Arts

Neal Guma gallery assembles a striking group show

With just five photographs on view, Neal Guma has assembled a richly satisfying show featuring some of the most interesting photographers working today at his new, eponymously named gallery on Third Street. While different in terms of style, approach and subject matter, the work is linked by a sense of mystery, foreboding and even danger. […]

Sarah Sargent | October 19, 2016

Arts

Sonya Clark marks slavery history at Second Street Gallery

Sonya Clark’s “Bitter, Sweet and Tender,” currently on view at Second Street Gallery, features sculpture, textiles and photography Clark has created, found or had fabricated. These objects limn a potent narrative encompassing Clark’s personal history and the troubled history of the U.S. and Caribbean centered on the use of people as commodities, examined through the […]

Sarah Sargent | October 5, 2016

Arts

The Fralin explores iconography through Warhol’s eyes

In “Andy Warhol: Icons,”  The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA brings together prints the Andy Warhol Foundation gave to the museum in 2014, along with works from a number of loaned sources, to explore the concept of icon in both a traditional and contemporary sense. As one of the most prominent 20th century icons, […]

Sarah Sargent | June 29, 2016

Arts

Layers of emotion: Artist Anne Slaughter builds up to self-discovery

Anne Slaughter has been a familiar presence on the Charlottesville art scene for many years, her oeuvre being most notable for its heavily worked surfaces. Slaughter spends enormous effort on these, building them up with layers of pigment, “Many, many layers,” she emphasized. She’s constantly tinkering, applying paint and then sanding it down, reapplying paint […]

Sarah Sargent | October 24, 2014

Arts

Kluge-Ruhe presents new works in renovated galleries

After an extensive renovation, the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection has unveiled two new exhibitions in its redesigned galleries. “Art and Country,” on view for the next year, provides a crystallization of Aboriginal art through the framing of basic questions. The exhibition’s design will remain while the work will be rotated out yearly so that treasures […]

Sarah Sargent | June 27, 2014

Arts

LOOKbetween and “TREES” fill in for photo fest downtime

It’s that time of year again when dazzling photographs of exotic wildlife hang from the willow oaks running along the Downtown Mall. Dubbed “TREES,” the exhibition of large, double-sided images is the most visible and popular aspect of LOOK3, the nonprofit organization that celebrates the vision of extraordinary photographers, ignites critical conversations about the subjects […]

Sarah Sargent | June 12, 2014

Arts

Earl Gordon’s mixed media collages are open to scrutiny

Art History Remix, now on view at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, presents 20 collages by Earl Gordon that are rich in meaning and contain lively dialogues between Western and African art, contemporary and traditional approaches, and drawn motifs and collage. Gordon’s work provides an interesting contemporary counterpoint to the Joseph Cornell show […]

Sarah Sargent | May 23, 2014

Arts

Artist Trisha Orr paints herself out of a corner

Trisha Orr’s complex, tour de forces of fabric, objects, and flowers have earned high critical praise for many years. They are beautifully rendered, dispassionate works, and they reveal very little about the artist except that she is technically gifted and admires beauty. Growing up in a demanding family and going to art school in the […]

Sarah Sargent | April 23, 2014

Arts

Joseph Cornell plays in the shadows of the Surrealist movement

A rich and deeply satisfying show, “Joseph Cornell and Surrealism” at the Fralin Museum explores Cornell’s work in the context of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s and ’40s. Prior to seeing it, I had the common, yet incorrect impression, that Cornell was a hermit-like creature akin to Henry Darger who created his work in […]

Sarah Sargent | April 2, 2014