I’m writing from the road in DC, so I’m going to be lame and just post this press release my guru-friend Richard Dana passed along while we gnoshed on pomme fritz at the Bistro du Coin in Washington, DC last night. Short is, he’s got a piece in a group show called “Presence” at (get this!) the Center for Modern Psycholanalytic Studies in the Village this month. I’m going to try and “be there” for the opening Sunday night with Dennis Kimambo – maybe you will too!

The show will include more than forty works in painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography by fifteen emerging and established artists.

The exhibition will be held from Monday October 22 through Friday, November 30, 2007 . A catalog is available online: http://www.cmps.edu/news_events/art_exhibition.html

The first in our new series of art exhibitions and screenings, this show will explore the sense of psychic presence in art. It was curated by internationally recognized artist Kenneth Feingold, who writes about the concept of the show, “The human figure, in one way or another, has been a focus of art from its beginnings; but rather than examining the figure
itself, here we look to focus attention on the ways in which the artists’ representations evoke familiar aspects of the interiority of the person and are able to evoke certain affective responses in the viewer. In particular, this group of works produces feelings in me that might be described as disquiet, a form of anxiety along the boundary of absence/presence, as if a sense of the presence of something which is absent or the absence of something which is present. “

“Presence” will include more than forty works by fifteen artists in a wide variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography.

Here’s what they say about Richard (and its all true!):

He’s “an artist, independent curator and arts administrator based in Washington, DC. His work has been exhibited extensively regionally, nationally and internationally. Mr. Dana has had over 18 solo exhibitions and participated in over 60 group exhibitions. Selected exhibitions in the United States include the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Drawing Center (New York, NY), Tribes Gallery (New York, NY), the International Monetary Fund (Washington, DC), and the Washington Project for the Arts (Washington, DC). Internationally Mr. Dana has exhibited in Belgium, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. The artist is self-taught. He has a BA in Russian Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Before dedicating his life to art, Mr. Dana worked as a Soviet Affairs expert and international economist in Washington, DC.” Check him out at www.rdanaartist.com