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The Space Dividing a Dotted Line by Nora Rosengarten

In his Alchemy series, Joan Belmar pays homage to amorphously undulating linear graphics, organically perfected circles, and snapshots of remembered ghosts of childhood through their engagement with one another in dynamic still lifes. Using a color palette which is suggestive of another world—although whether it is a South American island two centuries ago or a futuristic spaceship eons in the future is left to the viewer. In this ambiguity Belmar breeds his brooding melange which captivates, suggesting influences as diverse as CAT scans, jellyfish, looms, eyeballs, and delicate stitchery, recalling to the viewer Pablo Neruda’s “Walking Around”. 

Nora Rosengarten Georgetown ‘14

Washington Post. Restore: Japan

, DC Local Artists-Examiner (Fragment)

For his current series Once, Belmar uses techniques he’s been perfecting for six years. Beginning with a piece of painted plywood, he uses special ink to create an icon on this background layer, drawing from an image he manipulates in Photoshop. Then he uses mylar, dyed and cut, to create an inch-thick intermediate layer—perhaps arranged in a honeycomb pattern, perhaps in a wave of long, colored strips. Finally he adds another icon on glass for the front layer. The resulting work is a three-dimensional juxtaposition of the two icons—such as a housefly against an early prototype airplane—one easy to see, one obscured.

The series, Belmar says, is about time and memory, depicting connections between ideas from the past and present, sometimes showing how an idea manifests itself over time from imagination to reality. “So somebody says, ‘Oh, I would like to go to the moon,’” he offers as an example. “The most stupid idea in the world, but it happened eventually.”

Belmar’s work has been featured in recent exhibitions such as Restore: Japan at Lamont Bishop Gallery, W.A.V.E of Love at L2 Lounge, and Catalyst at Katzen Arts Center. Thanks to a nomination by artist Manon Cleary, he plans to debut the series Once at Hillyer Art Space in October.

 About STEPHEN MACK

Stephen Mack studied music at the New School Jazz Program in Manhattan before plunging into the world of film. He wrote and directed his first short film Nathan in 2006, followed by the Super16 feature Last Winter for which he won Peer Silver awards for directing and original composition at the DC Peer Awards in 2009. He was also awarded an Artist Fellowship Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities in 2006, which helped fund the production of Last Winter. He has worked on many narrative, documentary, and television projects in the DC/Baltimore area as an editor, assistant director, as well as in the camera, grip, and electric departments.


Stephen Mack, director

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The Washington Post: 'Migration': Universal Truths

Julian McKinnon

The Washington Post.

By — Stephanie Merry, Tuesday, March 29,1:23 PM

Art    ‘RESTORE: Japan’

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Joan Belmar’s “05:46 UTC Coordinated Universal Time” marks the moment the quake hit Japan.

You’ve had the chance to contribute to relief efforts in Japan by going out to eat (at Kushi, among other restaurants) and buying drinks (at Buddha Bar, Iron Horse and Commissary, to name a few), and now you can help out by purchasing a piece of art. ReadysetDC and Curating for a Cause are hosting a silent auction at the brand-new Lamont Bishop Gallery, with proceeds going to the Japanese Red Cross Society. Among the 30 artists selling works are some some locally well-known names, including Cory Oberndorfer, Tim Conlon and Decoy. In honor of the cause, the works for sale will be inspired by Japanese culture or allude to a theme of overcoming obstacles.

GessoHead



Zip Through the Galleries: Fridge, Studio and Hillyer
Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss
    GessoHead has just returned from an extended visit to the Isle of Sloth and is attempting to fling herself back into the current of DMV art. So far, efforts have been half-assed; I've poked a toe in and here comes the rest! There are a few shows that I want to write about ASAP before they disappear.
      
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Laura Elkins and Mr. Fridge
ImageFirst, there’s Laura Elkins’s solo at The Fridge, that funky little gallery in the alley on Barracks Row. Laura is continuing to mine the rich vein of her decade-long pre-occupation with painting self-portraits in the guise of our county’s first ladies. This time she’s gone big and even more scary – and I mean that in the best possible way. ImageThe show is called “White House Negligee” and features the first ladies in their dressing rooms in various stages of deshabillee, sporting alarmingly aggressive expressions and sometimes brandishing weapons. I find the Hilary Clintons most effective, probably because the pictures so vividly capture what I believe to be the woman’s true feelings.
 
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Favianna Rodrigeuz
   Then there’s the group show at Studio Gallery called “The Magic of the Melting Pot: Immigration in America.” Let me start with a little nit-pick: as is often the case, I am a bit put off by the distance between the title of the show and what I see on the walls. What I see are some very interesting, sometimes superior pieces of art by artists who have come, or whose parents have come, to this country from various places around the globe. I don’t see all that much that speaks to me of the “immigrant experience.” I wish curators didn’t feel they had to assemble topical consistency, or suggest it. Is that too crabby?
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Graham Boyle
Image    OK, on to the art - and there is a lot of that to like. I love Favianna Rodriguez’s high-key prints.  Rodriguez, from Oakland, California, uses the bold colors and hortatory text of 20th century political posters. The work is attention-grabbing and intelligent. Graham Boyle, whose studio is Mt. Rainier is across the driveway from mine, has contributed some evocative hand-altered photographs that create a feeling of time passing and memory dimming. Susan Cho’s parents emigrated from North Korea to  Northern Virginia before her birth and her images on layers of sheer cloth speak of ancestors left behind.
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Joan Belmar
 Finally, Joan Belmar, who was born in Chile and landed in DC 12 years ago after living in Spain, has long dealt in the emotional currency of memory. His meticulous, dimensional pieces create both the physical reality and the emotional content of distance, separation and nostalgia. As always, I find Joan’s work compelling.

    I finished First Friday in Dupont Circe with a visit to Hillyer Art Space, the gallery run by International Arts and Artists that fronts on the alley space it shares with such tony company as the Cosmos Club and the Phillips Gallery. The place was completely jammed with well-dressed young bodies. Gotta confess, it’s a mystery to me, but Hillyer openings  have somehow acquired a reputation with the cool kids. I’m not complaining. I wish I could bottle it. Anyway, truth be told, the work was pretty much obscured by the bodies and GessoHead suffered waves of clautrophobia, but she gave it her best.. 

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A glimpse of Kyan Bishop's salt mountains
    The largest exhibition space has been given to Kyan Bishop, a young local sculptor  whose work is characterized by the accumulation of multiple pieces or fragments of material. The idea is one that is very much “in the air” now, but Kyan manages to achieve a kind of counter-intuitive delicacy in her constructions that I find beguiling. This time she has reduced the idea to its essence; we have large snow-white piles of salt chunks filling the main exhibition space. (The rumor is that she wanted to make them even bigger but that the Hillyer folks were concerned about possible collapse.) Visitors on opening night were given a 7-ounce packet of the salt in a plastic bag printed with the information that this is the approximate salt content in the average human body. The packets encouraged reflection about the meaning of “elemental” and the interdependence between the human body and the most basic aspects of the earth around us.
    Leah Appel’s photography show, “Southern Exposures”, occupies the front exhibition space. Her pictures of the park-like squares that define Savannah Georgia, each dedicated to a historical figure, are lyrical and lush, toned using an old technique called “Berg printing” that gives them a golden brown patina.
    
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Craig Kraft's neon
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There are some Ellyn Weiss encaustics back there
Finally, the terrific new Members’ Gallery, stripped, painted and spiffed, makes its debut this month with a three-person show curated by local sculptor, Barbara Liotta. I was lucky enough to be chosen for the show, where Barbara has hung a small grid of my “seascape’ encaustics, along with the amazing explosions of neon artist Craig Kraft and Lauren Kotkin’s, precise and delicate paper cut-outs. The show is called “Dispersed” and, according to the curator, “the pieces in this exhibition explode, flinging their elements outward and only retrieving them in the final arrangement.” Wow. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

The Times Square Building :: Digital Art Show

United Creators curated the art show on the two futuristic and predominant 7.5 x 15 ft large screen installations at the red carpet like, street level event in AFI’s new 2-story high-tech lobby in The Times Square Building, designed by Andres Escobar & Associates.

It all started when Lev Leviev, the Israeli billionaire, made many New Yorkers sit up and take notice when he bought the former New York Times Building on West 43rd Street in 2007 for $525 million, three times what the seller paid for it 30 months earlier. It was a bold declaration that Mr. Leviev, who planned to spend an additional $170 million transforming the landmark building into a first-class office building, wanted to be a real estate player in New York. It was also a deal emblematic of an era when buyers and bankers imagined that rents and values would soar forever.

Now that it`s done, The Times Square Building, where a classic architectural gem is combined with white glove services to tenants in an increasingly competitive office environment. Furthering the redevelopment story, a new Times Square retail destination will supplant areas where printer presses and delivery trucks once operated daily. To it`s reopening, United Creators curated the art show on the two futuristic and predominant 7.5 x 15 ft large screen installations at the red carpet like, street level event in AFI’s new 2-story high-tech lobby in The Times Square Building, designed by Andres Escobar & Associates.

The show is stunning with those huge flat screens by Bang & Olufsen. The high definition with the superb B&O image quality made the exhibition a dazzling show. The show was also taken to Frankfurt, London and Istanbul. The artists selected by United Creators reflect the time period of 1913, when the building was constructed, till 2010 in contemporary visual arts. Among the contemporary artists we found works by: Fernando Ferreira de Araujo, Mark Weiner, Paul Seftel, Joey Kilrain, Joan Belmar, Alberto Oliveira and Leyla Rosario.

The Times Square Building History: Formerly known as The New York Times Building, is an 18-story ( 81 m 267 ft ) building at 229 West 43rd Street in Times Square, that was the headquarters of the New York Times from 1913 through 2007. The building was built in three stages between 1912 and 1937.

The building, originally designed by Mortimer J. Fox, of the firm Buchman & Fox, was originally called the New York Times Annex because it was designed to supplement the One Times Square Times Tower built in 1905 at Broadway and 42nd Street (which gives Times Square its name). In 1922 the Ludlow & Peabody designed a 100-foot (30 m) extension on the west side as well as a five-story setback attic level in the style of the French Renaissance including the Mansard roofs. In 1930-32 Albert Kahn designed a further expansion to the west including a second lobby and roof-top studio. Further expansions included a 12-story New York Times North building adjoining it to the north on 44th Street.

The Times sold the building in 2004 to Tishman Speyer for $175 million. Tishman sold it to Africa Israel in 2007 for $525 million. Africa Israel is in the midst of a $175 million renovation including adding a new sign on the top and replacing a digital clock in place since 1962 with an analog version. Africa officially calls it “The Times Square Building.”

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The Times Square Building

UNITED CREATORS AT THE FORUM AT THE TOP BY YDG / AFIusa
THURSDAY MARCH 12th, 2009

The Examiner

Weekend Pick: Joan Belmar

June 27, 11:00 PMBicycle Transportation ExaminerAdam Voiland
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Credit: Joan Belmar

Whether you're a bicyclist or simply appreciate unique art, Joan Belmar's 3-D paintings are well worth seeing. A number of his pieces--though none featuring bicycles--are currently on display at Gallery Neptune in Bethesda. 

 

Bourgeon online

Joan Belmar on his View from the Outside

9 JUNE 2010 

I have lived in many cultures, but have never felt completely at home in any one. Born in Chile, I moved to Ibiza, Spain at 24, and to the U.S. at 28. In each culture, I have experienced the feelings of an outsider. I have come to understand that “all is not what it seems.” My need to communicate this point of view is what drives my art.

In my recent work, I have created 3-inch thick worlds under glass. At the base of this world is plywood or masonite, on which I have drawn tools, toys, animals, or body parts that can just be detected by looking closely. The surface layer is acetate, on which I often make a geometric pattern or drawing to represent the external, structured, societal world in which everything would seem to have an objective measure and to exist within familiar rules. In between these 3 inches, I use Mylar and acetate to create layers that both expose and obscure the worlds within. Sometimes I use closely separated vertical strips of Mylar that are dyed with diluted acrylic. This heightens the effect I’m looking for, because as the viewer moves from left to right in front of the piece, new things that exist below are revealed and others become partially obscured. Also, the color intensity of the piece varies as you shift from looking at the piece head-on to looking at it from the side. The result I hope for is an organic and mysterious world that is in constant movement, as you shift your viewing position. One image that I have recently used isthat of an old bicycle, because it touches upon both our interior and exterior worlds, and it also represents movement and change.

I am fascinated with color and transparency and the compression of worlds that coexist due entirely to the imposition of a technical structure. I think that I create this work as the result of my journey. I think of myself as a collage of experiences and even though many times I do not feel as though I fit in a place, I have access to these experiences.

I do not like to title my works with names that are too descriptive. I think names sometimes narrow the viewer’s focus. I want each viewer to bring their life’s perspectives to the viewing experience, with the hope that each viewer will discover something different.

I love taking advantage of technological changes and contemporary materials. I remember using thin layers of acrylic and oil to create abstract paintings back in 1996 in Spain – a combination of media that was frowned upon at the time – and I have continued to experiment with materials and imagery. I have used all kinds of material (fabrics, papers, plastics, glass, etc) but when I discovered the transparent qualities of acetate and Mylar and the effect of using them in combination, I began to make the dimensional pieces that characterize my current work. They are not exactly painting and not exactly sculpture, another ambiguity that I love.

There are two pieces that have been especially influential in my work: Anish Kapoor’s blue egg and Tara Donovan’s thousands of styrofoam cups. I appreciate the way that Kapoor exploits all the tactile and physical characteristics of materials. He also succeeds in taking the viewer to a different dimension that distorts the senses. As an example, he has placed people playing as children in front of his work; this is done as part of the work itself. Tara Donovan’s work has similar qualities, but she uses disposable materials as glasses, straws, and paper, often in large installations, creating optical illusions that are a challenge to understand. Donovan uses a simple plastic cup to create a world!

I imagine that each of these artists must have a great time in the studio playing and making art from the play. As artists, we face a host of adversities outside our studios, but inside our studios we need to stay very close to our child inside.

Right now I am working on a series of paintings on paper and canvas. In these, the layering is more optical illusion than physical reality. These are a new direction for me and some of them can be seen in my current show at the Neptune Gallery in Bethesda. In the future, I would love to experiment with photography, using light and reflections as new way to create depth.

This month I will open a large exhibition at the Winvian in Litchfield, CT.

Joan Belmar was born in 1970 and grew up 2 hours south of Santiago, Chile. He left Chile for Ibiza, Spain, at the age of 24 where he began painting professionally, using the Catalan “Joan” for his first name, John. He came to Washington, D.C. in 1999, and was granted permanent residency in the U.S. based on extraordinary artistic merit in 2003. Belmar’s work is in the permanent collections of the DCCAH Art Bank, the District of Columbia’s Wilson Building, and the Airport Art Collection, Ibiza Spain. In DC, he has shown in WPA\C venues, the American University Museum ,the Chilean Embassy and the Corcoran Art Auction Gala. He has also shown in Chicago, New York, in Europe (Athens, Barcelona, London, Ibiza, Biella, Lisbon, Sevilla, Santander, Bologna, Malaga, and Rome), in South America (Buenos Aires and Santiago), and in Asia (Seoul). He was a Mayor’s Arts Award Finalist in 2007 as an outstanding emerging artist in Washington, D.C. The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and awarded him an artist fellowship grant in 2009 and in 2010, he was awarded an Individual Artist grant by the Maryland Arts Council.

Click here to see the artist’s website.

Editorial assistance on this article provided by Ellyn Weiss

Many thanks to Rob Bettmann.

 Gazzete


 
Joan Belmar, Alchemy XI,30 by 22 inches, mixed media.
        Real simple




 

GessoHead

 
Joan Belmar, Cameron Petke and Marie Ringwald at Neptune Gallery
Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

May 30, 2009

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Eliyse (left) and the civilians
Elyse Harrison, doyenne of Neptune Gallery, has, along with Cate Fraser of Fraser Gallery, consistently brought serious work by local artists to Bethesda. Neptune’s show this month is particularly rewarding, combining the depth of Joan Belmar’s otherworldly paintings with the zen of Cameron Pietke’s ceramic bells and the architectural discipline of Marie Ringwald’s constructions.
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Joan and Elyse
I am normally too afflicted with shpielkes (i.e. antsy) to sit comfortably through artists’ talks, most of which are interchangeably vapid in any case. So I was surprised: a) to see so many civilians turn out on a Saturday afternoon in May for artists’ talks, and b) to find these talks interested and informed me. The artists are all thoughtful and genuine about their work, which can be seen in the product.


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new Belmar work
Joan Belmar is a friend whose work I admire greatly. Born in Chile, resident in Spain and then the US, the element of layered experience, of more in the background than is revealed on first view, of lives that have been lived in the past but never left entirely behind, is always present in his work. The image of the bicycle, which appears prominently in a number of the new paintings, seems an almost literal expression of life as a traveler among cultures.
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more new Belmar work
The newest work, which includes pieces that are physically flatter than the dimensional pieces of the last several years – that is, drawn and painted on a flat surface - is stunning. They create multiple visual layers, deep with information yet breathing in space, conjuring a kind of cosmic pattern-making. I love these.


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Marie Ringwald
Marie Ringwald has the franchise on paintings/constructions based on architectural ideas. She uses found and embellished materials of all kinds and compresses the essentials of the built environment into each piece, ranging from the very small on up. The new pieces at Neptune, all of which were created very recently, represent a shift in direction from more monochromatic industrial buildings to color-drenched, almost tropical places. They have a human-scaled charm and accessibility.
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Cameron Petke, family and bell
Cameron Petke is a new artist to me. A ceramicist and teacher, Petke’s MFA project involved research into the acoustic variables of ceramic bells. He has created a series of white ceramic bells, lovely in the clarity of their form and the simple dignity of their decoration, each of which has a unique tone and pitch. They add a serene quality to the gallery.

 

 Washington Post Express 

Optical Illusions: Gallery Neptune Show

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Gallery Neptune brings together three simpatico artists with an eye-opening group show. The works of Joan Belmar, Cameron Petke and Marie Ringwald are on display through June 5. All three artists use ingenious techniques to create deceptively simple-looking, bare-bones work, like Belmar's "Bicycle," above, whose image is built in layers, and shifts and blurs depending on the viewer's angle.

» Gallery Neptune, 5001 Wilson Lane, Bethesda; through June 5; 301-718-0809. (Bethesda)


20th Annual Small and Miniature Show at Aaron Gallery


Aaron Gallery’s “20th Annual Small and Miniature Show contains a wonderful mixture of representational and abstract art, all of which are fascinating in their own way. There are the very, very tiny paintings, measuring no more than 3 x 3 inches, of Freya Grand such as The Sea, whose use of a monochromatic color palette imbues the pieces with a certain moodiness as well as strength. Josh George’s exquisite mixed media pieces present a powerful statement by the artist on man’s ability to wreak havoc upon himself so vividly depicted in his Pollution Makes Pretty Sunsets. The piece with its lush and vivid use of color does depict a “pretty sunset”, but this beauty is tempered by the fact that this is the result of the overwhelming clouds of pollution which literally consume the city below.


Sondra Arkin’s small delicate abstract encaustic pieces, with their subtle and soft colors, convey a sense of calm and tranquility to the observer,while Megan Chapman’s works, with their dark, yet very deep and intense colors, convey a sense of power and strength so aptly expressed in her piece titled Implosion. Carlotta Hester’s playful use of encaustic and melted crayon in her work evokes a wonderful sense of playfulness and charm in her pieces of which Lacing Through is a delightful example.


Joan Belmar’s well balanced combination of collage, acrylic, and oil paints is very obvious in his work, as is so well displayed in his La Noche de San Juan. The juxtaposition of “real” and “visual” textures in his pieces creates a sense of intricate detail while his use of layering and overlapping resulting from his use of collage creates a profound sense of depth and space as well. David Friedhiem’s small welded figurative sculptures titledSmall Monsters are refreshing in their playfulness and childlike quality as they seem to run about and interact one with the other.


Aaron Gallery’s 20th Annual Small and Miniature Show offers to the visitor a wide range of pieces that may be small in size, but are monumental in their overall effect. This writer would strongly suggest that you take some time and treat yourself with the opportunity to wander through this creative and delightful display of work at the Aaron Gallery.


Ron Riley is the President of the Foundry Gallery.


The Examiner
Seeing way beyaond,deep within...or a reflecction?
By Robin Tierney
May 26,2007

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Northern Virginia Art Beat
Written by Kevin Mellema
Thursday, 11 December 2008 10:42

There are ways to make an arts district.

One is to have a seriously run down area with cheap rents because artists as a group are perpetually in that "just getting by" segment of the population. The area in question also needs to have spacious lofts suitable for studio use.

As unlikely as it all seems, this is usually the way things happen. Soho in New York was known for developing along this format. Crummy part of town where nobody wants to live. Artists settle the urban wilderness, and make it a cool hip and trendy place to be. Suddenly, people with more money, and less nerve, want to be there. The artists slowly get priced out of their own development, leaving them to find another crummy part of town to settle. And the cycle starts all over again.

Needless to say, this scenario leaves a lot to be desired on all levels. If you do the math, you can see that nobody gets what they're after for very long. The other way to do it is to actually plan an arts district. It almost never happens that way.

A drive up Rhode Island Avenue (also known as Maryland Route 1, and Baltimore Ave. depending on where you are at the moment) through the Mount Rainier, Brentwood and Hyattsville areas (just north of the D.C. border) plainly shows that urban revitalization has taken root, and good things are happening in the area. Labeled as the "Gateway Arts District in Prince George's County," there's no doubt that the arts community is a vital part of this plan.


Shelter for the Arts



Gateway Arts District Open Studios, etc. in Mount Rainier-Brentwood-Hyattsville Maryland from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. this Saturday, Dec. 13. (Times vary with location.) For more information and a downloadable map of the entire arts district, as well as a complete list of venues and times, visit www.gateway-cdcpg.org.

With over a hundred lofts within the arts district specifically set aside for artists housing, in at least three live/work unit complexes, we can safely say that this area has, or will have, the highest density of professional artists in the greater D.C. Metro area. Keeping in mind that the area reportedly had a substantial artist population base before any of this came about, it's not too difficult to see this area is on track to becoming a serious hot spot for the arts inside the Beltway. What was obviously a run down area, won't be for long... assuming we manage to avoid a full blown economic depression in the meantime.

One artist housing complex was developed by an unusual non-profit development group, Art Space, Inc. (www.artspace.org). They have similar artist housing developments all over the country.

Much has been made of trying to develop the arts here in Falls Church, but little if any thought seems to have been applied to the notion of actually creating studio space for artists to work in, much less actually housing them here. It's a vital part of the equation, and is the difference between an ersatz arts district and a self-sustaining vibrant arts friendly community.

Prince George's County has been quietly at work on this for some 15 years, and it's all starting to gel in a big way. At the moment, housing and studio space in the Gateway Arts District is up and running, with more galleries and museum space in the works. A new non-profit (they all are) community art gallery will be opening before Spring, and possibly before New Year's Day.

It's just jaw-dropping to see this happening in what is traditionally a sleepy southern town based on federal bureaucracy as its sole major industry. Well, the census bureau says we have the fourth largest artist population in the country behind New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Seems like more than just numbers when you see this sort of thing going on.

H+F Fine Arts Gallery (3311 Rhode Island Ave., Mt. Rainier, Md.) is showing a pair of artists who use circles/spheres, and line to express egalitarian notions about humanity.

Alan Binstock, a NASA architect, and long time resident of the area, manipulates 3/4-inch plate glass to form his sculptures of captured colored orbs. The basic thinking behind Binstock's work is that we, and everything around us, is made up of particles originating from the Big Bang. And thus we are all more alike and connected than we typically give credit for being.

Similar, but slightly different thinking drives Joan Belmar to make his complex multimedia sculptures. Based of the notion that how we perceive people varies with our perspective and relationship to them, Belmar makes mylar ribbons, standing them on edge so they nearly disappear as we look directly at the work. As our view point becomes more and more oblique the work becomes more and more two dimensional. Each piece is different, but they all change in significant ways as your view point changes. It's complex and entertaining work.

Three old white warehouse buildings make up the artist studios complex on Otis Street, and Wells Ave. Inside you'll find the Washington Glass School and Studio where area art star Tim Tate works his own brand of magic. Appearing on the art scene after an "Artomatic" showing several years ago, Tate now shows his work nationally, and recently had a show in London. We've reviewed Tate's work here several times.

Without doing a strict head count, I'd say the entire ceramics group making up the fabulous 10th floor exhibit at this year's "Artomatic" have their studio spaces within this three building complex. Seemingly every studio has several kilns off in the corner.

Of special note, Margaret Boozer's Red Dirt Studio is among that group. Margaret recently showed some excellent and innovative clay earth work at McLean Project for the Arts, and the Arlington Arts Center, both of which were reviewed here. Boozer was a busy girl this week, opening her latest show at Project4 (903 U St. NW, Washington D.C.; www.project4gallery.com) from 6 - 8:30 p.m. this Thursday.

Also in the Otis Street complex is painter Janis Goodman, a full professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, as well as an arts reviewer for WETA's "Around Town" program. Goodman has also shown extensively on both a national and international level. Another busy lady, Goodman is also in a five-person show that opened this month at Reyes + Davis (923 F Street NW, Washington, D.C., Suite 302; www.reyesdavis.com).


The Northern Virginia Art Beat is compiled by Kevin Mellema. See www.fcnp.com for photos and more. To e-mail submissions, send them to kevinmellema@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Inspired by Duchamp, artist aims to disorient



By Maria Longley/staff
July 10, 2008




Joan Belmar (pronounced "Joh-on") has shown his abstract artwork in several major cities, including Chicago, New York and throughout Europe, as well as Santiago, Chile, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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So what has drawn the Chilean-born Belmar to Staunton? An e-mail from Kevin Postupack, owner of Kronos Gallery.

"My pictures are online on a Web site, and after I got an e-mail from Kevin, I went to his Web site," said the soft-spoken Belmar. (He switched comfortably from English to Spanish and back again during a recent interview.) "His vision he's having in Staunton is what caught my attention. He invites very (avant-garde) artists."



That's a "very important" role for a gallery to play in a small yet growing rural area, said the 36-year-old, and the reason he accepted Postupack's invitation to show here.



Belmar, whose studio is in Washington, D.C., has created an unusual technique in 3-D painting with his recent work. He combines his former painting and collage methods with painted and untreated Mylar a flexible plastic used to preserve books and archival texts and acetate strips. He works mostly in circles and curvilinear shapes that he places perpendicular to a painted background and then covers it (but not always entirely) with a lightly frosted Mylar. The effects it produces involve changes in transparency, as light and the viewer move in relation to the work.



The process of making his abstracts can be tedious at times, he said, because he has to cut and dye several times.



"Some take me a long time, and others are more fluid," Belmar said.

But the results he gets are well worth his time, he added.
"When you look at it, you get disoriented," he said. "You don't know the technique, and you get confused, because you're not sure of what you're looking at."

Belmar's upcoming Kronos exhibit, "The Exile," is a nod to the radical French artist Marcel Duchamp, who is often remembered for his playful digs at art marketing through actions such as exhibiting a urinal that he called "Fountain" in 1917.



"It was a big scandal when he did that; he was a revolutionary artist," he said of the late Duchamp. "He changed the way people view art, or people's perception of art. I'm also playing with perception, and how people imagine art."



Belmar's work has attracted the attention of art consultants, curators and collectors in D.C. He has been asked to exhibit in venues sponsored by the Washington Project for the Arts and is included in the art bank of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.



He grew up two hours south of Santiago, Chile, and at age 24 moved to Ibiza, Spain where he started going by "Joan," the Catalan version of his first name, John. He settled in Washington, D.C. in 1999 and was granted permanent residency in the United States based on extraordinary artistic merit in 2003.



Belmar's pieces are showing around Washington at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and at the American University Museum. These days, however, Belmar is focused on his upcoming visit to the Shenandoah Valley.



"I feel really good about Staunton," Belmar said. "I'm very much looking forward to it."

By Michael O'Sullivan



Washington Post Staff Writer



Friday, January 4, 2008; Page WE26







Multi-artist exhibitions built on a single broadly interpreted theme too often deserve the description "all over the map." Normally, that's not a compliment, but with the Association of Ibero-American Cultural Attaches' 16th annual art salon, the phrase is fitting and flattering.







This Story



'Migration': Universal Truths



The Story Behind the Work



Maps figure prominently throughout "Migration: La Diaspora," which addresses the theme of movement from one culture to another. That's true in a series of five photo-based portraits by artist Marianela Salgado ( Costa Rica) collaged atop maps. But it's also true in "Human Settlements," a painting by Evangelina Elizondo ( Argentina) that features an array of small, anonymous figures that have been positioned, like playing pieces from the game Risk, against an abstract backdrop that is part map, part board game.



Both works embody the show's central message. In a nutshell, it's that the issue of migration is not just political, but personal. For every map, for every fragment of a national flag, for every abstract reference to geography, there's a human being involved.



In almost every case except Salgado's, the features of their faces are blurred, obscured, generic or absent, emphasizing not their individuality, but our common humanity. Take "Hombre" by Julio Perez ( Spain), featuring a seated Everyman whose face is distorted beyond recognition in the manner of a Francis Bacon painting. Or how about "Take Off" by Juliana Moncayo ( Colombia)? On the right in her flat, posterlike diptych is a queue of human silhouettes, apparently waiting to be evacuated by air from some unnamed trouble spot. On the left is an expanse of sky, empty but for a flock of birds. They represent, presumably, the universal yearning for freedom -- or a better life.



One of the show's most powerful pieces is "Maldita Brisa III" by Gerard Ellis ( Dominican Republic). Echoing Moncayo's none-too-subtle allusion to the kind of political winds that carry migrating men, like birds, away from their homelands, the title of Ellis's painting translates to "Damned Breeze." Yet his work rejects the promise and hope suggested by her painting. In "Maldita," a solitary, hooded figure moves across the canvas, painted to look like a sheet of ruled composition paper. Here, the somewhat underdressed man lowers his head against a far stiffer gust than the one that carries Moncayo's migrating subjects. In fact, it suggests a violent burst of gunfire to the head, along with a spatter of blood and brain matter.



The experience of this particular immigrant is an extreme example in a show that offers views of cross-cultural flow as varied as the artists involved, many of whom are themselves immigrants.





Chilean-born Joan Belmar, for instance, lives and works in Washington, as does Katya Romero of Ecuador; Venezuela's Sara Nu¿ez is based in Vienna, Austria ; Ellis in New York City . Of the association's 21 member nations (which include Spain, Portugal and the countries of Latin America), only Bolivia, Cuba, Guatemala and Nicaragua are not represented this year.



But the preponderance of immigrants among the show's artists is completely coincidental. That's according to Patricia Abdelnour, the Venezuelan Embassy's cultural attache and the association's vice president. She chalks it up to globalization and the rootlessness of the contemporary human condition.



In the end, what ties the art in "Migration," though, is a shared sensibility. It's one underscored by the recurrence of the figure, by the slight but significant edge of the personal over the political. "Migration" is not about the places people come from, but the people who come from them. At once faceless and universal, they remind viewers that this nation has always been a haven for folks from someplace else.



Migration: La Diaspora Through Feb. 2 at the Mexican Cultural Institute, 2829 16th St. NW (Metro: Columbia Heights) Info:202-728-1628.



http://www.iaculturalattaches.org. Hours: Open Monday-Friday from 9:30 to 1 and from 3 to 6:30. Admission: Free.



Artist Feature 4: Joan Belmar
NKG BLOG

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Pictured Above:

*Duplex and Concentric Green, 2007, mixed media on plywood, 21 x 25.



*Duplex I, 2007, mixed media on plywood, 21 x 25



This week's Artist Feature (posted earlier than usual, due to the Thanksgiving Holiday), takes a closer look at Chilean-born, Washington DC based, lyrical Mylar collage mastermind Joan Belmar. Pronounced "Joe-on," Belmar might be unfamiliar to some NKG visitors as he does not yet have a page on our official website, but his work is certainly not to be overlooked! He started out with paintings, but in recent years has moved towards the world of abstract collages. Though one might observe that there are echoes of OP Art and minimalist qualities in his general body of work, Belmar's mixed media collages are certainly one-of-a-kind. They are a reflection of the inner workings of his spirit, and do not imitate the work of anyone else: he is his own, unique person.



Pristine strips of solid-colored Mylar are delicately placed under the glass of a plywood frame, constructed into circles of all shapes and sizes; some slightly more representational than others. There are usually no more than 4 colors/hues represented simultaneously. Some of these compositions easily can be compared to a 3-dimensional approach to the biological system of the human body, found in the science textbooks of today. Due to his use of modern materials, such as plastic, acetate, Mylar and glass, an optical illusion is easily created. Viewing these works allows one's sense of curiosity to leap out, to question the purpose of his art and to be able to reach in and physically feel the materials in order to fully grasp the concept of each collage. Undeniably, there is also a deep sense of nostalgia connected to Belmar's collages that urges the viewers to take a deeper look at their own respective lives in light of his art. That somewhat uncomfortable, tingly sensation never dies, and an air of mystery prevails.

Strongly influenced by Anish Kapoor's scuplture at the Hirshhorn, which depicts a bisected egg painted blue, Belmar's work exists in order for us to test our eyes and abilities to perceive the things that take place around us. His constant exploration with circles (specifically with the mandala principle) helps us realize the importance of constantly accessing deeper levels consciousness, that life is not perfect and that we as humans are all in this together. This is why Belmar creates worlds in his art where some things are clear, others opaque. It makes the journey of life more interesting to discover.







Prior to moving to the United States in 1999, Belmar lived and experienced "multiple lives" in both Spain and his native Chile. His response to the events of his life is blatantly reflected in his artwork, which he describes with adjectives such as "alienation" and "disconnectedness". Through the daring use of his concentric collages, Belmar excels in his goal of not only examining critical social structures, but also of [psychologically] analyzing those who struggle within them, including himself. It is like reading the artist’s autobiography in his artwork, making himself completely vulnerable to the masses and allowing us to respond in light of our own life experiences. This is what the circle of life is all about.

Three of Joan Belmar's works (including the two pictured in this entry) will be on display AND for sale at our Third Annual Attainable Art show. Please join us for our open house on December 1, 2007 from 4-7pm. Till next week, I hope you ALL have a happy Thanksgiving holiday!



POSTED BY LAURA KUAH AT 12:49 PM 0 COMMENTS

LABELS: ABSTRACT, CHILE, CIRCLE, CONSTRUCTION, CONTEMPORARY ART, JOAN BELMAR, LAYERS, LIFE, MINIMALISM, OP ART, PHILOSOPHY, SPAIN, WASHINGTON



Three of Joan Belmar's works (including the two pictured in this entry) will be on display AND for sale at our Third Annual Attainable Art show. Please join us for our open house on December 1, 2007 from 4-7pm.



POSTED BY LAURA KUAH

LABELS: ABSTRACT, CHILE, CIRCLE, CONSTRUCTION, CONTEMPORARY ART, JOAN BELMAR, LAYERS, LIFE, MINIMALISM, OP ART, PHILOSOPHY, SPAIN, WASHINGTON DC