Arlington Arts Center
3550 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington VA 22201
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11:00am - 5:00pm
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The exhibition program at the AAC consists of juried group shows and solo exhibitions. The year is divided into six slots, each six to nine weeks long. The AAC issues an annual call for solo exhibitions proposals for the subsequent season. Proposals are reviewed by a rotating Exhibitions Committee, which includes members of staff and Board, as well as outside curators, artists, and other arts professionals. Calls for entry for group shows are issued intermittently and juried by an AAC designated curator. Occasional invitational exhibitions take place, with the AAC curator or a guest curator making the selections. The AAC continues to pursue artistic excellence and to facilitate bringing emerging and under-represented artists into contact with the public as well as museum and gallery professionals. The AAC serves as a focal point for the ongoing exchange of ideas and images between artists and the public and as a doorway to the arts for the local and Mid-Atlantic regional community.

August 15 –September 27, 2008 (Reception September 5)

PICTURING POLITICS 2008:
Artists Speak to Power
Curated by Rex Weil

Artists: Helga Thomson, Renee Stout, Jose Ruiz, Rick Reinhard, The Pinky Show, Jefferson Pinder and Matt Ravenstahl, Randall Packer and John Anderson, Independence Fund's Veterans Art Project and the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, Alberto Gaitán and Victoria F Gaitán, Benjamin Edwards, Mary Coble, Judy Byron, Lisa Blas, Wendy Babcox and Meg Mitchell

Show Dates: August 15 - September 27, 2008
Reception: Friday, September 5, 6:00 - 9:00pm
Location: Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA
Metro: Orange Line: Virginia Square
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 am - 5 pm

At the Arlington Arts Center this August and September, Washington independent curator, artist, teacher, and critic Rex Weil will present a show focused on the intersection of politics and art-terrain that seldom seems to be explored by artists and galleries in and around the nation's capital.


Picturing Politics 2008 will supply a corrective, examining a wide array of strategies used in the contemporary visual arts for addressing controversial issues and promoting progressive social change-all against the backdrop of a political landscape dominated by mass media.

Nine individual artists and five collaborative projects will be included in seven separate gallery spaces on two floors of the AAC.

The artists and their work:

  • Jose Ruiz: installation addressing the struggles of immigrant workers in Northern Virginia with issues of identity, class and intolerance
  • Randall Packer and John Anderson: multi-media environment featuring video, sound, images culled from mass media, and a gravesite for American democracy
  • Alberto and Victoria Gaitan: video and sound installation exploring the politics of sexual identity

  • Mary Coble: video from her Aversion series, exploring the history of using electroshock therapy to "treat" homosexuality
  • Lisa Blas: installation and sculpture riffing on 'men on horses' monuments and other symbols of domination and power
  • Judy Byron: installation and sound, highlighting women's personal and political priorities
  • Rick Reinhard: photographs documenting political demonstrations in the Metro Washington, DC area
  • Benjamin Edwards: prints depicting a hyper-real version of the local landscape and the instruments of power and commerce it reflects
  • Jefferson Pinder and Matt Ravenstahl: their new performative video, Passive Resistance, investigates the human capacity to resist and maintain dignity in the face of violence
  • Wendy Babcox and Meg Mitchell: project featuring video projection, RSS feeds, and information from viewer polling updated in real time concerning issues of war and peace in the Middle East
  • Helga Thomson: prints from the Argentinean-born, Maryland-based artist's Here's Looking at You series highlighting issues of survelliance, identity cards and fear of a dystopian future
  • Renee Stout: prints and sculptures, including her print, Lunch at the Bush Whitehouse
  • The Pinky Show: the popular internet phenomenon featuring Pinky and Bunny, two cartoon cats who talk about public policy, will be represented by prints, paraphernalia, and a YouTube station
  • Independence Fund's Veterans Art Project and the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum: photographs and video taken by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, depicting the daily lives of military personnel and civilians in conflict zones

THE CURATOR:

Rex Weil teaches Theories of Art and Contemporary Art Theory at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is Contributing Editor for ARTnews, where he has published over 200 reviews and essays. His most recent curatorial projects were exhibitions of Michael Platt and Yuriko Yamaguchi at the University of Maryland Art Gallery.

In the Wyatt Gallery: Caroline Danforth and Eugenie Beer. Featuring small scale aerial landscape paintings by Caroline Danforth and works on paper by German artist Eugenie Beer--AAC's summer guest resident artist, appearing as part of the sister cities exchange between Arlington and Aachen, Germany.

2008 EXHIBITIONS SCHEDULE AAC

October 7 – November 29, 2008 (Reception October 10 or 17, TBA)

FALL SOLOS 2008

  • Katie Creyts makes fantastic narrative-driven sculptures using glass and found objects.  Her pieces are darkly humorous evocations of fairy tales—typically commenting on the infinite disproportion between those stories and actual lived experience.

(Reading, PA)

  • Lily Cox-Richard explores the intersection of pop-culture, pseudo-science, and biology with an installation employing images of Elvis Presley, Nikola Tesla, and lightning bolts (show description tentative)(Richmond, VA )
  • Ben Pranger is fascinated with codes, randomized operations, and blindness.  His installation this Fall will include an ambitious, room-filling, floor-to-ceiling sculpture—a cloud of interlocking words all taken from the Book of Revelations and inscribed on separate pieces of wood in braille.  (Roanoke, VA)
  • Andrea Chung makes representational paintings, large-scale sculptures, and site-specific installations evoking human geography—specifically, her family’s connections to Africa, China, and India via Caribbean trade in sugar, cocoa, and rum.  (Baltimore, MD)
  • Morgan Craig makes large oil paintings of inaccessible architectural ruins—dilapidated, abandoned urban spaces.  The paintings are reconstructed from photographs and memories generated while trespassing in condemned, structurally unsound buildings.  (Philadelphia, PA)
  • Robin Dana shoots and prints breathtaking large-scale color photographs of destroyed rural landscapes—razed by the mining industry. (Alexandria, VA)
  • PERFORMANCE ART SERIES Every two weeks during this exhibition, one of the experimental galleries downstairs will host a new performance and its attending documentation.  Featuring Virginia Warwick (Baltimore, MD), Judy Stone (Riverside Park, MD), and two other artists TBA.

December 9, 2008 - January 17, 2009 (Reception December 12)

Juried Show: Unlimited Edition (upstairs) A juried show featuring works that exist in large, unnumbered editions, or that somehow play with the relationship between reproduction and commodification in the contemporary art world.

Winter Solos 2008 – 2009 (experimental galleries)

  • Josh Rodenberg, sculptural installation
  • Alexis Granwell, sculpture

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Arlington Arts Center: 3550 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA 22201 
Metro: Orange Line, Virginia Square
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 5pm
Phone: 703.248.6800

Founded in 1974, the AAC is dedicated to presenting and supporting new work of contemporary artists in the Mid-Atlantic States. Located in the historic Maury School building, it holds exhibitions, rents studio spaces, and conducts educational programs for all ages. Normal public hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm. For more information, call 703.248.6800 or visit www.arlingtonartscenter.org. The AAC is located at 3550 Wilson Boulevard in Arlington VA, just one block off the Virginia Square-GMU Metro stop on the Orange Line.

Arlington Arts Center programs are made possible through the generous support of the Virginia Commission for the Arts/NEA, the Arlington Commission for the Arts, Arlington County Division of Cultural Affairs, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, Strategic Analysis, BB&T Bank, the Arlington Community Foundation, Arlington Catering, and our members.