Sight Scene: Fall Returns to Galleries Everywhere

Map It:  Dupont Circle   U Street-Cardozo 

Last week, Sight Scene scribe Kriston Capps previewed a slate of gallery openings in the heart of the 14th Street arts corridor. In his second installment, he looks at what's new elsewhere on 14th Street and around town.

THERE'S MORE TO THE 14TH STREET arts scene than the 1515 building as profiled last week. In fact, there's something new right around the corner on P Street NW at Transformer gallery. "SASS" is a show of all-female emerging artists from D.C. and elsewhere. Representing home court are performance artist Holly Bass and Lisa Marie Thalhammer, who works in ink, paint and collage; Amanda Douglas, Natalia Fabia and Danniel Swatosh round out the show. The timing couldn't be better: Next week, "Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution" opens at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This show ought to dovetail with that one nicely, especially given the feminist themes in Thalhammer's work.

» PROJECT 4: Over on U Street NW, the photography of Cedric Delsaux may be light fare compared with some of the other showings, particularly in photography, that opened this weekend. Delsaux uses traditional and digital techniques to juxtapose fantasy and reality. For example, the "Star Wars on Earth" series finds Delsaux Photoshopping Star Wars figurines into Parisian suburbs. ("R2D2 & C3PO" is pictured at right.) He's not the first to take a gimmick and run with it, of course — in photography, that's a fine tradition that William Wegman perfected. Some people might puzzle over Delsaux's concept; the question is whether they will be outnumbered by George Lucas' worshiping nerds.

» RANDALL SCOTT: Back on 14th Street, Nathan Baker is not exactly typical for a September opening, either. Few artists root their work in Martin Heidegger's "Being in Time," but that's what Baker's done for "Present at Hand." He doesn't seem to be photographing an undiluted humanity, the concept that Heidegger suggested with that phrase; rather, Baker shows various rapturous moments in which his subject subvert various obstacles in their environments. From these staged scene, he shoots large format photographs. To these he also adds some video art and sound installation. Who knows? Maybe Baker will introduce viewers to Dasein.

» IRVINE CONTEMPORARY: And down the street, starting the season at Irvine is one of the gallery's perennial favorites, Susan Jamison. New works for "Trust in Me" examine these similar to older works: femininity, ephemerality, and delicacy. ("Trust in Me" is pictured at left.) Courtney Jordan's drawings might do the opposite: She splits and transforms architectural fragments through space, as if a bomb had struck a Benjamin Edwards environment.

Images courtesy the galleries