Brightest Young Things

all photos: Ryan Wakeman

The exhibitions at 1515 14th street are worth seeing even if you missed the free wine and ale at the gallery openings this past Saturday.

Adamson Gallery always has a flair for rattling DC audiences with works by big-name progressive artists. This winter they are featuring the preternatural photographic works of Lyle Ashton Harris. Harris plays with polaroids and challenges creative and social norms through self-portraits that establish an alarming sense of intimacy with his viewers. In Billie #1, Harris’ guise bears a chilling resemblance to a tormented Billie Holiday, with a handcuff on one wrist strapped to a string of pearls on the other. In self-portrait, Untitled (Blue #3), Harris illuminates the smooth chocolate back of what appears to be a woman wearing red, butt-less fishnet stockings and a colorful shell necklace. The frontal view of the same image provided by Untitled (Blue #5) reveals that the subject is Harris himself—scantily dressed, blind-folded and screaming with a phallic shaped, paper-mache sculpture situated by his stilettos. The subjects of Harris’ disconnected crowd images are less jarring, however, his diversions with bold colors and psychedelic patterns are just as fun to look at (and probably nicer to hang on a wall if you have $45,000 to drop).

The fantastically disturbing works of Joseph Mills at Hemphill Gallery prolong the provocative escapade. The exhibition is appropriately entitled Dark World, as the photomontages and collage constructions creatively reveal a startling and sinister worldview. The objects on which Mills mounts his pieces play an important role in contextualizing the scenarios his montages represent. In Doll-Devil, Mills superimposes an image of the bloody legs of a small child over the top part of a strikingly gorgeous adult female face. The collage is suggestively mounted on a child’s headboard, producing an unsettling effect.

John Alexander’s paintings and drawings in Hemphill’s back room provide a light-hearted distraction. His depictions of various species of birds aren’t especially compelling, but his two drawings of personified warthogs in suits are pleasantly amusing.

If you enjoy the other exhibits, you’ll probably find the portraits at G Fine Art pretty unexciting. If you didn’t, then they’ll come as a relief. Chan Chao’s photos of minority women living in poverty and Collier Schorr’s sappy pictures of melodramatic, young, and rebellious couples look like they belong in a family planning waiting room. Zwelethu Mthethwa’s two vivid portraits of African women are the exhibit’s highlights. The women were photographed in dwellings that they innovatively constructed out of cardboard boxes and decorated with bright collages of English-language magazines and newspapers.

There’s not much to say about the Curator’s Office’s celebration of arts patron, Philip Barlow. Unless you know or are friends with Barlow, the exhibit is only mildly interesting. 15 for Philip: Fifteen Artists Look at Arts Patron Philip Barlow, features a series of videos, photos, prints, and paintings unexceptionally flattering what appears to be an exceptional man. One critical allowance can be made for a video of Amanda Kleinman of The Apes, sitting at a shiny black baby grand piano in a sketchy red face mask and bug-sunglasses, singing Ode to Barlow to a framed photo of her icon.