The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-12)

SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE E3

of beiges and golds. In pictures

that distill natural objects to

graphic archetypes, the

unadorned wooden surfaces are a

remnant of the real thing.

MasPaz: Peace Is Every Step

Through June 19 at Fred Schnider

Gallery of Art, 888 N. Quincy St.,

Arlington

Robert C. Jackson

Technically, Robert C. Jackson’s

hyper-realist paintings are still

lifes, since they rarely depict

animate life-forms. Yet the

Pennsylvania artist’s humorous

scenarios are well-populated with

stand-ins for living creatures.

Balloon animals, corporate-mascot

figurines and a windup chick are

among the inhabitants of the

pictures in “Back to the Future,”

Jackson’s Zenith Gallery show.

The most common elements in

the artist’s compositions are toys,

foods and vintage crates, often

emblazoned with soft-drink logos.

Sometimes a single sort of edible is

juxtaposed with an apt plaything,

such as bananas piled under a toy

gorilla or doughnut holes heaped

beneath a miniature police officer.

Jackson occasionally dabbles in

art criticism, as when he portrays

a balloon animal taped to an

abstract painting — both rendered

with precise realism, of course.

The artist has been called an

heir to Pop Art, and he does

meticulously copy commercial

imagery much as Andy Warhol

and Roy Lichtenstein did. But

where those precursors

reproduced labels, photos and

comics, Jackson prefers three-

dimensional items. Rather than a

box of Cap’n Crunch, for example,

he repeatedly portrays a figurine

of the cereal-shilling mariner.

Focusing on 3D items allows the

artist to demonstrate his

impressive traditional painting

skills, but also to yank them out of

context. Where Pop Art

commented on mid-20th-century

society, Jackson’s paintings

conjure his own little universe,

rooted in consumer culture but

also detached from it.

Robert C. Jackson: Back to the

Future Through June 25 at Zenith

Gallery, 1429 Iris St. NW.

pictorial format: bold black

outlines of streamlined natural

forms, filled with blocks of tan

and metallic gold.

Born in Colombia and raised in

Arlington, where he’s based,

MasPaz is a graffiti veteran whose

nom de aerosol means “more

peace” in Spanish. Inspired by

sojourns in New York City and

South America, the painter

developed a style that’s as

indebted to street tagging as to

pre-Columbian sculpture and

ceramics. Among these artworks’

motifs are flowers and the sun,

while patches of gold spray-paint

represent the precious mineral

that drew Europeans to what they

came to call the Americas.

The wood-panel pieces are the

most dynamic, in part because

their cut outlines follow the

shapes painted on them. Also,

MasPaz leaves some areas bare,

calling attention to the wood

grain and adding a slightly

different hue to the narrow range

not such an antiquarian as to

insist on that. She also provides

digital enlargements on white

paper that are easier to discern,

and demonstrate that tintypes

blow up quite well. With their

narrow depth-of-field, the photos

do resemble historic artifacts. Yet

the poses and expressions appear

entirely up to date.

Elena Volkova: Anacostia Portraits

Through June 18 at Honfleur Gallery,

1241 Good Hope Rd. SE

MasPaz

The paintings in MasPaz’s

“Peace Is in Every Step” are so

closely linked by design and color

scheme that the distinctions

among them aren’t immediately

obvious. Some of the pieces in the

Fred Schnider Gallery of Art show

are on paper, others on canvas

and a third group — the most

distinctive — on shaped wooden

panels. All are linked by the same

imagery has inspired a few artists

to retreat into photography’s past.

One of these technological

escapees is Elena Volkova, a

Ukrainian-born Baltimorean with

an expertise in tintype, a mid-19th-

century process. It captures direct

positives on thin sheets of metal,

yielding small but shimmering

black-on-silver pictures. Volkova

used the archaic technique to

make the contemporary

“Anacostia Portraits” on exhibit at

Honfleur Gallery.

The purpose isn’t exactly

documentary. The subjects of these

formal yet empathetic head shots

are identified only by first names,

although a few photos include

visual clues. Several of the people

are artists, one of whom was

photographed with paintbrushes in

hand. Most of the sitters are African

Americans whose skin tones are

rendered rich and luminous by the

high-contrast method.

The metal miniatures require

close inspection, but Volkova is

as complacent, splash together in

the spliced image.

Upstairs in the resident artist’s

gallery, Stephanie Lane

demonstrates multiple styles of

gestural abstraction. Her large

“Thresholds” paintings include

one in which a multicolored, torso-

like shape emerges from darkness

and three drawing-like pictures

rendered mostly in black

asphaltum (a carbon-heavy

natural substance) on whiteboard.

Although only some of Lane’s

spiraling, spontaneous pictures

include hints of human forms,

they all suggest bodies in motion.

Ju Yun: East Meets West ; Sharon

Shapiro: Then the Dream

Changed ; and Stephanie Lane:

Thresholds Through June 18 at

Arlington Arts Center, 3550 Wilson

Blvd., Arlington

Elena Volkova

Today’s near ubiquity of digital

Art

IN THE GALLERIES

BY MARK JENKINS

P

ersonal identity is a mask,

but for Ju Yun it is one she

stitches herself, using

materials she makes and

finds. Her “East Meets West,” one of

six shows in Arlington Arts Center’s

“Solos 2022,” collages items and

images to symbolically (and

playfully) represent the South

Korea-raised Virginia artist. Some

of her paintings and wall sculptures

invoke masks used in traditional

Korean dance, while hanging

ribbons and strands of costume

jewels yield swaying shadows.

Work that Ju has shown

elsewhere is wildly colorful, and

there are bright reds and oranges in

these works. But the emphasis is on

shades of blue, which gleam against

the white walls like the cobalt-

pigmented ornaments of East

Asian ceramics. Other traditional

elements include Korean and

Chinese text and a realistic

rendering of a tile roof contained in

a culture-hopping larger piece.

What distinguishes Ju's style,

however, is less Korean mementos

than freewheeling energy.

Another of the solos, Sharon

Shapiro’s “Then the Dream

Changed,” offers a harder-edged

sort of montage. The large-scale

collages are based on aspirational

photos of affluent, mid-20th-

century American suburbia, into

which the artist inserts

incongruous elements. This

reflects “the complexities of

growing up female in the

American South,” notes Shapiro’s

statement. The resulting pictures

also highlight contrasts between

rich and poor, chaos and stability,

settled and itinerant. In the vivid

“Crossing,” three migrants struggle

across not the Rio Grande, but a

backyard swimming pool. Various

American dreams, urgent as well

Still lifes

rendered

with satire

and realism

MARGERY E. GOLDBERG/ZENITH GALLERY

“High Anxiety” by Robert C. Jackson, whose hyper-realist p aintings are peppered with h umorous scenarios.