Galleries
Mary Swift's Crop of D.C. Art World Flashbacks
Thursday, August 18, 2005; Page C05
Remember Mary Swift? She used to show up at openings in jodhpurs and riding boots. Though the equestrian outfits never jibed with contemporary art's somber-hued uniform, her enthusiasm propped up the District's art scene for decades. Many of her photographs capturing the city's artists, poets and dancers got published in her now-defunct broadsheet Washington Review; the rest were stored away. At Flashpoint, a selection of Swift's pictures from the past 30 years amounts to a yearbook of Washington's creative class -- back when they had hair. Immortalized here are all-stars including painter Sam Gilliam and sculptor Martin Puryear, plus Walter Hopps, the beloved and eccentric curator who died last March.
A 1984 photograph of Walter Hopps, taken by Mary Swift.
Amid the Routine, Candy for the Eye
At Conner, an Ungainly Landing in the Real World
Conner's fifth annual survey of the area's best art-school grads includes enough copying to threaten the honor code. Maki Maruyama gets the contrivances of Japanese art down cold: Her creepy-cute girl-boy with a helmet of hair turns out to be a double amputee, imposing another layer of fetish on the already fetishistic style. Likewise, Zach Storm does a convincing imitation of comic artist Barry McGee in his works on paper; he's even aped the trademark saggy eyelids of one McGee character. More memorable: Virginia Warwick's tribute to what the cat brought home -- 36 pint-size wooden coffins fit for mice. Scraps of string and fabric pad the rodents' final resting spots. Warwick's attention to these creatures' comforts is a bittersweet gesture.
Virginia Warwick's "Mouse Coffins": Bring your own critters.(Conner Contemporary Art)
O Canada: Interpretations Of Thy Native Landscape
Before the Group of Eight we had the Group of Seven. Before the Group of Seven we had the other Group of Seven: not a clique of superpowers but a band of Canadian landscape painters. It was founded in the early 20th century by artists inspired by wilderness painter Tom Thomson. His followers rendered landscapes in a post-impressionist style indebted to French painting and Japanese prints. Now, seven contemporary Canadian artists revisit the movement in photography, painting, sculpture and video. Though the modern-day efforts bear no obvious resemblance to their forebears, vague traces of Thomson's influence emerge in Monique Mongeau's decorative panel paintings and in Lois Andison's clever, if lightweight, dissection of color called "7 Hues." 
Monique Mongeau's "Serie l'Herbier," on exhibition at the embassy.(Embassy Of Canada)
Loose Brushwork, Spooky Images
German transplant Laurentz Thurn likes to watch. The artist's canvases depict fellow New Yorkers scurrying along city streets and suggest impressionistic security footage -- one part stalker, two parts loose brushwork. The artist's best efforts here are paintings on paper, hung edge-to-edge like a surveillance reel unfurled in the Goethe-Institut vestibule. Thurn's passerby pictures bring to mind Beat Streuli, the Swiss artist best known for filming anonymous pedestrians at major New York intersections, yet the two artists handle their subjects very differently. Streuli's camera obliterates each stranger's mystique by registering every wrinkle, while Thurn preserves anonymity by drowning details in dollops of paint.
Laurentz Thurn's "Mac," at the Goethe-Institut, captures city life with blurry brush strokes.(Courtesy of the Artist)
The Wet and Mild World of Music Videos
