Civilian Art Projects Presents Terri Weifenbach and Trevor Young

Two new shows open at Civilian Art Projects this Friday (April 22) with a reception from 7-9 pm. The shows will be on view until June 4.

From the press release:

Civilian Art Projects is pleased to present two solo exhibitions: Woods II, new work by photographer Terri Weifenbach, and "Thrust," new painting by Trevor Young.

Terri Weifenbach

Woods II

Terri Weifenbach's second solo exhibition with the gallery continues the Woods project with twenty-one large and small scale images from within the autumn and winter woods of the DC metro area.

Before she picked up her Leica camera 33 years ago, Weifenbach was first trained as a painter. According to the artist, she has always been drawn to the layering of surface and the sumptuous accumulation of material found in painting.

On occasion, she has contemplated Cecily Brown's brushstroke with deep understanding and curiosity. It is no surprise, then, that Weifenbach's photographic work embraces the tactile nature of non-photographic mediums. She understands the limits of photographic technology and, through focus, metering, depth of field, vantage point, film selection, printing strategies, and other more intuitive decisions, plays with and pushes them.

She is, in short, a master of her craft; and her selection of what may seem a familiar scene of a walk in the woods is transformed through her skill into a deeper examination of space, palette, and the growth and morphing of nature. These are not accidental shots.

Just as a painter cannot make a single brushstroke and call the work complete, Weifenbach cannot click a shutter and call it a photograph. Photographic projects of this nature take months, years; perhaps even a lifetime. One image lends weight and strength to the next, but each must be able to hold it's own as a work of art.

Trevor Young

Thrust

Civilian Art Projects is pleased to announce Thrust, new paintings by Trevor Young, his second solo exhibition with the gallery. Thrust is an installation of three paintings by Young inspired by airports, continuing his research of the French anthropologist Marc Augé coined term "non-places." Non-places are spaces that we use or pass through, on the way to other places, but to which no one really belongs. They are not often places of real comfort and exchange.

Young is drawn to places such as glowing gas stations, complex highway overpasses, lonely cash machines, and airports including the runway and the plane itself. These new large-scale paintings consider the way humans interconnect and assign meaning. Young sees these non-places as providing comfort and beauty through their familiarity and transience, commenting on our continual evolution and movement to and away from intimate connection and communication. No longer is the non-place something to pass through, or something lonely, it is something to behold.

The subject matter is enthralling to the artist, considered into paintings depicting strength, vigor, and an almost a spiritual worship of the built world. But it is the nature of his medium that brings him to paint non-places. According to Young, "painting is an awkward medium that shows the human hand and imagination. It is the challenge of painting that brings me to paint these concrete roads and shiny surfaces. I am interested in making these lonely places fill with atmosphere. To that end, I rework an area over and over to create the space and the surface. And then I go back into the painting, many times, to develop the mystery and wonder."

Civilian Art Projects
1019 Seventh Street NW, Second Floor
202.607.3804