I was fortunate enough to catch the opening night of Without Formula, a week long exhibit of 17 artists brought to DC from Cubicle 10, a gallery space in Baltimore owned by Ozlem and Billy Colbert. The space, a condo turned temporary art gallery, was ideal for displaying and viewing art, not to mention an ingenious plan on Colbert's for selling art and the Realtor's end for selling condos.
There was something about this collection of art work that maintained a consistent quality, energy, humor and diversity in medium and subject matter which made it hard for me to pull myself away. I spent a lot longer walking around this show than I'd anticipated. You know how you go to an art show and there's a general patchwork of blech and then you move to the next room and it's whoah holy shit ICK, blech. Well, there was like maybe two instances of that at this show for me.
Billy Colbert was definitely the star of the show in my eyes, as everything I absolutely loved was his work. Incidentally he curated the show. Here's a picture of Why the Hell is She Crying?, though it's not entirely accurate because there's a really cute squirrel that got cropped out of the right. You see, had to take a picture of Clay in front of it because he got hit in the head with a pipe at the Shaw metro and still came to the art show. He's a real trooper.
I've been seeing Candace Keegan's art
around a lot. I noticed her work at ArtOMatic a couple years ago and I hated it because I thought a man did it. Then i realised she was a she and I loved that that was her point also, maybe its a slight play on her name, hence Candy , Candace...ah ah...yeah. She mostly paints woman eating candy in erotic way. They all seem to be of the same lady, who is not young, I'd guess around 35 or so. I'd like to say that I think the star of Keegan's paintings is a milf and I like them for that.
A lot of the art at this show has a sense of humor, which again, was a lot of its appeal. was satiracal or just plain cute., for instance, Trish Tillman who's wok is always evolving and I love it for that, had a few small canvases with Shel Silverstien characters printed on them, I'm not sure if they were painted or pigment prints like the other pieces she had up, but they were totally fun and made me smile. These characters were isolated on a very simple color plane, in comical action poses, with glass bubbled placed as highlights, one might even call them teardrops. Trish referred to them "a bit emo" as do convey a sweet and simple sensitivity.
Bridgett Sue Lambert's pigment prints of generic toys in confrontational situations captured the raw essence of human interaction in a very haunting and satirical fashion. The isolation of the situation in the frame combined with the simplicity of the toys and interaction between them made the scenarios seem comical, yet alienating.
Jefferson Pinder's The Truth about Light and Carwash can be viewed here.

I don't need to tell you that these were the joint. U can c 4 ur self.