C8 GALLERIES Old is new at Touchstone; Key turns back time by Jessica Dawson
From drought to deluge! We scrounged for art in August, then Sep- tember hit. This week, we scrambled to see the latest shows. Our best bets follow.
If you’re an oldster eager to cel-
ebrate how few things change and that most things stay the same, visit the new Touchstone, which is pretty much the old Touchstone, only relo- cated. Previously sited on an upper floor of the erstwhile 406 Seventh St. gallery building — remember when Adamson and Numark were there, back in the day? — Touchstone re- opened last month after being home- less for a year. Friday night, they’re toasting the New York Avenue store- front. Breathe deeply and you’ll smell the rising biscuits at restaurant Aca- diana next door. What’s new? The 1,000-square foot
exhibition space sports the features of so many recent condominiums, res- taurants and galleries: polished con- crete floors, 15-foot ceilings, exposed ductwork. As for the art, you’ll see works by 50 of the gallery’s dues-paying member artists; their quality level remains un- changed, which is to say middling. Here, titles speak for themselves: Ja- nathel Shaw gives us the sculpture “Baby’s Mama,” which is pretty much exactly what you’d imagine. Harvey Kupferberg offers “Live Oaks in Fog,” a black and white picture of, yes, live oaks in fog. And Rima Schulkind pre- sents “Tinman,” a — you guessed it — statue constructed from aluminum cans.
Also happening Friday night, the
unveiling of Rebecca Key’s Trans- former transformation, which may prove the gallery’s most brilliant use yet of its microscopic space. The Liv- erpool-based Key, 32, turned back time and gentrification by returning the gallery’s east wall to its original form: the side of another building. According to Key, up until the late
1970s the gallery’s interior had been an exterior, a sort of street-side air shaft lending light to surrounding tenements. She’d dug up public re- cords at the Martin Luther King Jr. li- brary showing the gallery’s tiny foot- print in 1896 and also in 1965; com- parisons revealed that partial infill took place at some point between those dates, but the particulars are murky. Key deduced that the roof over the storefront now housing Trans-
ing night visitors feared they’d stum- bled into the wrong place. This kind of trickery isn’t just one- note high jinks, it’s tough love. Once we’re familiar with a place, we almost always tune it out. Key jolts us awake by making the familiar strange. For a moment, at least, we’re aware of what surrounds us. Key’s project is near perfect, but
there’s something missing: l’odeur derelicte. The garbage bags hugging Key’s faux alley wall don’t reek and urine didn’t make Key’s materials list. Of course, this evening’s opening par- ty could change all that... But please don’t go too crazy there because you’ll need your reserves for Saturday night’s shell-shocking Eric Hibit opening at Curator’s Office. The 1998 Corcoran grad, 34, left the Dis- trict for Yale’s star-studded MFA pro- gram and returns to Washington for his first area show, which is the Libe- race of this weekend’s exhibitions. How can I describe this? Hibit’s wall-hung objects project off the walls and onto your eyeballs. Fluorescent pink pigment, glitter, bits of fur and felt, Tide detergent boxes, masks and McDonald’s-themed necklaces erupt from sculptural armatures. Bring sun- glasses and a baseball bat for protec- tion. Hibit’s works are about consumer
PHOTOS BY ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
former wasn’t installed until around 1980.
If the details are a little fuzzy, that’s
okay. Key is a set dresser, not an ur- banist. She has worked as an art direc- tor on small films and TV shows for years; she graduated from art school and long made her own art on the side. Things changed in 2006, though, when she had a stroke. Left with a continuous sensation of pain on her left side that requires daily medica- tion and plenty of rest, Key now relies on a cane to walk. The resulting life- style changes slowed her pace, but she’s also had more time to focus on making art. To execute the Transformer work,
Key enlisted two former colleagues (all three met on the set of the British film “Dead Man’s Cards” in 2005). Greg Winter, 36 (credits as a scenic artist include multiple Bond and Bourne films; IMDB him and drool) and Emma Dalton, 29, both flew in from the U.K. for the project. Under Key’s direction, the group
JUST LIKE OLD TIMES: With “Archetype,” Rebecca Key turns an interior wall at Transformer into its former, exterior self, complete with “distressed” bricks.
culture, ostentation and display. I ha- ven’t yet decided how I feel about them — I saw them before they were properly installed, so I’m not ventur- ing deep into opinion here — but I re- main alternately terrified and curi- ous.
style@washpost.com
Touchstone Gallery’s “Champagne Celebration” is Friday from 6-8:30 p.m. at 901 New York Ave. NW. 202-347-2787.
has distressed one of the gallery’s white walls into a reasonable facsimi- le of what it once was: the side of a brick building that now houses Mid- City Fish Market.
When I visited earlier this week, Winter was testing brick- and mortar- colored paints and Emma was out rounding up trash cans and garbage bags. Key showed me the alley a few doors down that inspired her design plans. She hoped to create a wall faux- roughed by decades of wear — patch-
es of weathered concrete plus bricks both grouted and un-, painted-over and crumbling. She also figured in a boarded-up window. For Key, site-specific forensics has become something of a specialty. Past shows include the transformation of a gallery’s exhibition space into its back office, putting the gritty business of art — or a facsimile thereof — on dis- play. Another project found her turn- ing a gallery (located in a studio building) into an artist’s studio; open-
Wednesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Friday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Saturday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m., to Sept. 26.
www.touchstonegallery.com. “Rebecca Key: Archetype” opens Friday from 6-9 p.m. at Transformer, 1404 P
St. NW. 202-483-1102. Wednesday-Saturday, 1-7 pm., to Oct. 15.
www.transformergallery.org.
“Eric Hibit: Picture Cohesion” opens Saturday from 6-8 p.m. at Curator’s Office, 1515 14th St. NW. 202-387-1008.
Wednesday-Saturday, noon-6 pm., to October 23.
www.curatorsoffice.com.
Dawson is a freelance writer.
S
KLMNO
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2010
THEATER REVIEW
‘Ovo’: Cirque du Soleil lays a pretty good egg
by Nelson Pressley
“Oh, no,” is not an unreasonable reac- tion to the early moments of “Ovo,” the extravaganza now perched on the Pla- teau at National Harbor. Performers in alarmingly bright, extremely silly rub- bery suits make nonsense sounds (“Zzzzt!” “Thththth-pt!”) and dance like they’ve just infested a third-rate night- club. They are meant to be insects, and you fear that the great Cirque du Soleil, always hunting for fresh themes upon which to hang its stunning acrobatics, has finally scraped bottom. Never fear. Once the troupe’s world- class acts begin their dazzling tricks, it really doesn’t matter what they’re wear- ing or what the gimmick is. Forget, for instance, that Vladimir Hrynchenko is supposed to be a firefly, which sort of ex- plains the sheer outer pants over his aquamarine tights. It’s enough that he is balancing himself on one hand, gripping a very small block screwed into the top of a sloping green metal pole, striking one splendid pose after another. The strength is awe-inspiring. And who knows, maybe the superhero cut of the shiny blue costume helps. To be fair, there is an appealing in- nocence to “Ovo,” and it’s incredibly easy to warm to the show (which was written, directed and choreographed by Deborah Colker). The title is Portuguese for “egg,” and indeed the design features a large glowing egg that fascinates Colker’s bi- zarre colony of characters. The action is full of becoming and emerging: a chrysa- lis that slowly emerges from the floor is marvelous, and so is the aerial dance on a swinging rope that follows between a pair of butterflies (the sublimely graceful Maxim Kozlov and Inna Mayorova). The butterfly bit is both demanding and gor- geous, with an undercurrent of affection that’s enchanting. When a frivolous sextet of foot jug-
glers races on to spin and kick giant hunks of fruit and vegetables in the air while lying on their backs, it’s hard not be in thrall to the unexpected antics. These women are ants (tight red cos- tumes, weird little handles sticking out from their heads — of course!). So they’re ants: whatever. Just watch the huge slices of kiwi they flip like gangsters’
coins, each improbable toss right on the money. Feet only, people, and FAST. That’s the circus: tricks you’d never think of, polished to a high shine and ex- ecuted with fabulous precision. A hazard is that the good shows — and this is one —inevitably run the risk of making real- ly difficult acts look too easy. Take the strong fellows on the tiny platform high above the stage: They seem like they could catch the bodies somersaulting at them from trapezes all day. Still, during Wednesday night’s opening, they coolly
PHOTOS BY BENOIT FONTAINE
made several highlight-worthy grabs of tossed bodies that nearly came up short. The same goes for Li Wei, whose slack-
wire act (it’s a loose tightrope) almost seems like something you might want to try yourself, until he does it upside down, on a unicycle, with his face in the seat.
Although the ladybug’s amusing cos- tume with inner tubes around the mid- riff is easily the best in show (followed by the slinky spiderwear sported by the spectacular contortionists), the clown- ing between this ladybug and two un- identifiable fantasy bugs is sometimes sluggish. That’s a particular problem with Cirque du Soleil; its upscale image and price point make you feel everything has to be smashing, and though these clowns eventually improvised expertly with Wednesday’s audience, the scripted slapstick and gibberish can be wearying. Likewise, the energy — keyed by lik-
able Brazilian music from composer Ber- na Ceppas — ranges from delightfully
MAKING IT LOOK EASY: Alarmingly bright visuals and sometimes silly costumes mark Cirque du Soleil’s extravaganza “Ovo” (Portuguese for “egg”), but the troupe’s tricks are nonetheless dazzling. The production’s Washington area run continues through Oct. 24 at the Plateau at National Harbor.
Ovo
written, directed and choreographed by Deborah Colker. Costumes, Liz Vandal; set and prop design, Gringo Cardia; lights, Eric Champoux; sound design, Jonathan Deans. About 21
⁄2
laid-back to dangerously understated, until an exciting, near-ecstatic finish in- volving trampolines and a climbing wall. Magnificence is the standard for Cirque du Soliel, and “Ovo” is not consistently glorious. It’s awfully good, though,
thanks to some brilliant, highly disci- plined people who excel at turning stunts into art.
style@washpost.com Pressley is a freelance writer. hours.
Through Oct. 24 at the Plateau at National Harbor. Visit
www.cirquedusoleil.com/ovo.
VIDEO ON THE WEB To watch video from Cirque du Soleil’s “Ovo,” visit
washingtonpost.com/style.
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