ARLINGTON ARTS CENTER presents

on view OCTOBER 24 - DECEMBER 20, 2015

VIRGINIA SQUARE • 3550 WILSON BLVD • ARLINGTON, VAARLINGTONARTSCENTER.ORG • 703.248.6800

Arlington Arts Center (AAC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit contemporary visual arts center dedicated to presenting and supporting new work by regional artists in the mid-Atlantic States. Through exhibitions, educational programs, and subsidized studio spaces, AAC serves as a bridge between artists and the public. The goal is to increase awareness, appreciation of, and involvement in, the visual arts in Arlington County, VA and the region. AAC was established in 1974 and has been housed since 1976 in the historic Maury School. Our facility includes nine exhibition galleries, working studios for thirteen artists, and three classrooms. At 17,000 square feet, we are one of the largest non-federal venues for contemporary art in the Washington metropolitan area.

KATIE DUFFY

RACHEL GUARDIOLA

DEAN KESSMANN

SONYA LAWYER

NARA PARK

AUSTIN SHULL

BENJAMIN ZELLMER BELLAS

FallSOLOSfeaturing

Cover image credits:Front Cover: Sonya Lawyer, Tia, pigmented inkjet print (detail)Page One: Dean Kessmann, Old El Paso Taco Shells, Archival Pigment Print (detail)

on view OCTOBER 24 - DECEMBER 20, 2015

2 FALL SOLOS · Arlington Arts Center

Each year, Arlington Arts Center presents SOLOS, a series of semi-annual exhibitions of new ideas, new forms, and new artists that enrich the local dialogue surrounding art and life. Artists from across the mid-Atlantic region submit proposals for solo exhibitions in one of AAC’s seven separate gallery spaces. Proposals are reviewed by invited jurors, and fourteen artists are selected for inclusion in the Fall or Spring SOLOS exhibitions. This year we were thrilled to have two incredibly talented and distinguished jurors — Melissa Ho, Assistant Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC and Chicago-based artist Jefferson Pinder — to help us select this year’s crop of exciting emerging and mid-career contemporary artists to fill our space. A central component of AAC’s mission is to support contemporary artists from the mid-Atlantic region, and to expand the conversation surrounding contemporary art. Over the course of two exhibitions, the 2015-2016 SOLOS artists will do just that.

Many things make the work of the seven artists in this year’s Fall SOLOS distinct from each other: from the conceptual work of Benjamin Zellmer Bellas to Dean Kessmann’s abstractions of consumer products, or Nara Park’s nostalgic and encompassing installation, and Katie Duffy and Austin Shull’s explorations of identity and sexuality through new and old-fashioned media, or the divergence between Rachel Guardiola’s fictional, pseudo-historical narrative creations and the personal and familial narratives woven through a collage of vintage photographs by Sonya Lawyer. Though the work is developed through each artist’s unique lens, the 2015 Fall SOLOS artists are united by an interest in moving beyond a purely artistic conversation to reflect on significant issues and ideas in contemporary society.

About the Exhibition

Cory Oberndorfer, Lawn Dart, and Frisbee. Photo by Greg Staley

KATIEDUFFY

About the ArtistKATIE DUFFY is an artist and designer from Chicago, IL. Duffy holds a BA in Digital Art and Design and a BSW in Social Work from Loras College in Dubuque, IA, where she also completed two years of Americorps service. In 2013 she moved to Baltimore to attend Maryland Institute College of Art’s Mount Royal School of Multidisciplinary Art MFA program. Duffy currently resides in Baltimore where she works as a designer and teaches digital art at MICA & Towson University.

navigate fleshy terrain that protrudes outside of easy definition

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About the WorkThrough projection-mapped video installations with large sculptural forms to abstract prints, Katie Duffy explores different embodiments of femininity and their intersections with fluid gender identities. Combining influences from both graphic design and fine art, Duffy’s carnal, colorful pieces visually navigate fleshy terrain that protrudes outside of easy definition.

KATIE DUFFY

Trin-a-trois

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RACHEL GUARDIOLA

a universal witness navigates through time on an other earth

RACHEL GUARDIOLA

About the WorkIncluded in this exhibition is a series of works inspired by the ability to comprehend vast geological time. An immersive video projection is paired with photography, sound, object, alternative darkroom processes, and written word to reveal an ambiguous futurepast topography. Inspired by the means in which we find artifacts, create documents, and construct histories, the collection

functions as evidence to of a landscape that playfully teeters between fact and fiction. The camera lens is a mediator between the body and external field of vision as technology mimics the mechanical act of looking. The perspective of a universal witness navigates through time on an other earth.

Voyage Around a Room

FALL SOLOS · Arlington Arts Center

About the ArtistRACHEL GUARDIOLA is a multimedia artist with a background in natural history preservation. Her practice investigates the intersection of art, science, and human curiosity to seek the unknown through lens-based technology. Guardiola has lived and exhibited internationally. She has participated in Artscape 2015, Atelier de Visu Residency, Re:Cinema Project, and a variety of Art l Sci collaborations including Nature in the Dark II. Guardiola received an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2015 and BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007. She has been recently accepted to the Vermont Studio Center and Arctic Circle Artist in Residence programs for 2016. The Fall SOLOS marks her first solo exhibition.

About the ArtistDEAN KESSMANN’S work has been included in exhibitions at Furthermore, Washington, DC; Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL; White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO; Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; and Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA, among others. His exhibitions have been reviewed in the Huffington Post, Art Papers, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and ARTFORUM. Kessmann’s work is in many collections, such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Baltimore Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography, and Orlando Museum of Art. Kessmann is an Associate Professor at George Washington University.

DEAN KESSMANN

About the WorkUtilitarian Abstraction continues an ongoing exploration of the materiality of mass-produced paper products and an interest in consumer culture. This work reflects upon the material messiness and tactile nature of ink-stained commercial packaging in a digital age. Additionally, it highlights the massive amount of commercial imagery that circulates the public on a daily basis and draws attention to the vast quantities of

paper and post-consumer content that enters the public sphere. To create these images, Kessmann breaks down cardboard boxes, then methodically scans and prints sections of those boxes to transform the utilitarian printer codes into large-scale abstractions. As in much of his work, these images are as referential as they are abstract, thus erasing the line between these two modes of representation.

these images are as referential as they are abstract

Safeway Softly Facial Tissue #2

DEANKESSMANN

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About the ArtistSONYA LAWYER is an artist and educator. She has exhibited in numerous venues across the United States including Jenkins Johnson Gallery in New York City, and School 33 Art Center in Baltimore, MD, among others. She received a fellowship to attend the National Graduate Seminar sponsored by The Photography Institute and held at Columbia University. Lawyer was an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work in Syracuse, NY. Additionally, she participated in Maryland Art

Place’s 19th Annual Critics’ Residency. Her work has been published in Contact Sheet, The International Review of African American Art, and The Washington Post. In 2009, she received an Individual Artist’s Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. Lawyer received her MFA from the University of Florida and a BS from Howard University. Currently, she is the Editor in Chief of SALYSÉ Magazine, a fashion/beauty and art photography publication.

SONYA LAWYER

About the WorkSonya Lawyer’s exhibition PATTERNS features three bodies of work: “A Peace (of the Dream),” “Beauty Patterns,” and “i.you.he.she.they.we. (us),” all of which seek to understand the underlying narratives present in the images surrounding us. PATTERNS is a celebration of lives past and present — a “visual poem” created through reflection and discovery. In weaving together pieces of personal family history and memory with our universal history, the patterns create a story

about our shared humanity. It’s about the stories we tell over and over again, and the secrets that we keep inside for far too long. It’s about our likes and dislikes, our faith and our disbelief, our friends and our enemies, our futile searches and our brilliant discoveries, but most of all, it’s about how when we really step back and examine our lives, we actually see the common threads (dreams) that bind “us” all together.

a celebration of lives past and presentTia

SONYALAWYER

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About the ArtistNARA PARK is a Washington, DC based artist who uses materials that imitate stone to create sculptures and installations that reflect on mortality. She holds an MFA in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she received the Henry Walters Traveling Fellowship and the Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award by the International Sculpture Center. Park’s work has been on exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Grounds for Sculpture, American University Museum, Baltimore/Washington International Airport, and the Rush Arts Gallery. Her work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, Art Fag City, and NY Arts Magazine. Park is represented by Hamiltonian Gallery in Washington, DC.

NARA PARK

About the WorkOnce places of worship, fortifications, or dwelling spaces for men, ruins are the physical embodiment of memories of the past suspended in a state of continuous decay. Nara Park’s large-scale installation comprised of hundreds of custom-made boxes presents a vision of a ruin, mimicking the brick structures of architectural forms long past. Visitors are invited to navigate through the installation, and to allow associations and

memories of decaying places that were once vibrant to wash over them. Park’s installations awaken in the viewer ideas of sanctuary, ritual, and contemplation with materials as simple as boxes. Park’s work explores the boundaries of imitations in order to inspire reverence and respect for their visual effect; a reflection of the ways we are moved, physically and emotionally, by the visual presence of our surroundings.

memories of decaying places that were once vibrant

Every Exit Is an Entrance

NARAPARK

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About the ArtistAUSTIN SHULL was born in Washington, DC and is a multidisciplinary artist and current Artist-in-Residence at Arlington Arts Center. He received an MFA from the School of Visual Art and a BA from Bard College. Shull participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program from 2007 to 2008 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 2008. More recently, he completed residencies with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

and the Henry Street Settlement Abrons Art Center. Shull has exhibited his work nationally and internationally at venues including the Cooper Union, Syracuse University, International Print Center, Pratt Institute, Nurture Art, Exit Art, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Hyde Park Art Center, the ACC Gallery, Hall 14 Gallery, and the Chiado Museum.

AUSTIN SHULL

About the WorkThe project Homage draws on the history of John Lyon Burnside III, inventor of the teleidoscope (a device that creates fractal patterns of whatever is viewed) and partner to pioneering gay rights activist Harry Hay. Austin Shull takes this historical gesture as a form of radical subversion — inventing a device that had the potential to alter people’s perspective of otherness (sexual, racial, economic, cultural) at a time (the 1950’s) when attitudes towards difference often resulted in conflict and oppression. Shull has created a number of teleidoscopes to explore

the impact of photographic images on the construction of individual and collective social, political, and cultural realities. For instance, a common image that comes to mind when thinking about romance is a stock picture of a couple walking down the beach holding hands, or perhaps kissing while the ocean waves lap at their feet. Does this unknowingly become the image on which we base our desires and fantasies, and in so doing begin a search for qualities of life founded in a dislocated representation?

the potential to alter people’s perspective of otherness

Teleidoscopic Image: 1981-1989

AUSTINSHULL

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About the ArtistBENJAMIN ZELLMER BELLAS has exhibited his work nationally and internationally at various venues such as Contemporary Istanbul; Track 16, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; la Space, Hong Kong; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; and Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki. He is the recipient of a Franklin Furnace Fund Award, an Illinois Art Council International Artist Grant, Maryland State Arts Council Grant, and SAIC Faculty Enrichment Grant, and has been awarded

residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Roger Brown New Buffalo, Redux Contemporary Art Center, 1a space, and the Contemporary Artists Center. His work has been written about in various publications such as Sculpture Magazine, FRIEZE, New City Chicago, and The Washington Post among other publications. He holds a BA in Studio Arts with minors in Art History and Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

BENJAMIN ZELLMER BELLAS

About the WorkI seek to understand the experience of understanding.

I want to see how information changes vision.

Instead of writing sonnets or post-punk anthems, I interact with the quotidian and offer the unassuming artifact or action as an epiphany.

It’s cerebral sculpture, or lyric visual art, these gestures into the void.

Through this battle I’d like to destroy everything in my path... disrupt existing systems, and leave them irreparably damaged in my wake... scorch the earth and salt the ground. Some days I want to be Shiva, others Dennis Quaid.

(My titles don’t fit in the spaces allotted, and neither do my descriptions of materials and processes.)

I seek to disrupt the formulaic within the comfortably established norms of artistic display and practice. The expected is to be unexpected.

this is how my vision of creation manifests, never neatly contained to the reserved spaces.

Ultimately I create fissures in one’s brain chemistry, or islands connected by a series of bridges.

Simple is paired with complex, emotion with pure logic, synthesis with analysis, and each pairing against each other simultaneously.

It is not work aimed at the eyes, but at the process behind them... at cognition itself.

I am firm in this regard, information is the greatest dictator of aesthetic.

I want to see how information changes vision

THE STAINED GLASS WINDOW THAT SYMBOLIZES AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL RECREATED AS IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SEEN UPON THE FLOOR OF THE NATIONAL CATHEDRAL, HAD IT EXISTED, ON THE DATE OF THE FIRST DIVORCE IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES

BENJAMINZELLMER BELLAS

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Additional Programming On Saturday, Nov. 7 at 1 pm Sonya Lawyer will present Behind the Scenes (The Strange World of Fashion and Beauty Photography), an interactive fashion photo shoot with Q & A that offers a behind-the-scenes look and commentary on contemporary fashion and beauty as portrayed in popular media.

Community Quilt DaysOn select days, Sonya Lawyer will be in the gallery creating i.you.he.she.they.we.(us) - A Community Quilt. Visitors are invited to bring vintage family photos (scanned on-site and returned), and share stories of their family history. With these shared memories, Lawyer will create a community quilt. If unable to attend a Community Quilt Day, the public is invited to email hi-res images and stories to apeaceofthedream@gmail.com for inclusion in the piece. Scheduled dates are 12 – 5 pm on Sunday, Nov. 8, Saturday, Nov. 21, Saturday, Dec. 5, and Thursday, Dec. 19.

Fall SOLOS Gallery Talks, Saturday, Dec. 12, 1 – 4 pm

Also on view at AAC this fall:

MICHELE COLBURN: WIRED | Wyatt Resident Artists Gallery | Oct. 24 – Dec. 20 CAUSE AND EFFECT | Resident Artists Lounge | Oct. 24 – Dec. 20Artist talks for Wired and Cause and Effect on Dec. 5 at 2 pm

ETERNAL LOVE – DIA de los MUERTOS | Jenkins Community Gallery | Oct. 30 – Dec. 20Opening celebration featuring live dancing and mariachi on Friday, Oct. 30, 6 – 8 pm.

Sponsors & PartnersOur programs are made possible through the generous support of the Virginia Commission for the Arts/NEA, Arlington County through the Arlington Cultural Affairs division of Arlington Economic Development and the Arlington Commission for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, The Washington Forrest Foundation, BB&T, The Arlington Community Foundation, Founders of the Fund Your Artist Vision, and AAC members.

aac

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ClassesAAC offers year round art classes for kids and adults! To learn more about our classes visit: www.arlingtonartscenter.org/education

Arlington Arts Center is open Wed. – Sat., 12 – 5 pm and by appointment

Metro: Silver & Orange Lines: Virginia Square

LOCATION3550 Wilson BoulevardArlington, VA 22201703.248.6800

For more info about AAC visit: www.arlingtonartscenter.org