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A Smashing Opening for "Under Surveillance"!

Sept.19,2008

Tim Tate and Scott Brooks

Ann Stoddard and (half of) her installation

If I do say so myself, we had a monumental turnout for the opening of Under Surveillance last night. Nevin Kelly Gallery has never seen quite so many folks; they were spilled out onto the sidewalk from about 6:15 until well after the 9 p.m.scheduled closing. The show looks great, every piece was made especially for this exhibit and God knows it's timely. I think people are hungry for work that speaks to these issues - I know I am. The gallery was constantly being watched by the cameras in Ann Stoddard's installation, contributing a bit of a sinister element to the reception.

Richard Dana's fabulous piece

Anna U. Davis's piece

The work comments on a very wide range of surveillance activities. Richard Dana's three dazzling digital prints deal with the categorization of people by the "authorities" into groups of more or less threatening kinds based on words and phrases taken from their email. Anna U. Davis's stunning large painting/collage of a semi-naked man on a public bus surrounded by hundreds of watching eyes depicts the psychological impact of the knowledge that one is constantly being observed. Sondra Arkin has constructed two large eagle's talons and affixed them to the ceiling, where they grasp a printout of a small portion of the data collected by a government surveillance program acronymed TALON, which was only terminated after it was discovered and publicized by her brother, William. Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter's tryptich incorporating her "information signature" - passport photos, handwriting samples, bits of cloth and other elements that make up an indivicual identity - is both visually and viscerally dominating.

My Life From the Satellite

Groover Cleveland and his eyes

My grid (that's Ellyn Weiss, for all you search engines) of 12 small wax and oil paintings are based on publicly available and remarkably detailed satellite images of every address at which I have lived. Other personal takes on the theme include Tim Tate's glass vitrine containing a tiny functioning camera pointed at the viewer and topped with a geiger counter that registers the viewer's level of contamination; Scott Brooks's faux sweet minutely detailed painting of a woman being covertly recorded by the little mechanical bird she is regarding, Rosemary Luckett's evocation of the data collection on our consuming habits in "Bar Code Spying"' Elizabeth Morisette's geological maps manipulated to show how different aspects of our environment can be exaggerated at the expense of the whole and Groover Cleveland's graphically powerful canvas filled with enlarged versions of that scary/strange eye-in-a-pyramid embedded in our currency. Ruth Trevarrow's plates painted with the silhouettes of insects are scattered around the gallery, commenting with a touch of humor on the prevalence of "bugs" around us. They act as a sort of visual punctuation throughout the space.

Betsy Stewart and Judy Jashinsky

Karen and Mary Beth

Mary Beth Ramsey did an amazing catalog for us, for which I am truly grateful. You can see the show until October 8 at Nevin Kelly Gallery, 1517 U St. NW, so get your ass down there right now!.

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