Say what you will about the DC art seen. Despite the fact that no one really buys art in DC, there is a lot of talent this month in the Maryland, DC galleries. While I doubt that DC is going to be the next Miami anytime soon, April has some real gems.
I first visited Katherine Mann’s opening at Hamiltonian Gallery on U St. http://www.hamiltoniangallery.com/. Her work largely reminds me of Andrea Sultzer where the work bounces from non identifiable objects to more concrete ones. They even share a similar scale in their work, although, Mann is working with color and Sultzer is primarily black and white. Mann uses mixed media to create her large scale abstracts, often time overlapping meticulous cutouts creating a dichotomy between the haphazard inks and the exact-o knife precession in the cutouts.
And a few days ago, I visited Gallery Neptune, http://www.galleryneptune.com/, to see the work of John Aquilino. If you can imagine a revival of such 1920’s artists like Charles Demuth and Charles Sheeler, (Precisionism movement), you would have a good grasp of his work. Very clean cut, stream lined and exact renderings of roof tops and very geometric buildings. Aquilino does not abide to the same surface rules of the Precisionists; he often times (except when using gouache) uses thicker brush work that contains many colors that merge together like a Pointillist painting without the millions of dots.
I know April is almost over, but if you get a chance make a couple of trips to our galleries. The museum art will always be there.