SOLOS 2022
Main Galleries
SOLOS 2022 Artists:
Alexander D’Agostino, Kyrae Dawaun, Danni O’Brien, Sharon Shapiro, Marisa Stratton, and Ju Yun
Opening April 15 and running through June 18, SOLOS 2022 includes solo exhibitions by six artists featuring new work in painting, sculpture, mixed media, installation, and performance. One of Arlington Arts Center’s longest running programs, SOLOS invites artists working in the Mid-Atlantic to submit proposals for solo exhibitions or projects to take place in one of AAC’s gallery spaces.
The jurors for SOLOS 2022 were Myrtis Bedolla, Owner and Founding Director, Galerie Myrtis; Amber Esseiva, Associate Curator, Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA VCU); Al Miner, Founding Director/ Chief Curator, Georgetown University Art Galleries and Associate Professor of Art and Museum Studies.
The SOLOS 2022 exhibitions include:
Alexander D’Agostino: Lavender Shrine
Alexander D’Agostino works with queer histories and images, reclaiming material from queer archives and paying homage to previous generations through practices of myth-making and ritual. In Lavender Shrine, D’Agostino explores the history of the Lavender Scare, a Cold War-era moral panic targeting gay and lesbian employees in the federal workforce. Drawing visual inspiration from Arlington Arts Center’s Tiffany windows, D’Agostino connects the funerary nature of his ongoing Queer Shrouds project with the history of the windows.
Kyrae Dawaun: Cursing the Very God (…)
In Cursing the Very God (…), Kyrae Dawaun explores the ideologies that shape social and political structures in the United States, including an embrace of hierarchy, individualism, and patriarchy and a refusal of humility and cooperation. His paintings and sculptures incorporate visual symbols and references drawn from art, architecture, and popular culture. The artist’s interpretation of this imagery provides a visual entryway into his multifaceted interests, including his interest in religious faith and the ideologies that accompany monotheism.
Danni O’Brien: Glow Up
In Glow Up, Danni O’Brien explores mending, conspicuous consumption, and the lives of old night lights. Fascinated by societal and consumerist detritus, O’Brien scavenges found, discarded objects and allows their raw forms to direct her practice. The resulting mixed media sculptures and relief wall works show reverence for low-brow, craft, and home improvement materials and meld nostalgic tendencies with dystopian fantasies.
Sharon Shapiro: Then the Dream Changed
Inspired by personal events, collective mythology, and pop-culture, Sharon Shapiro’s paintings and collages portray subject matter both fantastic and real, utopian and dystopian. In recent collage work, Shapiro combines found and staged imagery to explore issues of gender, race, identity, and history in the American South. Utilizing collage to create visual relationships between the past and the present, Shapiro challenges the viewer to differentiate between mythology and history. At AAC, Shapiro presents new enlarged collage works, allowing viewers to enter the intimate spaces created in the work.
Marisa Stratton: keep scrolling…
In keep scrolling… Marisa Stratton explores the scroll as object and action. Working with oil paint, the artist translates slick, low-resolution digital images into expressive polyptychs with unique textures and imperfections. Each screen-sized painting is sourced from temporary posts on Instagram stories, which regenerate infinitely in one linear stream of images. Through Stratton’s work, the screenshot, often thought of as disposable, becomes an artifact of movement through a digital interface.
Ju Yun: East Meets West
In recent mixed media works, Ju Yun examines the visual culture of her native Korea to understand her own relationship to it and her connection to her previous home and past life. Combining references to traditional Korean mask dance, as well as contemporary popular culture, Ju Yun explores her own hybrid cultural identity through works that are bright, engaging, and often humorous.
RELATED EVENTS
Spring Exhibitions Opening Reception
Saturday / April 23 / 7pm – 9pm
Join AAC to celebrate the opening of our spring exhibitions. The reception runs from 7pm to 9pm and guests are asked to register for the 7pm-8pm or 8pm-9pm time slot. Registration is required, capacity will be limited, and guests will be required to remain masked while indoors and not eating or drinking.
SOLOS Artist Talks with Kyrae Dawaun, Danni O’Brien, and Ju Yun
Saturday / May 7 / 1pm – 2:30pm
Register to attend
Join AAC for artist talks with SOLOS 2022 artists Kyrae Dawun, Danni O’Brien, and Ju Yun. The program will take place in the galleries. Each talk will be followed by a Q & A, giving visitors an opportunity to talk directly with the artists.
Registration is required and attendees will be asked to wear masks during the talks.
SOLOS Artist Talks with Alexander D’Agostino, Sharon Shapiro, and Marisa Stratton
Saturday / May 21 / 1pm – 2:30pm
Register to attend
Join AAC for artist talks with SOLOS 2022 artists Alexander D’Agostino, Sharon Shapiro, and Marisa Stratton. The program will take place in the galleries. Each talk will be followed by a Q & A, giving visitors an opportunity to talk directly with the artists.
Registration is required and attendees will be asked to wear masks during the talks.
