The show’s centerpiece is “The Great Trek,” a series of six computer-edited photos that represent a chapter in Jantzen’s family history. In the mid-19th century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites moved to Russia, where the members of the pacifist sect were exempted from military service. Later, Russia repealed this immunity, and many of Jantzen’s forebears joined other Mennonites in relocating to Nebraska. Led by a messianic minister, others began a trek through central Asia.
The photographer didn’t travel to the sites visited by the pilgrims to make the trek pictures. Instead, he selected a single photo of paving stones in Pompeii and transformed it into six differently hued variations that variously suggest cities, buildings and landscapes. Black and red weigh heavily upon the two compositions keyed to the locations where the exiles faced the most conflict.
The subtitles of a few pictures at least indicate that they were made in Italy, but many images, for example “Blue Crepe Moon,” are entirely mysterious. Two photos that seem to portray building domes might actually be of ceramic vessels — or something else entirely. Whatever the original subject, these photos luxuriate in the richly weathered grain of centuries-old stone surfaces. Even when they don’t tell a specific tale, Jantzen’s pictures reveal the textures of history.
Franz Jantzen Through June 29 at Hemphill Artworks, 434 K St. NW. hemphillfinearts.com. 202-234-5601.
Realism rules in the 20th annual Bethesda Painting Awards, whose finalists’ work is at Gallery B. The selection includes Lou Haney’s heavily patterned domestic scenes, Barbara Epstein Gruber’s handsome traditional landscape and Mary Proenza’s renderings of such autobiographical subjects as her mother’s broken leg. Yet the most striking contributions are by J. Jordan Bruns and Ellen Burchenal, the two artists whose styles are the least literal.
While the competition is open to painters from Washington, Virginia and Maryland, all but one of this year’s cohort is from Baltimore or D.C.’s Maryland suburbs. These include Bruns, whose glossy mixed-media pictures combine free-form gestures with hard-edge shapes produced through stenciling. The densely interlocking devices suggest buildings and machines yet were inspired by Bruns’s diagnosis with a rare medical condition, which prompted the artist to muse on his own body’s workings.
More drawings than paintings, Burchenal’s mostly black-and-white artworks are made with ink, charcoal and the skin of dried acrylic paint, which is cut into shapes that are glued into place. Inspired by study in Italy and employing Japanese paper, two of the pictures sketchily depict figures in landscapes. The people are faceless and constructed from decorative motifs rather than naturalistic details. They derive not from life but from the act of drawing.
The top prize went to Sanah Brown-Bowers, whose massive collage-paintings of friends and family members were reviewed in this column in December. Also included in this year’s lineup is Elaine Qiu, whose dynamic neo-futurist cityscapes were reviewed here in March.
Bethesda Painting Awards Through June 30 at Gallery B, 7700 Wisconsin Ave. #E, Bethesda. bethesda.org/gallery-b-exhibitions. 301-215-7990.
Five local women artists were invited to participate in Honfleur Gallery’s “Auxilium Continuum: Reframing,” which explores “under-investigated aspects of feminine energy,” according to curator Marta Lola Staudinger’s statement. The diverse artworks employ such disparate materials as silk, paper and aluminum, as well as dried flowers, electronic gizmos and actual bird wings.
The last of those are incorporated into Ceci Cole McInturff’s small sculptures, which affix feathered wings to streamlined female torsos made of white plaster; the hybrids suggest new species of beauty. Jean Jinho Kim distills womanly form to pairs of boots stylized from metal pipes, powder-coated for an industrial sheen. The largest set is seven feet high, rivaling the ten-foot elevation of Rania Hassan’s elegant “Slip,” which is two woven columns, one inside the other. Hassan is also exhibiting delicate drawing-paintings of profuse cell-like shapes.
The dried flowers cover the single piece by Leah Lewis, a complex collage-painting that combines abstract and figurative aspects. The gizmos are among the ingredients in Nicole Salimbene’s multi-panel series, each described as a “book of nourishment.” The artist arrays small pictures, sometimes painted over old books, and often text. One of her axioms is “may you unlearn,” a process that is, presumably, a prelude to the sort of creativity displayed in this show.
Auxilium Continuum: Reframing Through June 29 at Honfleur Gallery, 1241 Marion Barry Ave. SE. honfleurgallerydc.com. 202-631-6291.
In one of the videos made for “Swimming,” artist Monica Jahan Bose joins Bangladeshi women, wearing blue saris, who dance in their village and in the waters of the nearby Bay of Bengal. The installation at Marie Reed Plaza, which Bose calls a “public art immersion,” doesn’t offer flowing water. But the piece is outdoors and near the indoor pool attached to the school in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. And the blue saris the women wore are now sewed into banners that flap overhead, evoking ripples and waves.
Bose lives in the neighborhood and has ancestral ties to Bangladesh, which she visits regularly. Her community-building project enlists people both there and in D.C. to help decorate the saris, and to share their songs and verse. Some of the poems, read in video snippets, are included in “Swimming.”
The installation can be kept open 24 hours a day because most of it is virtual. While the saris are real, the six short films are arranged in “soundwalks” that are just QR codes on columns. Visitors must use a smartphone or portable computer to access the video content. Alone on the school plaza, they are invited to become part of a global community linked by elemental forces and universal feelings.
Swimming: A Public Art Immersion by Monica Jahan Bose Through June 20 at Marie Reed Plaza, 2201 18th St. NW. storytellingwithsaris.com. 202-509-6282.