Street Scenes at the Ellipse Arts Center
Art Not Ads, the premier project of an ambitious new public arts program called Street Scenes, launched today at the Ellipse Arts Center. Street Scenes: Projects for DC has been established by local independent art curators to mount temporary public art interventions in and around the DC area. The mobile billboards will be outfitted with banners and high-resolution video displays that will showcase paintings, drawings, video art and poetry from internationally and locally known artists. This project was sponsored in part by Arlington Cultural Affairs, Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources. For more information on this project please visit www.streetscenesdc.com.
DC artist Ian Whitmore, displayed his work on both sides of a mobile billboard, where ads would usually be seen. The mobile billboard drove around Arlington County this afternoon, before it headed into the District.
“Layers factor into Whitmore’s work in image and context. Inspired and informed by the language of art history, Whitmore creates a horizontal sense of movement by referencing paintings by Washington Color Field masters Morris Louis and Gene Davis. Over this imagery, he places such humorous representational imagery as an elephant and apple. Finally, he takes a mop of colors to the whole work.” -Nora Halpern, Art not Ads co-curator
Whitmore used mud as a medium on top of his billboard sized image.
As the sun set in Arlington County, the Street Scenes video truck prepared to launch into the metropolis. Video art by Colby Caldwell, Brandon Morse, Jose Ruiz and Conversions artist Kathryn Cornelius could be seen as the truck cruised around Arlington County on Friday evening.
“Brandon Morse’s digital work, non sequiter, 2006 (8 minutes) is a colorful play of movement, reminiscent of computer game images and film effects. Interested in work that is ‘situated somewhere between a specific narrative and a non-event,’ non sequiter moves through its sequence with one shape influencing the movement of the whole. As pedestrians and cars interact around the piece, the artwork will serve as a prism-like mirror to its city environs.” -Nora Halpern, Art not Ads co-curator
“In another twist on language and image, Jose Ruiz presents wifebeater, 2006 (3:55 minutes). Referencing a slang term for the undershirt made famous by Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowolski in A Streetcar Name Desire, Ruiz presents us with a T-shirt seen hanging in a kitchen, filled with a ball and continuously being punched and left swinging. The machismo usually connoted by the garment is ironically bled away in this depiction.” -Nora Halpern, Art not Ads co-curator
