The D.C. Docent

Ever wish someone would grab you in the parking lot, put a bag over your head, throw you in the van and take you to an undisclosed location? GET IN THE VAN! That’s my motto most of the time, and for tonight, absolutely yes!

Fifteen Passenger Van, a collaborative art exhibition featuring Professional Practices students from George Washington University’s Fine Arts and Art History department and the Corcoran College of Art + Design’s Fine Art Department is on view at the Montserrat House tonight.

The best parts have yet to be known, but the fact that Jose Ruiz (Decatur Blue, G Fine Art, Furthermore Print) and Jayme McClellan (Civilian Art Projects) are spearheading this means it will be extra rad. And the artists themselves? Features: Mazin Abdelhameid; Armando Lopez-Bircann; Wesley Cook; Larry Cook; Francesca Downs; Pamela Fernandez; Minami Hofmann; Katie Macyshyn; Christie Malvin; Larissa McGreer; Gabriel Mellan; Fatima Meyers; Bryana Siobhan; Brandon Rukin; and Marice Sy.

Get in the van, or risk being left behind.

Montserrat House, 2016 9th St., NW, Opening reception from 7-10pm.

Several of you have asked “what say ye D.C. Docent, for summer art extravaganzas not to be missed?” Not really, it was only one of you that asked and your vernacular was quite plain. But it did get me thinking, it’s never too early to start surveying the summer landscape. Here are my preliminary picks, but keep in mind that several private galleries have yet to release their late summer line-ups:

• Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park Series at The Corcoran - Scale, abstraction, stillness, muted tones and oceanic themes make for the kind of California Dreaming you only find on dappled, breezy Rock Creek Park picnics.

• Ai Weiwei at The Hirshhorn & Freer Sackler - Gigantism, interconnectivity, political dissidence, stone and wood translate into A Staring at the Sun kind of intensity where questioning authority, jail time and occupying something don’t seem so bad.

• Jasper Johns at The Phillips Collection - Printmaking, bold colors, graphics and pop vibe mean that if you’re wearing Ray Bans, an upturned collar and quoting the Beats or John Hughes, it ain’t gonna be such a Cruel Summer.

• The Art of Video Games at The American Art Museum - Unless you read my previous post on this show, be prepared for stammering, yammering, pixels, plug & plays and enough nerdy amusement to make you jam out like this.

• Joan Miro at The National Gallery of Art & The Kreeger - The geometry of surprise, think minimalist whimsy, but with an underlying lesson of more than basic shapes and primary colors is what you might hear in your Radiohead.

• Cynthia Connolly at Civilian Art Projects - Spare, clean, slightly gritty black and white images evoke the sense of Standing on a Beach.

• Leo Villareal at Conner Contemporary -  Disappear here with diodes, pure color, and prismatic flashes of the future L’Estate.

• Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi at Contemporary Wing - Precision and controlled chaos that manifest in ornamental sinkholes and portals where you might fall into a Suntrance.

This juried exhibition by the Corcoran College of Art + Design features undergraduate and graduate works in screen printing, lithography, etching, papermaking and mixed-media print processes.

Exhibit runs April 18 - 29. A closing reception will be held on Thursday, April 26, 6-8 p.m.

Commemorating the history of conflict can take many forms, depending on the era. In a new pair of exhibits at the Corcoran Gallery of Art covering the Civil War and the recent war in Afghanistan, the striking differences in the tools, subject matter, and point of view are bookends to the evolution of documentary photography and armed conflict.

Shadows of History: Photographs of the Civil War from the Collection of Julia J. Norrell, presents photographs that span the years during and around the Civil War, yet they are the places of war, without the war. There is always a distance, even when staring directly into weary gazes. These are the landscapes and regiments of war, but captured at moments of quietness and stillness that surprise, until you realize that as one of the first wars documented by photography, the absence of action in these photographs was largely a product of the available technology.

Photographic process in those years was fairly cumbersome; glass plates, photographic boxes, a complicated chemical process and a lack of fast shutter speed made action shots virtually impossible. Instead of the battle, we get the anticipation and the detritus. Fast forward 150 years and you can see the results of not only the advanced technology of digital photography, but the tools and trade of modern warcraft, and the soldiers who carry its burden.

Tim Hetherington’s Sleeping Soldiers is intimate, up-close and confined, even in its outdoor landscapes of Afghanistan. It shows, but it also tells; it gives us the emotional range of the toll of war. It moves quickly, but it also freezes. One alternates at looking at everything, unable to focus, or focusing only on a small piece of the scene, almost obsessing over small details.

This is the product of immediacy, lightening speeds and digital photography to be sure, but also the skill of a practiced hand, of someone more than an observer at the beginning or the end of a battle. It’s the story of a uniformed soldier’s life in the 21st century, but it’s also the tale of an embedded photographer, his legacy and the legacy of all wars.

Both exhibits are open now through May 6, 2012.