Tiny contemporary monuments to transient phenomena

The Washington Post

SUNDAY, 21 Oct 2018

BY MARK JENKINS

The most monumental thing about “Micro-Monuments II: Underground” is the way the sculptures are arranged in a semicircle at IA&A at Hillyer. The neat alignment is an homage to Pommelte, a ringed neolithic site known as “the German Stonehenge.” And yet, the individual artworks address modern concerns, often ecological ones. The artists — eight from Germany and 16 representing the Washington Sculptors Group — have erected tiny memorials to ephemeral things such as probiotics, hurricanes and the trash deposits known as middens.

The pieces use wood, plastic, paper and found objects more often than metal or stone, although there are exceptions. Marilyn and Gil Ugiansky drive a steel wedge into iron to signify “schisms,” and Jacqueline Maggi’s “Starry Night,” which conjures its subject with ebony wood studded with glimmering zircons, is on a marble pedestal. Both Janet Wittenberg and Diane Szczepaniak make evocative use of green glass, the former in an “Ocean Floor” diorama, the latter in partly overlapping sheets that embody “Green Quietude.”

Other themes are less picturesque. Ursula Achternkamp draws diagrams on chipboard to illustrate how tree trunks are cut into boards, and Judith Goodman places two model chickens inside a battered metal canister as an antimemorial to the “Factory Farm.” Toy soldiers wade through a resin swamp atop a birthday cake in Esther Eunjin Lee’s sugary war monument.

The layout emphasizes the sculptures’ fronts, but a few pieces must be seen from the rear, as well. Marc Fromm’s twofaced woman is veiled on one side and wearing a cross necklace on the other, exemplifying the show’s approach to monumentalism: commemorating a world and its inhabitants that are diverse and mutable, not set in stone.

Also at IA&A, the collage-paintings of Andrea Limauro’s “Mare Nostrum” draw on historical styles, but the subject of the show is as contemporary as the orange life jacket and silver emergency blanket it incorporates. The Italy-bred local artist charts the progress of one symbolic migrant across the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire’s mare nostrum (“our sea”).

The show includes a splitscreen video piece and sculpted hands that seem to emerge from the floor as though from beneath the waves. These are surrounded by paintings whose look emulates ancient maps, mosaics and frescoes but that are punctuated by small photos of ships or a guerrilla in a jungle. Limauro has researched child soldiers in Sierra Leone, so he knows the background of the story he tells. With “Mare Nostrum,” he places it in a context as a wide as the sea.

Angry white men and a few uniformed monkeys rampage through “Scruti-near-sighted,” RICHARD SMOLINSKI’s vehement burlesque of the international political phenomena that mainstream journalists politely label “populism.” The Toronto artist has papered the walls of IA&A’s smallest gallery with cartoon-paintings, rendered in smeary black and white on tornedged, loosely aligned panels. SMOLinski’s style suggests German-American satirist George Grosz, while his teeming, hellish compositions recall Hieronymus Bosch. There’s no apparent escape from the fury, although maybe one of the artwork’s broken borders leads to a Brexit. Micro-Monuments II: Underground; Andrea Limauro: Mare Nostrum; RICHARD SMOLINSKI: Scrutinearsighted Through Oct. 28 at IA&A at Hillyer,9 Hillyer Ct. NW.