Sight Scene: Do Work

Express contributor Kriston Capps surveys the local arts scene.

IVANNY PAGAN asks a lot of the viewer. His exhibition of paintings at U Street NW's Project 4, a joint show with Rich Macdonald that closes Saturday, features portraits of women he's known — but give them a second glance and you might not believe it. None of the clean, cool, bold oil paintings are finished, exactly; at a certain point into a painting, Pagan likes to let it alone. The backgrounds of his portraits are for the most part solid planes of color (the figure is set against white relief in most).

That's where things start to get dodgy. For example, in Antoinette I, at right, a small strip of painting is missing in a sense: while at the bottom of the painting the portrait bleeds off the edge, the depiction fails on the right-hand side before the canvas ends. Pagan calls attention to the ways that portraiture can mislead a viewer. The portraits themselves have a touch of fiction to emphasize the lie. Jubilee, a painting of a woman in the guise of a popular X-Men character, is based (like every other painting in the show) on someone Pagan knew personally. He mythologizes the women in his life with fantastic characterizations: Lilith, Marie Antoinette, and Kakusei.

Pagan tests the limits of the credibility of portraiture, but he does so enthusiastically and in full embrace of the tradition. His technique is solid, and the unreal effects are subtle. The satisfaction that comes in investigating the hurdles that Pagan places between subject and viewer doesn't compete with the curiosity about the painter's relationship to his subject. It just takes a little more effort.

» FRASER GALLERY: It's a different kind of work that Tim Tate has in mind. One of D.C.'s more visible artists, Tate has worked to rescue the reputation of glass art. Some might say that with such prominent artists as Dale Chihuly working in the medium, there's not much left to the cause. Nevertheless, glass art is still dominated by work of the boring "vessel" variety.

Glass is still vessel in Tate's work, in a sense. His show at Fraser Gallery — which opens today — includes vials, orbs, and cones. These feature inscriptions and contain trinkets and other objets d'art designed for symbolic effect: His pieces tell the story of the HIV+ artist's life. The symbol work can run from clever to simplistic to impossibly obscure.

Tate's shows are a mainstay at Bethesda's Fraser Gallery; no doubt the show will sell well. For this show, though, the hope is that Tate will demonstrate to viewers that he's committed to expanding his own scope as well as the medium.

» CIVILIAN ART PROJECTS: Longtime gallery watchers will remember the days when Cheryl Numark had a gallery. Not the E Street NW location, but the one before that at 406 7th Street NW. That space is once again home to a gallery: Civilian Art Projects.

Express was the first to bring you the news that former Transformer Gallery co-director Jayme McLellan would be opening a civic-minded gallery. The first show features work by two Civilian artists — two of the city's youngest talented photographers: Jason Falchook and Jason Zimmerman.

It's the best photographic work you'll find on display this month. Falchook's distinct urban scenes speak for themselves; his colors have been a standout since the artist debuted at Signal 66 and Fusebox Gallery (back in the glory days of 2000 and 2001). Zimmerman, winner of the Trawick Young Artist Prize in 2006, uses film and photography to achieve an aesthetic that speaks of vacant nighttime streets, rural expanse, and exurban ennui.