Washington Post

Contortion and Flick

By Mark Jenkins, Oct. 11, 2019

…Almost as gargantuan as “Timber’s” bear, a metal woman towers over “Contortion: Melodrama and the Figure,” at Brentwood Arts Exchange. Devised by Melissa Ichiuji, the steel Amazon holds six burning houses, illuminated from inside, in her six hands. Made partly from found metal parts yet with explicit human sexuality, this scrap-yard goddess looks far less vulnerable than the stuffed-fabric women Ichiuji contributed to the show. One of them, bloodily pierced by eight dental mirrors, might be a modern-day Saint Sebastian, martyred at the orthodontist’s office.

The other three artists also warp the human form, to various ends. Jenny Kanzler’s paintings, which have a gothic-tale vibe, include one in which a sleeping man’s form is mirrored by that of ghostly figure floating above him. Influenced by computer imagery, Rives Wiley depicts people who are flattened, elongated or pixelated. David Ibata distorts his otherwise immaculately realistic renderings of heads by omitting parts of them, which are suggested by lines or areas of color. There’s nothing ominous about this technique, though. Where the other artists do some sort of violence to their subjects, Ibata allows the eye to make his crayon and pastel portraits whole.

Also at Brentwood, Jeremy Flick continues his experiments with hard-edge blocks of evenly applied pigment. His “Superpositions” feature fields of two or three colors that appear to overlap partly and yield additional hues. The compositions are tidy, and the colors harmonious. Yet the overall effect is complicated by the way the artist arrays the paint on shaped canvases. Such pairings as white and green or two shades of yellow are calming, but Flick’s oblique angles disturb the peace.

Contortion: Melodrama and the Figure and Jeremy Flick: Superpositions Through Oct. 26 at Brentwood Arts Exchange, 3901 Rhode Island Ave., Brentwood.