The museum is closed, yet there are people all over the place. A housepainter hoisting a roller. Children playing on the floor. A good ol’ boy astride a riding mower. A couple chowing down on snacks. Yet the security guard isn’t making a move.
Actually, nobody’s making a move. These folks are the mixed-media creations of Duane Hanson (1925-1996), who nailed details from beard hairs to skin texture so perfectly that you expect to hear the figures breath even upon close inspection. The eyes are so lifelike that contemplating their source sends a shiver down the spine.
The 15 sculptures populating American University’s Katzen art space are being shown together for the first time, along with framed Polaroid studies offering clues to the artist’s methods. In creating his tributes to ordinary and often marginalized people, he began with live models.
“Real Life” is among several new attractions in Katzen’s indoor winter wonderland. Whether antidote or trigger for art attention deficit disorder, this bazaar of diverse works shares a unifying element: the intense physicality which with these artists poured into their creations.
“Sensations of Place”: While many artists have achieved fame by interpreting nature’s splendor and manmade marvels, some landscape masters instead conjured magic from the mundane. Stanley Lewis, who taught art at American University in the 1990s, ranks among the best, tackling unpeopled streetscapes (look for the D.C. sites), farm pastures and backyards. Super-thick applications of paint catch glints releasing the sparkle of the unremarkable. Lewis works outside, piling on paints or bearing down on pencil hard enough to split the surface. He cuts and re-seams canvases to add or compress content. Staples are left on the surface in his exuberance to craft visual experiences. The result jiggers perceptions of the texture and heft of bricks, weeds, bark. branches, damaged fencing, antique signs, a looming footbridge. The muddied rich color sweeps convey the whoosh of wind and chill or warmth. The landscapes of this concise retrospective communicate through more than sight.
“Neo-mythology”: A modern anthology of mythology unfolds in Robert Brady territory. Abandoning his perch as a revered San Francisco Bay Area ceramicist in 1989, Brady turned to carving painted wood sculptures – a cast of spirits and angels, anima and soma. The lithe, abstracted figures tilt, twist reach, and transcend the trappings of the body. This tribe of another dimension teems with pupae people, each a chrysalis answering a higher calling to serve as sentry or healer or progenitor — fertility is suggested by several elegantly graphic figures. Pieces include “Miracle Worker II” head embedded in a delightfully reproportioned body, and “Nash,” a large, arresting bronze of a man contorting into the geometry of an off-kilter chair. The weightless, attenuated form feels simple yet impossible.
“From Heat to Eternity”: Madeleine Keesing’s large Ashes and Embers canvases immortalize moments of heat and light. She records each moment with thick strokes of oil working bottom-up, evoking moonlight playing on the surface of ocean waves.
“Glass Class”: Contemporary Glass presents a quick immersion into the art of glass — fused, slumped, blown, acid-etched, sandblasted, engraved, laminated. Brilliant specimens fill the collection, include Robert Palusky’s endearing mosaic-tiled human with animals assemblage and Robert Mickelsen’s elaborate lampworked sculpture.
“Mixed Mystic Media”: Richard Cleaver encapsulates experiences of growing up in Baltimore as Catholic, gay and outcast in his exquisitely hand-built Family Fictions. These super-ornamented assemblages of human figures and faces, animals, symbols and constructed surprises meld the sacred and profane. They beckon like portals to magical realms.
“Garden of Chaos”: Dennis Oppenheim’s alternative landscape components have taken root in the Katzen’s patio gallery.
A tip: Stop by the restrooms and meet Queenie. Not real? Depends on your definition, which may changeafter this show.
Winter Exhibitions
On view through at least March 18
» Venue: American University’s Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW
» Info: 202-885-1300; american.edu/cas/katzen/museum
» Artists’ reception and gallery talks 5 to 9 p.m. Saturday
