Where to See Art Museum Exhibits in the Washington D.C. Area

Signori’s paintings and crayons are regularly exhibited near her suburban Maryland home, but her Gallery B exhibit highlights a unique focus and technique. Compositionally, the most striking features of these photographs are those divided by bodies of water, such as the passage through the golden expanse in “Talking With Silence.” The sun shines on these gaps in fields and forests, so that the stream that bisects “Evening Is a Piece of Paradise” looks like a strip of liquid gold.

Some paintings and crayons have a dense texture, albeit in different ways. The moon hangs low in the red sky of “Edge of the Shimmering Horizon”, and the prominent weave of Irish linen deepens its painterly gesture. Marble dust mixed into the plaster makes pastels such as “Flamenco Dancer” depicting a red flower look weathered. The subject is simple, but its impressionistic background is as complex and bright as one of Signori’s epic vistas.

The dominant color palette for Williams’ tree-oriented exhibition at Touchstone Gallery is not green but soft, lush blue. This forms the frame for branch silhouettes and other details in many of the Virginia country artist’s photographs, most of them watercolors drawn on clay panels and sealed with varnish. The arboreal forms are often brighter than their sky-like backgrounds, but are loosely dotted with spots and lines of bold green, orange, and red. The partially abstracted scenes feature occasional animals, including the brightest robin in Williams’ woods.

Everything is organic, but sometimes influenced by hard-edged geometry. Some pieces are divided into multiple squares arranged in a tight, regular grid. This approach can simulate a view from a window, or simply embody the artist’s ability to organize what she sees. Williams paired each photo with quotes about the trees from many sources, but the vision for the show was entirely her own.

Contributors to “Plant Cuisine,” presented by the Museum of Athena for members of the National Capital Region Botanical Art Society, depict their subjects with precise, detailed realism. That doesn’t mean these pictures of flora in watercolor, colored pencil, or both lack vibrancy or interest. Anne Clippinger’s “Garlic Scapes” has vivid effect, Pamela Mason’s “Beach Rose Hips” pops dramatically from black paper, and Joan Map Ducore’s “Balanced Diet” stacks various vegetables into a precarious pile .

Ducore’s pictures and Mary Elcano’s “Waldorf Salad” brought together fruits, nuts and vegetables that could be eaten together, while other participants found picture contrasts in botanicals in their natural state. Elena Maza-Borland emphasized the rough rind of the heirloom variety French squash, and CB Exley juxtaposed the subtle color gradation of two hanging persimmons, their skins mottled in the light and their leaves green but brown at the edges. Both ripeness and decay produce deep colors.

Loriann Signori: The Poetry of Place Until January 15th Gallery B7700 Wisconsin Ave., #E, Bethesda.

Patricia Williams: Some Thoughts on Trees until January 8 Touchstone Gallery901 New York Ave. NW.

plant food until January 8 athena201 Prince St., Alexandria.

“Promession,” the title of Benjamin Bertocci’s Von Ammon Co. exhibit, refers to a theoretical method of breaking down dead bodies through freeze-drying. All of the paintings are titled “Promession” plus one or more Roman numerals, but only a few seem to depict human bodies, either decaying or merely distorted. It is not the subject matter that connects the pictures, but the technology.

The New York-based artist typically paints on what he calls “plastic embedded canvases,” segmenting subjects into blocky, computer-style pixels. The effect is to distort the image, although some simpler images can be easily discerned when viewed from a distance – such as skulls, of course. Less recognizable are the pastel-toned Julie Andrews and Jan Brueghel the Elder’s “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” darker than the original.

One of the artist’s concerns was technology, and some of the collage’s single images included fragments of circuit boards. But perhaps Bertocci sees digital representation as a mere means of division and reduction. The process an artist pursues is like progress, reducing complex things to their simplest parts.

Benjamin Bertozzi: Promise until January 8 by Amon Corporation3330 Cady’s Alley NW.

Some of the paintings in Liz Tran’s current exhibition have been recreated from those in mid-2021, but they have a new venue and a new centerpiece. While both exhibitions were organized by Morton Fine Art, “The Matriarch and Daughters’ Braille Sea Dreams” was exhibited at the Homme, an abstract image flanked by a 16-foot vertical banner that Hangs from the wall and forms a pool on the floor. Produced in collaboration with Tran’s mother and incorporating a portion of the grandmother’s tablecloth, the piece inspired the show’s title, which refers to intergenerational connections and the tactile nature of the fabric work.

Of the other works, only three are circular, but all feature an abundance of spheres, points, and circular spots. Tran takes hot color form in a variety of media, often densely overlapping on a cream background. Indulging and even encouraging dripping, circles of painted dots often trace the circumference of a larger sphere.

While the Seattle artist’s color scheme has a floral quality, the abundance of shimmering markers is reminiscent of a star map. The title of a series excerpted here, “Cosmic Circle,” acknowledges this affinity, but the original inspiration for Tran’s compositional patterns was actually Rorschach inkblotting. The immensity of expanse in these paintings represents both interstellar and psychological.

Liz Tran: Matriarch and daughters dream of a sea of ​​Braille until January 6 Morton Fine Art by Homme, 2000 L St. NW. Open by appointment.