At the D.C. Arts Center, a 'Change' Will Do You Good

Amy Kaplan's "Praying Bears," part of "Space of Change." (By Amy Kaplan)

"Space of Change," the third in the D.C. Arts Center's series of Curatorial Initiative exhibitions, is by far the best of those so far mounted. Supported by a $45,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Curatorial Initiative program provides apprenticeships of sorts, allowing novice curators the chance to gain experience by working with more established organizers of art professionals. In this particular case at least, the words "novice" and "established" should be interpreted only loosely, seeing as Ann Surak, in the junior position, is herself director of a gallery, Project 4. Her so-called mentors, and the show's co-curators -- sculptor Margaret Boozer and Claire Huschle, executive director of the Arlington Arts Center -- joked during the show's opening reception that the roles should be reversed.

Little does it matter. The show is, for the most part, tight, fresh, smart and coherent, and it comes across as the fruit of a singular vision, rather than a collaboration.

Organized around the idea of "liminal spaces," or thresholds between one state of being and another, "Space of Change" includes work by five artists little known in Washington. Amy Kaplan, whose haunting, even slightly creepy "Praying Bears" installation of altered stuffed animals is among the show's standouts, is the lone artist with roots in this area. Wrapped in cocoons of white wool felt, and sometimes missing limbs, Kaplan's repurposed toys evoke the work of the better-known Jeff Spaulding and share his art's sense of innocence disturbed.

Artist Martin Brief's work is equally strong, though subtle. Made from overlaying vellum on pages from the New York Times and filling in all the o's, or by tracing the column outlines of dictionary pages, Brief's minimalist ink abstractions draw our attention away from the cacophony of information we're asked to process on a daily basis to a kind of beautiful formal silence that our eyes can't possibly "hear" -- until all the notes have been removed.

As with much performance-based art, Justin Rabideau's "A Sense of Place" at first seems to suffer from the fact that it documents something that's long over: in this case, an action in which the artist harnessed himself to a kind of rake that, while dragged behind him, simultaneously left a record of his path while erasing his footprints. The rake is there, as are photographs, but where's the art? Gradually, the idea creeps in that all art is merely a record of a kind of struggle, a battle between mark-making and erasure.

Collaborative artists Wendy Weiss and Jay Kreimer take the idea of liminal spaces far more literally, creating a fiber sculpture and sound installation over the D.C. Arts Center's entrance stairwell that is triggered by visitors' movements. Initially, "Ground Shift" appears to do little more than remind us that the gallery door itself is a threshold between inside and out, but the presence of Kreimer's mechanical skeletons, rigged to "dance" by windshield wiper motors, hints of a far more profound space of change, and one that we will all pass through sooner or later.

SPACE OF CHANGE Through Oct. 8 at the D.C. Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW (Metro: Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan). 202-462-7833. http://www.dcartscenter.org. Open Wednesday-Sunday 2 to 7, later when there is a theater performance. Free.