Washington Post

In The Galleries: Metaphrase

By Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, November 22, 2017

Color and line define space in at least six different ways in parallel shows at two Marymount University locations. At the school's new Ballston Center, "Metaphrase" hangs Jeremy Flick's hard-edge paintings alongside Jon Malis's high-tech abstractions…

Flick and Malis turn digital simulation into physical reality. Flick draws on 20th-century color-field painting, but toys with his predecessors' styles. He staggers green and gray bands to make a static-like jangle, and slips a barely perceptible shape into the purple bar of a Gene Davis-like stripe sequence. Malis bases his spectrum-spanning compositions on the international standards for computer-represented hues, and prints them on shaped aluminum panels or 3-D plaster stone. Both artists offer intriguing shapes and patterns, but their colors are what really zings…

Metaphrase Through Dec. 2 at Marymount University Ballston Center Gallery, 1000 N. Glebe Rd., Arlington. marymount.edu/ballston-center-gallery.