Arlington Arts Center is pleased to announce its spring exhibitions, including the group exhibition Stretched and Ryan McCoy: From an Abyss in the Wyatt Resident Artists Gallery.
The exhibitions will be open to the public during AAC’s regular gallery hours, Wednesday through Saturday, 12pm to 5pm. Online programs, including an artist talk with resident artist Ryan McCoy and a series of artist talks with the artists included in Stretched, will take place in conjunction with the exhibitions.
AAC is pleased to reopen its galleries after an extended winter closure. Visitors will be required to wear masks and maintain six feet of distance from others while inside AAC’s building. For more information on public hours and AAC’s plan for a safe reopening, check out our website.
IN THE MAIN GALLERIES
March 27 – June 5, 2021
Featured Artists: Amna Asghar, Rushern Baker IV, Erick Antonio Benitez, Mark Joshua Epstein, Saskia Fleishman, Jen Noone, Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann, Madeline A. Stratton, and Rives Wiley
Stretched presents an expanded perspective on contemporary painting, featuring nine artists whose work is rooted in but transcends the medium. The exhibition includes two-dimensional work by Amna Asghar, Rushern Baker IV, Saskia Fleishman, Jen Noone, and Rives Wiley, shaped and sculptural work by Mark Joshua Epstein and Madeline A. Stratton, and new immersive installations created for the exhibition by Erick Antonio Benitez and Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann.
Ranging from work on canvas to large-scale installation, the exhibition emphasizes the expansive and multi-faceted approach taken by contemporary artists who work with paint as part of their practice. These diverse approaches include incorporating unconventional materials and techniques into their work and expanding beyond the canvas into three-dimensional objects and installations.
These artists look to the central role played by painting throughout art history, including the legacy of modernist abstraction and the tradition of Chinese landscape painting, to name just two influences visible in the exhibition. In addition to these art historical threads, all nine artists incorporate and reflect visual influences from popular culture and digital aesthetics. Although nearly every work in the show is entirely analog in its physical construction, the visual influence of digital devices and online space proliferates throughout the show.
The diversity of techniques, influences, and materials visible in Stretched reflects a long tradition of artists who approach painting as a starting point for broad experimentation, while demonstrating the ways contemporary artists have continued to expand painting within and beyond the canvas.
For more details about the Stretched artists download the full PRESS RELEASE.
IN THE WYATT RESIDENT GALLERY
March 27 – June 5, 2021
From an Abyss is artist Ryan McCoy’s response to the experience of living in America during the Covid-19 pandemic. Executed from just before the pandemic’s outset to the present moment, From an Abyss is McCoy’s visualization of the country’s staggering death toll, the emotional and psychological effects of sustained isolation and attacks on truth, facts and America’s democracy. Working in an abstract visual language, From an Abyss reacts to a dark chapter in America’s history through stark abstract compositions, poetic gestures and canvases heavy with the accrual of material excess.
Ryan McCoy is an artist based in the Washington, DC area and a resident artist at Arlington Arts Center. He works in various media, but his primary body of work, developed over the last 15 years, includes paintings that combine materials such as seawater, ash, rust, and baby powder to create iconographies about time, place, and memory.
McCoy’s work has been exhibited at national and international venues including Connersmith in Washington, DC; Latrobe Contemporary in Victoria, Australia; and Grizzly Grizzly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. McCoy’s paintings are included in numerous private collections throughout the US, Europe, South America, and Australia. He teaches at George Mason University’s School of Visual Art.
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Add to Calendar 20210527 America/New_York 3550 Wilson Boulevard Arlington VA 22201 Spring 2021 Exhibitions