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Boyd, Benefiel and Frankel and the Hamiltonian

Feb. 3, 2009 (Happy 200th birthday Felix Mendelssohn)

With the current show, the Hamiltonian Gallery has reached its goal to pair established artist mentors with emerging artists in ways that clarify and illuminate the work of all. (One is tempted to say “add value”. Gee, I did say it, didn’t I?) As I have remarked before, I am not a big fan of conceptualism stripped of visual interest, but in this show, the artists have achieved a satisfying synthesis of the two.

Mark Cameron Boyd

Hasidic Jew adding Talmud to Mark's piece

The established artist is Mark Cameron Boyd, who teaches at the Corcoran and other local institutions and is a decidedly conceptual artist (E.g., his Corcoran class is titled: Post-Conceptualism: Epistemic Myth and the Metonymic Avant Garde). Mark uses text as his language of painting; he writes extended texts on blackboards, sometimes original thoughts, sometimes the words of others, then bisects the lines by erasing half of them horizontally. What is left has the look of ancient hieroglyphics and is oddly intriguing. Off to the side of the board, mounted on the wall, is a small tray with a few pieces of chalk. There is no sign calling attention to it and no directions. Eventually, someone brave may decide to use the chalk to write on the board. In the case of the current show, I was the first person to add something, but I take no credit because I already knew the secret and I just wanted to get the interaction going. Mark may come back at various times during the course of the show and take pictures to document the development of the piece.

wood?

The “emerging” artists here are Chrisitan Benefiel and Leah Frankel, who share a University of Maryland connection, have shown together previously and share an affinity for tweaking the expectations associated with various materials. There are luminous slices of wood cast in metal and then finished to appear like the wood they were. There are books combined and re-assembled, then sliced into other forms. This show works and the gallery looks great.

Paul So - happy guy

So a big "you go, fella" to Paul So, the brain and heart behind the Hamiltonian (not to mention the bucks) who has made his vision real, and to Boyd, Benefiel and Frankel.

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