'5 + 5': The Equation Works Only in Theory

By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 23, 2007

I can't help seeing the whole thing as a blown opportunity.

After 10 years at 16th and Q streets NW, the D.C. Jewish Community Center decided that a departure from business as usual was in order. Hence "5 + 5: Five Artists Select Five Artists to Watch," an exhibition at the center's Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery celebrating, for the first time, neither Jewish themes nor Jewish artists but connections, in the broadest sense of the word, to and among the local community.

So far, so good.

Here's how it was designed to work, according to guest curator Phyllis Rosenzweig, the former Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden curator who, by her own admission, did very little other than facilitate the exhibit's two-step process. In collaboration with the gallery committee, Rosenzweig came up with a list of five established artists who either lived and worked locally or who had historical ties to Washington. The final list featured painter Sam Gilliam, photographer John Gossage, sculptor Martin Puryear, installation artist Dan Steinhilber and mixed-media artist Renee Stout. Each of them then would be invited to select -- and exhibit alongside the work of -- a second, more obscure artist from the area ("emerging artist" is the term commonly used for these most curious of creatures, in an evocation of caterpillars turning into butterflies). Five artists select five artists to watch. Pretty self-explanatory.

Except that, the show's title notwithstanding, that's not what's on the walls and, in a couple of cases, the floor of the gallery. It's more like "Five Artists Select Five Artists They Really, Really Like and Hope You Will, Too." The idea of the old guard shining the spotlight on a generation of worthy but unknown up-and-comers -- an idea I was kind of looking forward to -- went quickly out the window, says Rosenzweig, who says she "sublimated" that theme almost as soon as she started soliciting picks from the initial five. The abandonment of the stated theme for a looser interpretation of the notion of "artist to watch" was "very intentional," she says. The watching, in other words, soon became less about "artists you've never seen before" than about artists you may not have heard of before and "what they're doing next."

So who ended up getting a nod from the Fab Five?

Gilliam, arguably the most famous name in the show, with a big retrospective at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2005-06, selected Jae Ko, an artist known for elegantly simple rolled-paper sculptures. Three of Ko's pieces are included here, and they're beautiful. Gossage, whose black-and-white photos of the American South aren't exhibited often, chose Pia Calderon, a little-known artist whose contribution includes multiple pages from her diary-like sketchbooks. Puryear, a Washington-born and -trained sculptor who has long since graduated to the international stage, picked Otho Branson, a less-than-household-name represented by six quiltlike acrylic-on-paper grids of abstract color. Steinhilber, whose untitled sculpture consisting of a smashed fluorescent light bulb will not surprise those who have seen his work in area museums, tapped Y. David Chung. The exhibit features three of Chung's graphite-and-conte-crayon interpretations of suburban sprawl. Finally, Stout asked Mary Early, who offers a pair of abstract wood constructions covered in glowing yellow beeswax.

Now don't get me wrong. There's lots to like here on both sides of the menu. Stout and Steinhilber are two of the most exciting "name" artists working in Washington. So, for that matter, is Gilliam's "artist to watch," Ko. And Chung? He well deserved his inclusion in the Corcoran's 2001 biennial, "Media/Metaphor," but he's hardly a newcomer. Gilliam and Puryear are giants in their fields, and Branson and Calderon probably deserve wider exposure.

It isn't even so much the weird age disparities either -- or sometimes the lack thereof -- between the pickers and the pickees. Stout, who's nearly 50, chose an artist barely out of her 20s (Early), lining up neatly with the established/emerging paradigm. By contrast, Puryear and his choice (Branson) are in their mid-60s. The admittedly rather well-known Steinhilber is still in his 30s, while the artist he picked "to watch" (Chung) is not only 15 years his senior but was named outstanding emerging artist nearly 20 years ago at the 1988 Mayor's Arts Awards.

But if Rosenzweig can live with that, so can I. In Steinhilber's defense, Rosenzweig says he wasn't aware of the "artist to watch" theme until late in the game and then felt guilty about picking someone who had been working so much longer than he had.

No, what sticks most in my craw about the show is what strikes me as, for lack of a better term, lazy choices on the part of the pickers. Gilliam and Ko -- an emerging artist by no stretch of the imagination, except, perhaps, to someone as famous as Gilliam -- are both represented by the same dealer (Marsha Mateyka). So are Stout and Early (George Hemphill, whose gallery director, Kimberly Gladfelter, sits on the DCJCC gallery committee). As for Steinhilber and Chung, they share a mailing address in the old Mather building downtown. Gossage and Calderon know each other from the University of Maryland, where Gossage once taught and Calderon was a student.

So what, though?

Far from suggesting scandal (it's a small town after all), I merely wish that someone had beaten the bushes a little harder to turn up fresh quarry. Don't just try to surprise me; surprise yourself, for crying out loud.

Rosenzweig, for her part, is happy with the results, arguing that the show "says something about the vitality of the art scene" at all levels of experience and recognition. I think it does say something about the art scene, but for me -- as, I suspect, for anyone paying the least bit of attention to that scene in the decade that the DCJCC has been at its current location -- "5 + 5" feels less like a departure than like logrolling as usual.