The Washington City Paper

"Three Part Harmony: Definition, Delicacy, and Detail in Drawing"

By Jeffry Cudlin
June 8, 2007

Drawing continues to be hot. Whether you credit the explosion of art fairs for the upswing—or maybe the popularity of the 2005 book, Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing—young artists continue to turn to venerable old graphite and paper to make contemporary work. That is good news. What's not so good is that most of this new generation of draftspersons seems to be making exactly the same drawing: a few isolated passages of delicate illustrational rendering, floating on a sea of pristine white or cream paper. This describes more than a few of the pieces on offer in the new show at Curator’s Office, "Three Part Harmony: Definition, Delicacy and Detail in Drawing." Luckily, once you get past the faddishness—and the alliteration—the show is actually a winning mix of local favorites and international talents. Ricardo Lanzarini's Derecha, for example, features tiny pen and ink drawings of figures that appear to have been lifted from a Hieronymus Bosch painting; without context, it's hard to decide if these odd little homunculi belong in the pages of a kid's storybook, or in hell. Abstractions that look like aerial views of fantastic cities are a common theme; Daniel Zeller, for example, makes what appears to be a mechanized island colony out of tiny yellow and blue biomorphs. There are some real treats here—such as a tiny James Siena, with his trademark quasi-mystical freehand pattern-making. Despite the formal unity, the show features a wide variety of subjects—from A.B. Miner's existential body terror to Zach Storm's quirky fake book covers to Avish Khebrehzadeh's layered translucent animation cells. The salon-style installation and the intimate scale of the work ultimately provide a perfect fit for this micro-gallery.

The exhibition is on view from noon to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, to Saturday, July 14, at Curator’s Office, 1515 14th St. NW. Free. (202) 387-1008.