Movable Parts

Patterning, shadows, and evocations of change characterize the works -- sculptural and otherwise -- at the Athenaeum, Pazo Fine Art, and Mclean Project for the Arts

Lori Katz, “Shadows Structure” (detail) (Athenaeum)

AT FIRST, WHAT SEEMS NOTABLE ABOUT "ECLIPSE" IS WHAT'S LACKING: The Athenaeum's "Sculpture Invitational" includes few pieces made of metal or stone, and very little bright color. This is a sculpture exhibition mostly in shades of battered white or industrial gray, and one whose artworks represent not enduring solidity but states of change or immateriality. The results are subtle yet often alluring.

Curated by Alison Sigethy, the 11-artist show is heavy on ceramic or glass works, including pieces by Washington Glass School principals Tim Tate, Erwin Timmers, and Michael Janis. Tate's "Vitruvian Lenticular" is literally mutable, since its Leonardo-inspired figures alternately reach to each other or actually touch, depending on the viewer's vantage point. One of Janis's glass-panel portraits offers multiple views of a face, suggesting jagged facets of a single personality.

Most of the other offerings are not representational, although there must be images on the film that Sarah Hood Salomon shredded, sliced, or pulverized and fixed in place with resin. (This series was shown last spring at the nearby Multiple Exposures gallery.) The exception is Maduka Udah's "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil," in which the Nigerian-American artist replaces the proverbial Japanese monkeys with gaunt humanoids made of bonded stone.

Several artists use rigid materials to imitate mutable ones. Michael Enn Sirvet's aluminum piece, powder-coated in white, is perforated like lace and appears to be crumpled. Similarly scrunched are Salih Zeki Sayar and Murat Sener's papery ceramics, finished with glimmering black, gray or brown surfaces. The changeable aspects of Mike Price's work are the traces cast by a twisted, knotted length of steel wire, mounted above a board that becomes the stage for the shadow play.

Light emanates from inside some of Carol Prusa's curved wall sculptures, whose dotted surfaces are punctuated by tiny fiber-optic twinkles. Solar eclipses are a source of inspiration for the artist, which explains why her works often feature arcs and globes that curve like the sun and moon, and gray-and-white color schemes that suggest the waxing and waning of astral light.

Prusa also offers a drawing of similar shapes and hues, executed on a banner that hangs down a long wall of the high-ceilinged gallery and drapes on the floor. The artwork's shape and placement complement Lori Katz's array of ceramic blocks -- skinny, rough-edged, and white-slipped -- that climb vertically nearby. The sense of motion is palpable, as it is with Timmers's upright circles of recycled glass, jagged and swirling. "Eclipse" showcases solid objects that aspire, or at least allude, to fluidity.

Installation view of “The Language of Patterns” (photograph by Vivian Doering)

THERE'S JUST ONE SCULPTURE IN "THE LANGUAGE OF PATTERNS," the five-woman show at Pazo Fine Art's D.C. location. But the two-dimensional work is concerned with defining space in a way that's almost sculptural. Most of these post-minimalist paintings, drawings, and mixed-media pictures, made between 1974 and 2022, deploy repeated gestures to fill a rectangular space to capacity.

Marilyn Lerner's single entry, from 1988, is striking but atypical. Its hard-edged multi-color bars, interlocking to mimic a maze, frame white channels and draw the eye toward the composition's center. More characteristic are Alison Hall and Andrea Way's all-over drawings, which drench the space with dots, dashes, stars, or numbers. Hall's eight "Hymns," made in 2022, punctuate black-on-black designs with silver-gray graphite dots and barely-there hints of blue and red. Among the tactics of Way's 1983-85 pictures are to link tiny white dots with thin black lines and to slice black diagonals across fields of tiny pink numbers. (Way is based in D.C.; the other four contributors live or lived in New York City.)

Gloria Klein's approach is similar, but bolder and more kinetic. The artist (1936-2021) arrays short, slanted bars of bright, contrasting hues that suggest pulses of light or energy. Her epic "Ten Panels" employs several colors but is dominated by red slashes, which dance across 10 squares whose backdrops are usually black or various shades of gray. While the elements suggest pixels, the piece was made in 1979, in the early days of the PC. The dashes that comprise her intricate paintings smack of all sorts of things in motion, from atoms to jangling musical notes.

The sole sculpture is Jackie Ferrara's six-foot-high wooden construction, which resembles a chimney. Like many of the show's other entries, the 1984 piece is made of rectangular bars, but these are 3D ones in natural wood hues. The effect is to build a cohesive entity while emphasizing the individual parts. The whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, but that doesn't mean it's lesser. In "The Language of Patterns," the dialogue between constituent and totality is never-ending.

Liz Lescault, “Trundle” (McLean Project for the Arts)

SO EPHEMERAL THAT THEY RENDER ABSENCE AS TANGIBLE as presence, Liz Lescault's recent sculptures are made primarily of transparent extruded filament. The 27 wall-mounted or hanging pieces in "Playing With Shadows," the Maryland artist's Mclean Project for the Arts show, evoke nests, flowers, spider-webs, and microscopic organisms. As the show's title indicates, the filmy shadows cast by the sculptures's tendrils are as integral as those clear plastic wisps themselves.

While many of the pieces are airy, some incorporate more solid elements, including found objects. Glass, metal, and recycled plastic feature in about half of the works, including three adjacent ones whose blue accents give them an aquatic feel. A clump of yarn centers one piece, as a claw-like form does another. Two chunks of amber glass peer like eyes from "Binocular," which might be a creature from a deep ocean trench. Lescault's creations are abstract, yet suggest artifacts from worlds yet to be charted.

Eclipse: An Athenaeum Sculpture Invitational

Through Feb. 23 at the Athenaeum, 201 Prince St., Alexandria. nvfaa.org. 703-548-0035.

The Language of Patterns

Through March 15 at Pazo Fine Art, 1932 9th St. NW (entrance at 1917 9 1/2 St. NW). pazofineart.com. 571-315-5279.

Playing With Shadows: Works by Liz Lescault

Through Feb. 22 at Mclean Project for the Arts, 1234 Ingleside Ave., McLean. mpaart.org. 703-790-1953.