Grimaldis Gallery

The visual arts department at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County has issued a call to artists for works that comment on the history and development of video as art.Four works will be selected to appear in the Video Art 2000 symposium at UMBC on Feb. 11. The works will then be installed at the Holliday Street Galleries of the Contemporary Museum from March 6 through June 6.A $1,500 honorarium will be awarded to each of the four artists selected for...

In the late 1940s, critic Clement Greenberg wrote an influential essay titled "The Crisis of the Easel Picture." He argued, among other things, that the convention of figures placed in illusionistic, three-dimensional space, dominant since the Renaissance, had been rendered moot by the radical experiments of Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock.The half-century since Greenberg's article appeared has seen his ideas first vindicated, then repudiated, and finally given new life amid the convulsions of postmodernism, a curious pastiche of styles that manages to look backward and forward at the same time.

Raoul Middleman's paintings can galvanize an art show, with their scudding clouds, flashes of light and active brush strokes that communicate the intensity of feeling behind them.In the C. Grimaldis Gallery's impressive exhibit "The Painterly Landscape," one meets Middleman's "Corner of the Barn" just inside the door. It's impossible not to respond to trees so energetically painted that they appear to rush up from the ground toward the squiggle of light that peeks out beneath the stormy clouds.

Even after a century of abstract art, the viewer tends to try to find suggestions of representation in abstract work. Jon Isherwood's fine stone sculptures at the C. Grimaldis Gallery serve as a good case in point.The sculptures don't depict anything. The artist leaves some of the sides of his stone slabs in their natural state, smooths and polishes others, makes striation-like cuts, often hollows them out so that one can peer into a vertical interior space but not penetrate it.As worked pieces of stone, they fully satisfy the demands of sculpture.

There are some fine meetings of minds in the C. Grimaldis Gallery's current summer group show. Works by artists who may never have met one another just seem to go together.Mel Kendrick's "4 Point, Black Oil" and Grace Hartigan's "Spanish Still Life" share a sense of humor about inanimate objects that resemble humans. The Kendrick is an abstract sculpture that looks like it's trying to re-form itself into a human figure, and a two-handled vase in the Hartigan watercolor looks like a woman with her hands on her hips sashaying across the room.

Baltimore gallery-goers will know the sculptor Daithi O'Glaisain, the current artist at the C. Grimaldis Gallery, by the name of David Gleeson. Irish-born, educated in Ireland and the United States, and a local resident for several years, he now shows his art under the Gaelic equivalent of his name.And the 15 wood sculptures on view at Grimaldis, all created in 1997, relate to divided Ireland, its troubles and the artist's guarded hope that it can be united again some day.Although these works undoubtedly spring from deeply felt emotions and an admirable desire to see his motherland once more united and at peace, as a group, they suffer from two problems: repetition and cliche.

"Fallen Angels" at the C. Grimaldis Gallery is gallery owner Constantine Grimaldis' imaginative idea for a show to complement the Walters Art Gallery's just-opened "Angels from the Vatican."In only one case, Joseph Sheppard's "The Fall and Metamorphosis of Lucifer," is the fallen angel of the biblical kind: Lucifer, or the devil, was banished from heaven to the nether regions for challenging God's authority and has here fallen naked to the ground.The angels portrayed by the show's other 10 artists are of the human kind, flawed and earthbound creatures like the rest of us, struggling with their own failings.

De Kooning showed in Baltimore galleryAfter reading The Sun's story on the passing of Willem de Kooning, I became alarmed that Sun archives have been perhaps destroyed or misplaced.On Feb. 5, 1982, Sun art critic Elisabeth Stevens wrote: ''The de Kooning show . . ., is unquestionably one of the most significant exhibitions ever hand at an art gallery in Baltimore.''Again, on April 2, 1987, under the headline, ''A Dazzling de Kooning,'' John Dorsey wrote, ''The C. Grimaldis Gallery is bringing us some important exhibits just now . . . Hans Hofmann a couple of months ago, de Kooning, and the sculptor Anthony Caro next month.

Baltimore doesn't often see a show that's all stars, but Grimaldis has one this month: painters Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan and Hans Hofmann, all from the abstract expressionist era; landscape painter Eugene Leake and realist painter Alice Neel; abstract sculptors Anthony Caro and Anne Truitt; conceptualist photographer John Baldessari. And the biggest surprise is that nothing's for sale.This is "Raison d'etre," an exhibit marking the 20th anniversary of the gallery's opening in September 1977.

Walk into the Grimaldis Gallery these days and you are virtually surrounded by water. Sukey Bryan's 18 "Water Paintings" reveal an artist whose work has become a great deal more focused in the last year. The results are largely, but not exclusively, positive.Bryan is a landscape painter who won a major National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1993. It allowed her to travel to Iceland, Scotland and Norway to gather visu- al material for her work. Her show last year at Galerie Francoise contained paintings of intensity and romantic vision, though the subject matter was not always totally clear and the artist's sense of composition occasionally deserted her.Since that time Bryan's subject matter has narrowed.

At the opening night party for the "Sublime Structure" exhibit at C. Grimaldis Gallery, featured artist Lu Zhang's creative hand wasn't just apparent in her paintings on the wall. The 26-year-old artist and model designer for Development Design Group makes a statement with her personal style, too. "My style is all over the place. I like to put my own spin on things but not really stand out too much. ... I think it's a combination of going to art school and now [working] in the corporate environment for an architectural firm.

"The Universe and the Side of My Body," a huge study in red oil on wood by Kim Manfredi, is not just an eye-catcher in the new show at C. Grimaldis Gallery. It's deeply provocative. A couple of sagging globs of paint on the upper portion of the four, 96-inch-square panels seem to be on the verge of shifting downward, threatening to invade two circular images formed by the perforation of tiny holes with a drill. Those orbs simultaneously suggest microscopic cells and planets adrift in a blood-dense sky. The piece is representative of the intriguing premise of "Sublime Structure," an exhibit that features several Maryland Institute College of Art alumni.

THEATER 'One-Man Star Wars Trilogy': Being able to recite Star Wars dialogue verbatim is a common affliction of the nerd population. But Canadian actor Charles Ross takes the practice into hyperdrive. In Baltimore for a two-week run, Ross' off-Broadway hit re-creates all the characters, sound effects and even John Williams' score with nothing but some lights and elbow pads. Opens 8 p.m. Tuesday at Center Stage. For more: centerstage.org DVD Heath Ledger: in 'The Dark Knight': Despite what the fanboys say, this Batman flick is not the best movie ever made.

Imagine 99 identical Barbie dolls in green Army fatigues and boots arrayed in parade rank before a crimson backdrop. It's an image of militaristic, monolithic power that pretty much sums up artist Mina Cheon's decidedly dim view of totalitarian rule. Cheon (pronounced CHUN) is a Korean-American artist who teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In previous exhibitions, she's explored the tensions between her native South Korea and its communist neighbor to the north in a variety of media, including video, interactive multimedia installation and complicated, three-dimensional string sculptures.

`Off the Map' The lowdown -- Catch a performance of Off The Map, a quirky comedy that revolves around the main character's reminiscences about her unusual childhood, at Fell's Point Corner Theatre. If you go -- The production runs tomorrow through Feb. 17. The theater is at 251 S. Ann St. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15-$17. Call 410-466-8341 or go to fpct.org. Handel show The lowdown -- Hear some harpsichord and Handel on Saturday at the Unitarian Universalist Chalice Concert Series' presentation of "Handel en Italia."

What do Josephine Baker, Amelie Matisse and Lili Marlene have in common? Aside from their aura of European sophistication and glamour, they're all featured subjects in New Paintings, a lively exhibition of recent work by Baltimore master Grace Hartigan at C. Grimaldis Gallery. Over the years, Hartigan has repeatedly returned for inspiration to famous women from history, legend and the history of art. She was a leading member of the New York School of Abstract-Expressionist painters during the 1950s, and her subsequent work remains an inventive mix of delightful human forms and pure abstraction.

Documenting a subculture rarely seen by Westerners, local photographer Betty Rosen has returned from her recent trip to Thailand with more than 100 striking portraits of transgendered exotic dancers. Rosen's empathy and compassion for her subjects whom she met at a nightclub in the southeastern city of Phuket is clear in the large-scale ink-jet photographs on view at C. Grimaldis Gallery. But as a spectator, Rosenberg did not participate in the way of life her pictures describe. Consequently, they do not have quite the moral authority of, say, Nan Goldin's impassioned visual diaries of New York's East Village scene during the 1970s, or Larry Clark's spaced-out narratives of dysfunctional Midwestern youth.

Drum and dance The lowdown -- Enjoy a showcase of some of Maryland's traditional dancers and musicians. Nations across the world will be represented by performers, including Ahmad Borhani, a leader of the Iranian music scene; Baile McKnight, African drum master; and Nilimma Devi, Indian Kuchipudi dancer and choreographer. Maryland legend and celebrated Piedmont Blues Harmonica player Phil Wiggins will headline the show. If you go -- The event is 7:30 tonight at the Creative Alliance at the Patterson, 3134 Eastern Ave. Tickets are $5. Call 410-276-1651 or go to creativealli ance.

Fuzzy magazine illustrations of nesting birds and Alaskan sled dogs might not seem like promising subjects for ambitious art, but Lorna Bieber's mural-scale black-and-white photographs at C. Grimaldis Gallery endow these banal images with a mysterious aura of arrested meaning. Bieber, who started her career as a painter, is interested in a classic minimalist strategy: How much can you take out of a picture and still have an image that signifies something? In a painting, the ultimate expression of minimalism is an all-white or all-black canvas (or any other monochrome hue, for that matter)

More than 30 works by Maryland Institute College of Art professor Raoul Middleman will be on display at the C. Grimaldis Gallery starting today. The exhibit, Pop to Plein-Air, features oil paintings and works on paper. One of the more notable pieces is Midnight Snack, which dates to the 1960s. Pop to Plein-Air opens today and runs through April 28 at the C. Grimaldis Gallery, 523 N. Charles St. There is an opening reception 6 p.m.-8 p.m. today. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays.