On View: January 10 - January 31, 2015
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 10, 2015, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Civilian Art Projects presents the first exhibition of the New Year: Resolution 2015: A group exhibition of new and ongoing projects by artists affiliated with the gallery who primarily use photographic or representational imagery in their work.
“Resolution” refers to measurement, commitment, and a workable finality, such as the completion of a work of art. “Resolution” can reference the sharpness of computer-generated imagery, or a new life decision. It is a word of multiple meanings and interpretations – a representation for meaning, and a gateway to acceptance as we start a new year. Literally defining the way we see, “resolution” in the case of this exhibition is a concept uniting the representational imagery of a group of artists, realized through photography, drawing, mixed-media, and video. Resolution includes new and ongoing projects by artists Ken D. Ashton, Frank DiPerna, Jason Falchook, Ryan Hill, Bridget Sue Lambert, Brandon Morse, and Dan Tague.
Ken D. Ashton’s photographic work, primarily of urban neighborhoods, is defined by the presence of the artist being felt -- yet not seen -- in the frame. His new project, documenting the Van Ness neighborhood of D.C., collages multiple images to build context and movement, choreographing visual scenes of everyday life represented through light and form, in black and white and color. Ashton resides in Washington, DC, and has spent the past decade photographing neighborhoods throughout the world, with DC as a starting center point. He has undertaken an encyclopedic project of photographing communities in the Northeastern corridor of the US, from DC to Boston, entitled “Megalopolis.” Ashton's work has been featured in exhibitions in many venues, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington Center for Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art (DC), Anacostia Museum, Arlington Arts Center, Charlottesville's Second Street Gallery, and Longwood Center for the Arts in Farmville, VA. Ashton received his BFA from James Madison University.
Frank DiPerna exhibits new images from an ongoing body of photographic work called “Industrial.” This project, which began in 2008, sees the artist choosing subjects in the urban landscape that we might commonly see everyday. In this work, he has moved in closer to the subject matter to remove most of the context, giving the work a semi-abstract quality that instills a sense of elegance in these industrial objects. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He is also represented in many collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Bibliotheque Nationale, The Center for Creative Photography, Library of Congress, and The Virginia Museum, among others. He has had several residencies including the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France; Lightwork in Syracuse, NY; The Pittman Study Away Program in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; and the Vermont Studio Center. He studied photography at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY with Nathan Lyons, Ralph Gibson and Syl Labrot. He also studied with Gary Winogrand. He has an MA degree in photography from Goddard College and Bachelor's degree in engineering from Virginia Tech.
Jason Falchook’s new work continues to examine the built world through an awareness of color, light, and texture. The new images look at spaces that have been transformed by light and the passing of time. There are reoccurring elements and patterns that surface, including several thresholds and barriers. Falchook's photography is in the permanent collection of the U.S. State Department, the National Academy of Sciences, and several private collections. He has had solo exhibitions at Fusebox Gallery in Washington, DC (2002 and 2004) as well as group exhibitions at the Katonah Museum of Art (Katonah, NY); Shade Projects and Monorchid Gallery (Phoenix, AZ); The National Academy of Science (Washington, DC); Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC); Art Positions, Art Basel Miami Beach (through Fusebox) (Miami, FL); U.S. Embassy Brasilia (Brasilia, Brazil); Instituto De Arte Fotographico (Lima, Peru); and the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art (FL). Falchook is a graduate of the Corcoran College of Art and Design (1998), a Trawick Prize finalist (2003), and a recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Young Artist grant (2001).
Ryan Hill continues his investigation of how digital and database logic impacts our experience of images and their interplay. His gouache drawing of a digital cat collage, appropriated from an online source, plays with the tension between laborious realism and photoshopped abstraction. A native of Los Angeles, Ryan began his career as a performance artist and collaborator, most significantly with the artist movement collective, SHRIMPS, with whom he toured the United States. Ryan's drawing series are influenced by this past work in performance, along with his background in film and research into media studies. Ryan's work has been shown and collected in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington DC, and his works on paper traveled as part of group shows to London, UK; Berlin, Germany; Cape Town, South Africa; and Melbourne, Australia. Ryan has a B.F.A in Fine Art from University of California, Santa Cruz, a M.A. in Television and Film Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a M.F.A in Fine Art from California Institute of the Arts.
Bridget Sue Lambert presents “First Dates: Really Good to See You Tonight,” a series of photographs of text messages and staged miniature dollhouse furniture that portrays the emotional, anxious, and sometimes sexually-charged moments of that initial meeting between two people hoping to develop a romantic relationship. Lambert is a recipient of a 2004 Maryland State Arts Council Works on Paper grant and a 2007 DC Artist Fellowship Grant, and was a semifinalist for the 2008 Trawick Prize and for the 2008 and 2012 Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize. She is in private and public collections, including the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum Collection, the Wilson Building Art Collection, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank. Her work has been exhibited publicly as part of the DC ARTWALK and Public Garden, Washington DC in 2006; the Open Sky Project in Roslyn, Virginia in 2011; and ART on the ARTBUS in Arlington, VA in 2103. Recently Lambert has exhibited her work at The Studio Visit in Berlin, Germany; the Civilian Art Projects, DC; Workhouse Art Center, VA; Hillyer Art Space, DC; the Arlington Arts Center, VA; the Katzen Arts Center, DC; and the Decker and Meyerhoff Galleries, MD. Lambert is a master digital print specialist who has been collaboratively printing for artists for over 20 years, and is currently part of the Resident Artist Program at Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, Virginia.
Brandon Morse is a Washington, DC-based artist who works with generative systems as a means to examine the ways in which physical phenomena, such as entropy and emergence, can function in ways that are both poetic and metaphorical. Through the use of code and the creation of custom computer software, he creates simulations of seemingly complex systems to create video and video installations that draw parallels between the ways in which these systems work and the ways in which we, both individually and collectively, navigate the world around us. According to the artist, “Lately, I've been very much interested in phenomenological issues involved in experiencing time-based abstraction - I want the pieces to have a physicality and presence even though they are the products of ephemeral zeroes and ones.” He has exhibited his work in museums and galleries across North America, Asia, and Europe. This is his first exhibition with Civilian Art Projects.
Dan Tague’s work addresses power structures in contemporary society. He is most well-known for his folded dollar bill imagery displaying proclamations such as “We Need a Revolution” and “Holy Shit.” For the exhibition, he’s created nine small-scale works on paper, the surface of which is covered in layers of newspaper events, obituaries, pop culture magazine covers, art reviews, and nostalgic vintage ads. He sanded through the various layers and screen-printed folded images of monuments and buildings from world currencies, then enhanced the imagery with paint. According to the artist, “I started to fold the monuments and architecture, which I became aware of from the back of one of the revealed message folds. The resulting images gave the dynamic appearance of crumbling and falling. As structures fail, humanity will be forced to reconsider its past.” His work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of Art, the Weisman Foundation, the West Collection, and numerous private collections. His work has been used in conjunction with The Spirit Initiative, The Clinton Bush Fund for Haiti, Help USA, and Teach for America. He has been featured or reviewed in "Raw: A collection of Photographs from Classic to Contemporary Art" (Tectum Publishing), Art in America, Russian Esquire, British Vogue, the New Yorker, Neon Magazine (Munich), Mondo Magazine (Venezuela), Frieze Magazine, Utne Reader, Inside Art, The Times-Picayune, The Washington Post, The Austin Chronicle, UK Daily Mail, The Daily Serving, Art Daily, Art Info, and more. His work is included in the traveling exhibition and book “For Which It Stands: Americana in Contemporary Art,” curated by Carla Sakamoto and published by Farameh Media.