minute details. In Shakers, three small light bulb type globes are centered in the middle of green felt or Astroturf. Each globe contains miniature figures reminiscent of worry dolls but better defined. The people are dressed in suits and ties and business attire. Each globe is filled with different amounts of people. It is easiest to view the one with the least amount of mini-people, while the one filled half way with the miniature people, feels very claustrophobic.
Todd Johnson's photographs of mundane, but quirky objects grouped in a pattern which alternates duck decoys, fishing lures and handkerchiefs, also play with scale. He enlarges the fishing lures to similar sizes of the handkerchiefs and decoys, so small details of rust or chipped paint are not missed.
Utilizing scale to further enlarge a small medium for dramatic effect, Valerie Molnar uses acrylic yarn to knit large, vivid, abstract pieces. Her work carries an interesting context in that they are made with inexpensive material but the work to create such unwieldy objects is unimaginable. In Count Tyrone Rugen's Run, intense colors are striped at various intervals, making triangles of abstract shapes throughout the piece. The shape is tacked onto the wall and stretched at various points. At the top, black and white stripes are spitting out of the color stripes, demanding attention. The knitting provides an interesting texture and hands itch to indulge the urge to touch.
Laurel Farrin uses trompe l'oeil and "fools the eye" to create a different texture creating painted fabric on canvas. The majority of her compositions are minimal and her canvases are mostly covered by an army green fabric background with some form of a mosaic skeleton and a photograph of a girl in period dress. In Rest in Piece, the skeleton is in pieces with the head at one end of the painting and a leg bone at the other. The head is anchored to the right center of the frame by the only real texture in this series, a mess of thickly painted layers. Along with texture, Farrin’s work carries the themes of the exhibit with bright colors, scale and a more than meets the eye context.
You Catch More Flies with Honey…@ Carroll Square
While the name might promise simple sweetness and pleasantries, the exhibit You Catch More Flies with Honey…, now on display at Carroll Square Gallery, is not simple or superficial. Curated by Hemphill Fine Arts, the exhibit features five artists in the first annual OPTIMA exhibition, which showcases artists whose works have natural connections and form dynamic relationships when viewed together.
Bright color infuses the gallery as each artist uses a cheerful color palette to hide complex meaning and subject matter. This is most prevalent in the mixed media canvases by Isabel Manalo. At first her compositions seem to form uncoordinated landscapes. Upon closer inspection, familiar natural forms start to emerge. You can tell that each blob of color or bright blown ink spot is very deliberate and makes her compositions tight, drawing your eye easily around the canvas. The joyful colors and pretty patterns clash with the dark subject matter of works named Death March (pictured) and After Chernobyl.
The exhibit also plays with scale, as Denise Tassin's miniatures snake through the floor space of the gallery providing an interesting contrast to the large pieces displayed on the walls. Her work is intimate and invites you close to consider its minute details. In Shakers, three small light bulb type globes are centered in the middle of green felt or Astroturf. Each globe contains miniature figures reminiscent of worry dolls but better defined. The people are dressed in suits and ties and business attire. Each globe is filled with different amounts of people. It is easiest to view the one with the least amount of mini-people, while the one filled half way with the miniature people, feels very claustrophobic.
Todd Johnson's photographs of mundane, but quirky objects grouped in a pattern which alternates duck decoys, fishing lures and handkerchiefs, also play with scale. He enlarges the fishing lures to similar sizes of the handkerchiefs and decoys, so small details of rust or chipped paint are not missed.
Utilizing scale to further enlarge a small medium for dramatic effect, Valerie Molnar uses acrylic yarn to knit large, vivid, abstract pieces. Her work carries an interesting context in that they are made with inexpensive material but the work to create such unwieldy objects is unimaginable. In Count Tyrone Rugen's Run, intense colors are striped at various intervals, making triangles of abstract shapes throughout the piece. The shape is tacked onto the wall and stretched at various points. At the top, black and white stripes are spitting out of the color stripes, demanding attention. The knitting provides an interesting texture and hands itch to indulge the urge to touch.
Laurel Farrin uses trompe l'oeil and "fools the eye" to create a different texture creating painted fabric on canvas. The majority of her compositions are minimal and her canvases are mostly covered by an army green fabric background with some form of a mosaic skeleton and a photograph of a girl in period dress. In Rest in Piece, the skeleton is in pieces with the head at one end of the painting and a leg bone at the other. The head is anchored to the right center of the frame by the only real texture in this series, a mess of thickly painted layers. Along with texture, Farrin’s work carries the themes of the exhibit with bright colors, scale and a more than meets the eye context.
My Work in the Show
Over The Albino I Think overhead shot
Welcome to the Pit of Despair with Over the Albino I Think installation shot
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