Highs -- and Lows -- in the 20s
At Hillyer, a Group of Young Artists Exhibits Strengths and Weaknesses

By Jessica Dawson
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, July 18, 2008

A trio of area 20-somethings showing at Hillyer Art Space betrays the advantages and pitfalls of youth.

The artworks of Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin, 24 and 26, respectively, arrive clapping and stomping. In pictures that blend word and image into something like visual performance, the Jasons, who go by "Reynolds and Griffin," exude youthful vitality. After meeting as University of Maryland undergraduates, the pair began collaborating on spoken word and performance pieces. Reynolds handles the words, and Griffin is on the visuals.

Those visuals alternate between graffiti, doodles and neo-abstract expressionism. A raven painted on a big wooden slab suggests Washington graffiti-writer-cum-gallery-darling Kelly Towles. The interior monologue of their "Art? Art." series recall the wry works of young Scotsman David Shrigley. And a face rendered in big gestures of paint recalls mid-1950s gestural abstraction.

Almost every piece -- whether on canvas, paper or wooden door (a signature move of '50s-era abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning) -- includes both word and image. The effect is that of illustrated poetry. A word scrawled in ink or painted on canvas delivers very different meaning. Some suggest interior monologues, others a dialogue between the artists.

The pictures speak to being young and male: free, rowdy and selfish, yes. But also insecure, regretful, searching. Reynolds and Griffin remind us why the 20s were great, but the 30s are better.

Though second-oldest here, Ben Tolman is 28 going on 18. His detailed, large-scale ink drawings from the series "An Allegory in Ink" are thick with references to illuminated manuscripts, Edward Gorey and Hieronymus Bosch. (For one of his creations, Tolman borrows the title of the 16th-century master's orgiastic triptych, "The Garden of Earthly Delights.")

Yet despite the visual erudition -- or, perhaps, because of the works' Gothic focus -- Tolman's pictures seem suited to the covers of heavy-metal albums or science-fiction novels. They belong to genus Unzip Skin to Reveal Skeleton, species Crowned Skull with Bat Wings.

Call them teen boy fantasies. Half-men half-beasts, a heck of a lot of naked women, plus a number of orgiastic couplings appear here. We get narcissism, too: Tolman and his girlfriend appear in several images. Both play stock Goth characters -- a warlock's goatee dangles from Tolman's chin; his muse's eyes are lined as if with asphalt.

Neither the works' detail nor their painstaking construction make up for the fact that the guy needs to grow up.

At 29, Mandy Burrow enjoys elder stateswoman status here. Intimate yet sophisticated, Burrow's five works make a strong impression -- even the weak ones show promise. Her subjects are loss and remembrance, with each piece seemingly haunted by longing.

"Undone" finds variously sized balls of yarn wrapped tight and displayed in a wooden cabinet like a shabby museum exhibit. Each is labeled: "Tim's gloves," "Mama's white sweater," "The blanket grandma made for baby." Presumably former belongings of the artist's loved ones, the balls and their labels suggest people who have died or grown older, outgrown things or worn them out. The sense of loss and time passing is palpable.

Burrow uses a similar strategy in another work in which she documents family knickknacks. She covers a wall with sketches of everyday objects and a few phrases describing them. One reads: "The pineapple salt shaker that Grandma Virginia and Peepaw brought back from Hawaii for Dad and Gwen." Written in a mannered, schoolgirl cursive, the text here becomes cloying, robbing the piece of its poignancy.

Other works include a quilt made from used and emptied tea bags -- a sad but impressive sight, suggesting lost purpose and fragility. Another, called "Rides Home," is a grid of bus transfers dating from February 2005 to March 2006.

As a collection of the artist's rides home, they might have been a meditation on the quotidian. Instead, many of the transfers are found or donated by friends, and thus the schedules are erratic -- four rides home on March 1, 2006; no rides for a month in late 2005. Burrows missed the mark with this one, but she's off to a great start.

Gina Brocker at Irvine

Photographer Gina Brocker set herself an unusual task during graduate school in Wales. She befriended a family of Irish Travelers -- the tribe of nomads whose very identities revolve around itinerancy -- and set about documenting them.

The Donovans were more stable than most. Brocker's pictures from 2005 and 2007 show familiar surroundings -- children appear in the same playground -- as the family transitioned toward a settled lifestyle.

Brocker's vision of the family's children, who appear in this portfolio at Irvine, hardly stresses their nomadic roots. Instead, youth and faith dominate these pictures.

The Donovan teens are like any others. Several pictures show them on their cellphones, leaning as if expecting major revelations. Others show them hanging out in empty parking lots, girls wearing revealing tops as if their bodies were their currency.

Brocker goes to great lengths to underscore the family's Catholicism. An image of Pope John Paul II and a ceramic Last Supper relief show up in two interior views. Celtic crosses rise up in a landscape. Looking at a picture of a baby girl whose shirt reads "Angel," we think, perhaps, that Brocker tapped the sacred in the everyday.

Reynolds and Griffin, Ben Tolman and Mandy Burrow at Hillyer Art Space, 9 Hillyer Ct. NW (enter from Florida Avenue between Massachusetts and R Street); Monday 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday-Friday 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; 202-338-0680, to Aug. 29. http://www.artsandartists.org/artspace.php.

Gina Brocker: Portfolio at Irvine Contemporary, 1412 14th St. NW; Tuesday-Saturday 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; 202-332-8767, to July 26. http://www.irvinecontemporary.com.