Washington Project for the Arts Announces Exhibitions and Public Programs for 2012-2013 Season

Take it to the Bridge is a nine-week series of installations and performances taking place July 18

Monument to the Unelected   
September 10 - November 9, 2012   

Project on view in the street level windows of The Washington Post, 1150 15^th St., NW, Washington, DC
Public Talk with the Artist: 
Monday, September 10, 2012, 6:30pm
Location: The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW 

Opening Preview: Thursday, October 4, 7pm - 9pm
Fair Hours: Friday and Saturday, October 5 & 6, 12pm-7pm; Sunday, October 7, 12pm-5pm

WPA is pleased to return for the second year of DC's (e)merge art fair at the Capitol Skyline Hotel. WPA's room at the fair will feature DC-based artist Jimmy Miracle, alongside a rotating installation of works on paper by WPA member artists.

Jimmy Miracle, WPA's featured artist, works with mundane materials to construct sublime tableaus from the detritus of everyday life. His artifacts and installations transcend material reality, unsettling the viewer's perception of the physical world. This stunning shift in perceived meaning and value - from worthless physical material to transcendent object - would be impossible without the meticulousness of Miracle's craft.    

Image: Jimmy Miracle, Calling Japan, 2010, Found objects and filament, 40" x 34" x 9"   

Coup d'Espace: Palimpsest 

Coup d'Espace: Palimpsest is an exploration of layering and digital representation of information. Selected works will be photographed and these images will be uploaded to the web and linked to a QR code. Then the work will be white-washed, scraped away or otherwise covered over, leaving few remnants of the original. The appropriate QR code will be transferred to the original "surface" of the obliterated artwork. The new work will be an abstract geometric form, a digital representation of the original artwork. It is these new, altered works that will be exhibited, while representations of the original work are only available with the aid of technology. 

Palimpsest is part of Coup d'Espace, WPA's member-generated programming series. Coup d'Espace invites artists and curators to utilize the WPA office as a laboratory or workshop space, to introduce new and in-process projects and present challenging ideas.

WPA's Professional Practices Series Presents  

Location: National Building Museum, 401 F Street NW, Washington, DC 20001  

St. Louis based artist and Washington University School of Architecture Professor Ben Fehrmann will present a free participatory lecture to help artists and their patrons (developers, urban planners, private and public agency administrators) to better understand and improve their response to public art opportunities. This program, part of WPA's ongoing professional development series for artists, is presented in collaboration with Arlington Public Art. AIA and AICP CEU credits will be offered. RSVP to Christopher Cunetto ccunetto@wpadc.org to attend. 

 
image: Ben Fehrmann, artist and Washington University School of Architecture Professor 

The Ripple Effect: Currents of Socially Engaged Art

October 25, 2012 - February 24, 2013

Curated by Raquel de Anda, Independent Curator
Presented in partnership with AMA | Art Museum of the Americas
Location: Art Museum of the Americas, 201 18^th St., NW, Washington, DC

Participating Artists: Annie Albagli (Gaithersburg, MD), The Aschoy Collective (La Paz, Bolivia), The Floating Lab Collective (Washington, DC), Ghana Think Tank (New York, NY), Olivier Giron (Arlington, VA), Miguel Luciano (Brooklyn, NY), Pedro Reyes (Mexico City, Mexico), Mark Strandquist (Richmond, VA), and Lina Vargas de la Hoz  (Silver Spring, MD)  

Presented by WPA, in partnership with AMA | Art Museum of the Americas, The Ripple Effecthighlights social practice and collaborative works produced within the United States and Latin America. The exhibition reflects the growing interest among artists in engaging with members of diverse communities, prioritizing the creation of dialogue as an integral part of their artistic practice, and effecting change in their communities and the world at large. The Ripple Effectfeatures artists whose work explores such issues as the environmental blight of illegal dumping, the social stratification of Washington, DC, and the ongoing fight against gun violence in Mexico. By bringing together artists based in the DC area and artists from across the Americas, the exhibition provides an opportunity for cultural exchange, reflecting the emphasis within contemporary art on both local and global relationships.  

SELECT: WPA Art Auction Exhibition and Gala 

Gala: March 16, 2013
Exhibition dates and location: TBD  
Auction co-chairs: Robert Shields and Jessica Naresh

The 32nd iteration of WPA's annual art auction exhibition will highlight some of the region's most talented artists, presenting a broad range of media and styles of work by both new and emerging artists as well as more established career artists. As an annual WPA presentation, the auction exhibition is one of the most prestigious and recognizable art showcases of its kind, with a high caliber of work selected by notable curators from some of our region's top arts institutions.  

OPTIONS 2013 

Presented by WPA at Arlington Art Center, OPTIONS 2013 is the fifteenth iteration of WPA's biennial exhibition of works by emerging and unrepresented artists from DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Begun in 1981, the OPTIONS biennial has a thirty-two-year history of showcasing vibrant, challenging, and innovative work and providing a much-needed platform for emerging and unrepresented talent from the region. A call for entries for OPTIONS 2013 will be released in the fall of 2012.