Zeitgeist II: What's Important Now" - An Epic Opening | Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

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Zeitgeist II: What's Important Now" - An Epic Opening

November 20, 2009

Michael Platt and Carol Beane's amazing print

The crowd is hanging from the rafters

We had an epic opening reception Thursday night for “Zeitgeist II: What’s Important Now?”, the second in what I grandiosely imagine as an episodic series of exhibits themed around the significant issues of our times, curated by moi and my episodic partner in crime, Sondra Arkin. (Did I mention the grandiosity of it all?)

Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter and Michael Platt

I hope you will forgive me if I violate the blog rule about short bursts of text only, but this is a special occasion. So here is the manifesto for the show, written about 7 months ago:

My co-curator Sondra Arkin looking smashing

Ruth Trevarroa, Molly Ruppert, Scott Brooks, Jessica Beels etc

In October, 2008, the Nevin Kelly Gallery hosted the first Zeitgeist show. Titled “Under Surveillance,” and curated by Ellyn Weiss and Sondra Arkin, it presented the responses of twelve artists to what Weiss and Arkin view as one of the most important elements of the prevailing ethos: the increasingly diminishing zone of personal privacy available to any of us as we are constantly under surveillance by a growing array of government, corporate and media technologies.

Renee Stout's Real Chess Game American Style

Molly Ruppert and Michael O'Sullivan

Just as the show was being presented, the world started to pivot again in ways that we are just beginning to assimilate. George Bush and Dick Cheney et al. are gone and Barack Obama is here. The new zeitgeist is full of ironies.

one of Rosina Teri Memolo's families

My spawn, Nora, and an unnamed male person

For example, the government will finally face up to global warming at the same time that we all now own GM, whose products bear major responsibility for a lot of it. New on the scene along with Obama are Bernie Madoff and his apparently numerous larcenous cohort, vanishing retirement accounts, stock market meltdown and the demise of one after another giant Wall Street financial houses.

Deb Jansen's piece - more karma and catharsis

People just flat stopped buying things and many felt liberated at the same time they are financially constrained. The future is anything but certain.

Phil Barlow - now it's an opening!

Veronica Szalus looks awfully happy

It is apparent to us that the zeitgeist has shifted dramatically and it seems like the perfect time to ask artists to respond to this question: “What’s important now?” We don’t want to limit responses to a single subject or viewpoint but to leave the artists room to reflect on this question individually.

The elusive Mr. Weiss

Groover Cleveland's "We're All Immigrants Now"

The artists who joined us include some of DC’s most interesting and thoughtful: Sondra Arkin, Carol Beane, Scott G. Brooks, Judy Byron, Groover Cleveland, Richard Dana, Anna U. Davis, Thomas Drymon, Aziza Claudia Gibson-Hunter,

My "Respect" - a detail of "You Get What You Need"

Deb Jansen, Rosin Teri Memolo, Micahel B. Platt, Renee Stout, Tim Tate, Ruth Trevarrow and Gessohead herself, Ellyn Weiss.

one of Ruth Trevarrow's animal halos

detail of Richard Dana's "Hope Over Now"

The opening was so insane that I couldn’t photograph the art, so I’ll include some pictures from the catalog for your viewing enjoyment. But you should see this in person. Who knows when Zeitgeist will return?
The show will be at Nevin Kelly Gallery, 1400 Irving St. NW, #132, (right at the Columbia Heights metro station through mid-December and we will have another open house on Saturday, Dec. 12 all afternoon.

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