Amanda Besl’s tiny figurative oil paintings combine stark contrast, vivid color and gorgeous texture with the immediacy of photography. She creates images of startling beauty and menace, evoking the swirling blend of childish vulnerability and adult sexuality that defines female adolescence. Besl’s use of paint and her tactile surfaces serve to transform each photo into […]

The art of Arthur Simms is versatile, rough, edgy, bold, haunting, rather primitive in technique–which gives the work its charm–highly reflective, and at times, intimidating. Through his art, he wishes us to feel what he feels–experience his life, his history, and compare it to our own. He challenges the viewer’s instincts with the foreign and […]

In "Contested Spaces in Post-Soviet Art," the second part of the "Russia Redux" exhibition that premiered in the fall, curator Elena Sorokina assembled works by 13 artists and two artist collectives in a conceptually tight and intellectually intriguing exploration of space. Contested Spaces in Post-Soviet Art Isabelle Dupuis Muratbek Djourmaliev and Gulnara Kasmalieva, Transsiberian Amazons, […]

Life moves at a different pace in amusement parks. We visit them for the free fall of the rollercoaster, the dizzying centripetal spin of the teacups and the breathtaking heights of the ferris wheel. Amusement parks invite us into a fantastical world where we can break the rules, codes and taboos that govern everyday life: […]

A young tree whose blossoms, leaves and branches are hindered from further growth by a metal fence has been a recurrent image in Betty Bee’s paintings. The subject itself offers a significant insight into the mind of an artist whose work is attached to her psyche. This wire mesh symbolically both confines and protects her […]

I find it rare to encounter exhibitions that elicit an uneasy or anxious feeling. "Disturbance" (Anderson Gallery, Richmond, VA), a video installation by Bob Paris, consisting of five separate but connected works, does just this, while producing an environment that is both welcoming and unsettling. Uncomfortably Hypnotic Ron Johnson Bob Paris, Still from Disturbance: 22 […]

Michael Zansky: Let’s talk about something like the film industry, where millions of people around the world look at something during the lifetime of the film and compare that to hanging a lonely little painting in a gallery, where maybe a few people see it and say "no fucking way?" Artist to Artist: Michael Zansky […]

I’ve always loved that line from Who Framed Roger Rabbit when Jessica Rabbit says "I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way." That’s how I feel about the girls in my drawings. I like to think of them as nice girls, the good girl from next door that just happens to be naked on the […]

"If some people had their way, we’d be all bundled up with only our noses sticking out," said David Quammen from behind the reception desk of the Washington DC Museum of Contemporary Art in Georgetown. Quammen, 66, is the director of MOCAdc and founder of the Figure Models Guild of Washington, DC. Flowers And Meat […]

J’ai toujours aimé dessiner. Du plus profond de mon enfance, mes souvenirs sont peuplés de crayons de couleurs, de feutres et de tubes de gouache. C’est à cette époque que je découvris, émerveillé, les croquis soigneusement rangés dans le carton à dessins appartenant à ma sœur de douze ans mon aînée. Paul Laurenzi Paul Laurenzi […]