In art, there are few binaries as clear as the one between monochrome and color. Three exhibits currently on view in the D.C. area crystallize that reality. One is an exhibit of vibrant botanical photographs by Jennifer Sakai. The second is a collection of sedate black-and-white photographs by David Myers. And the third is a series of works by Amy Schissel that includes both monumental, mostly monochromatic canvases and some smaller, brightly colored abstractions.
In the artist’s statement for her exhibit, Summer Quarters: On Cultivation, Beauty, and the Gaze at Addison/Ripley Fine Art, Sakai bills her photographs as borrowing from both Dutch still lifes and the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. That description is concise, and accurate. Her images are made at night with an intense flash, in her garden rather than in a studio; the bright light offers clear views of the flowers’ details, but the green stems and leaves fade into an almost impenetrable darkness just inches away from the lens. The flowers Sakai documents range in color from cake-frosting yellow to peach and multiple shades of pink; the textures she captures include both small, sawtooth-like ridges on leaves and unopened buds whose waxy surfaces call to mind Edward Weston’s pepper photographs from the 1930s. Especially notable are a series of six time-lapse images mounted on handmade paper that track the slow growth of pink dahlias; also impressive is an image of white and pink peonies that captures a smattering of ants walking across the petals.
Enduring Roots: A Solo Photography Exhibit, Myers’ 30-photograph exhibit at Multiple Exposures Gallery, documents olive trees and their surroundings, mostly on the Greek Island of Naxos, which seems to be a land of eternal, gentle sunlight. Some of Myers’ images echo Lee Friedlander’s desert landscape photographs of brambles and bushes; others capture the ancient rock walls or weathered industrial-age detritus. One image depicts circular buds dancing on slender stems, set against a clear sky, an homage to works by Harry Callahan.
One wide-angled landscape offers a bracing contrast between an inky black hillside and the blankness of the sky above; two others include a flock of flying birds that echo a notable image from John Gossage’s “The Pond.” One repeated motif involves fences, some made of wood but mostly of metal; in one image, a gridded fence suggests latitude and longitude lines, bent into a compellingly rippled surface. One of Myers’ most notable photographs features velvety-textured grass in which a roughly circular patch stands out as darker than the rest.
At Hemphill Artworks, Schissel’s works couldn’t be more visually divergent. The exhibit includes several monumental, mostly monochromatic works, some as wide as 226 inches (just shy of 19 feet) and some as tall as 96 inches (or 8 feet), many of them backed by complementary wallpaper. The process of making these works is laborious, sometimes taking as long as 300 hours—that’s more than 12 days. They involve multiple coats of paint, often massaged into organic highlights, followed by painstakingly detailed patterns drawn in ink—radiating straight lines; geometrical shapes (sometimes highlighted in muted red); loops and whorls; and the occasional spirograph form. In their entirety, the large canvases suggest a frenzied, widescreen, digital universe, with touches of steampunk, topographical maps, neural networks, and surreal dreamscapes.
Interspersed between these large, gray canvases on the gallery walls are intensely colored abstractions. These are smaller and not as stunning in sweep, but their contents are noteworthy—forms that are alternately angular and landscape-like, in bright, Leroy Nieman-esque shades of blue, green, pink, and beige. Some of the color works suggest surrealism, others abstract expressionism. Schissel says she creates the color canvases in order to get those colors out of her system as she creates the all-enveloping grayscapes. This interconnectedness only underlines the inescapable relationship between black-and-white and color.
Enduring Roots by David Myers runs through June 1 at Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. Daily, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. multipleexposuresgallery.com. Free.
Jennifer Sakai: Summer Quarters: On Cultivation, Beauty, and the Gaze runs through June 7 at Addison/Ripley, 1670 Wisconsin Ave. NW. Tuesday through Saturday; 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; and by appointment. addisonripleyfineart.com. Free.
Amy Schissel runs through June 21 at Hemphill Artworks, 434 K Street NW. Tuesday through Saturday; noon to 5 p.m.; and by appointment. hemphillartworks.com. Free.