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Picturing Politics 2008 at the Arlington Arts Center

September 17, 2008

Image For a city that likes to think of itself as the vortex of global politics, very little "political" art is shown in Washington. My good friend Richard Dana says despairingly that Washington is a city of "wallpaper art." Perhaps this is due in some part to the fact the most artists are lefties and this town has been ruled by the righties for some time. If you own a gallery, you want to sell art and would therefore want to avoid offending potential patrons. On the other hand, the right wingnuts are not known to be patrons of the visual arts in any case. Remember John Ashcroft covering up the boobs on the classical statute in the Justice Department? Speaking of John Ashcroft, did you ever think you would look back on his term as the good times? And they said Alberto Gonzales wasn't good for anything. But I digress.

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Helga Thomson's wall of identity cards
This autumn is an exception and poliical art is all over the city. (Of course, our show, "Under Surveillance" opens tomorrow). The Arlington Arts Center has devoted virtually all of its expansive exhibition space to Picturing Politics 2008:  Artists Speak to Power, curated by Rex Weil. The show crosses generational lines, including mid-career contemporaries of Weil's like Renee Stout and Judy Byron along with newer voices such as Benjamin Edwards. It also covers a broad swathe of political territory, from Mary Coble, whose work concerns sexual politics to Rick Reinhard, who has been photographing political demonstrations for years.

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Renee Stout: Slow Voyage From the Land of Cosmic Slop
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Helga Thomson: Here's Looking at You
While many of the artists work in new media - there are several interesting video installation -  the work I find myself still thinking about is that of Helga Thomson and  Renee Stout. These two artists work in the relatively traditional media of digital printmaking, sculpture and monoprinting, but the work packs a visceral wallop. Helga Thomson's prints use her old passport photo, one in which she looks like a fugitive from the law. She combines the photo with imagery of electronic circuit boards and identity cards in a variety of ways that convey the loss of privacy and individuality, as we are each categorized and filed away by the authorities. My favorite piece of Renee Stout's is a small sculpture of a human brain floating in a tub of brown stuff; it's called Slow Voyage From the land of Cosmic Slop and suggests the way we are mired in the cultural effluent of media manipulation, consumerism, political lies and all the other pervasive influences that are omnipresent.

The show is at the Arlington Arts center until Sept. 27, so catch it if you can. 

 

 
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