'One Wicked Mime' Dennis Quillin and Christian Turner

One Wicked Mime brings together recent work by Dennis Quillin and Christian Turner (of Art Enables DC, and Studio Route 29 NJ, respectively), whose work is connected in its formal presentation and playful sensibility.

Quillin’s small-scale works on paper are pared down and soft - they feel like relaxed and relaxing renderings of what's around - a cup, a desk chair, or a butterfly, and perhaps also states of mind - reflection, in between, balance. The artist’s signature crosses the bottom of most pages, a big but delicate formal presence that turns these also toward self presentation, as though we’re receiving a card, or a gentle hello. Lovely to meet! Quillin’s drawings offer just enough for recognition, they feel like slowly whittled treasures, textural and encountered partly by their outlines - like seeing a friend’s silhouette approach on a bright sunny day.

Turner’s sculpture, though it arrives at a connected formal state, appears to be generated in a highly energetic one - balance here is achieved after revision and play: putting things together and seeing what that’s like, taking them apart . . . then back together again anew. Completion tenuous and found, the journey floaty and open. Turner’s sculptural work comes into being alongside the artist’s wide ranging and often performative world building and storytelling. At times the works are props for, say, welcoming someone home, transferring a brain from one to another, or envisioned as a friend’s new home, garage, or star ship. One Wicked Mime present’s Turner's monochromes, in which heavily applied color unites the objects beneath, forming a whole whose details are submerged. Form moves to the fore here, and the energy of the artist's process finds placidity and a moment of calm.