Modern or Retro? Let's Call it a Draw. 

By Michael O'Sullivan

Washington Post Staff Writer 

Friday, August 22, 2008; Page WE24

It's 2008. Do you know where your children are?

Forgive the paraphrase, but in the context of contemporary art, the answer might surprise you. Chances are, if your kid is in -- or just out of -- art school, he or she is probably off somewhere . . . drawing pictures.

Yes, drawing. I thought that went out with the rotary telephone.

Not so, at least according to "Introductions4," Irvine Contemporary's fourth annual exhibition of rising American talent, from schools as far away as San Francisco. Of the nine young artists featured, six are represented by that most traditional of art forms.

· Christina Empedocles, of the California College of the Arts?

Waxed pencil on paper.

· Adam Frezza, of the University of Florida?

Graphite on paper.

· David Linneweh, of Southern Illinois University?

Line drawing (and paint) on wood panel.

· Matthew Woodward, of the New York Academy of Art?

Mixed media and graphite on paper.

For the sake of argument, I count Jimmy Joe Roche and Becky Alprin (both of the Maryland Institute College of Art) as draftsmen, too. Although you could argue that their work is sculpture, Roche's 8-by-8-foot wall installation of hand-cut paper is really nothing more than a large 3-D drawing, albeit one made with a blade instead of a pencil. Same for Alprin's bas-reliefs, put together from wafer-thin cutouts of white and black acrylic. To my eye, they're closer to drawing than to sculpture.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying.

The works range from the meticulously representational to pure abstraction. Empedocles draws and paints birds; Linneweh and Woodward, architecture and architectural details. Roche, on the other hand, makes something that looks like a giant Rorschach inkblot. In between you'll find Frezza, a surrealist version of Rube Goldberg, and Alprin. Although her cookie-cutter shapes evoke both natural and man-made forms, they resemble nothing so much as an old set of Colorforms, minus the color.

How retro. And in an odd way, how refreshing.

Empedocles is the most interesting of the bunch. Both painter and draftsman, she doesn't make pictures of birds so much as pictures of pictures of birds. Drawn from field-guide illustrations, not life, her art isn't really about birds at all but about memory, the nature of seeing and art itself.

By now, you're probably thinking, "What happened to all the photography, sculpture and video art?"

"Introductions4" includes only one artist in each of those disciplines. As with many a student show, the work fluctuates between fresh and derivative. Take photographer Andrea Land of the San Francisco Art Institute. Her haunting pictures of girls in their rooms call to mind the surrealism of Ralph Eugene Meatyard or the sexual charge of Sally Mann. And yet their power to unsettle is all their own. Are they environmental portraits? Staged tableaux?

Reid Bingham gives us three videos shot with a camera that's sometimes moving faster than its subjects (see story at right).

Sculptor Sebastian Martorana is serious one minute, cracking jokes the next. His "Anonymous: An Un-commissioned War Memorial" features a faceless marble bust with a star-shaped hole in the back of its head. Heavy stuff. Less weighty, and far wittier, is the artist's "Ode to Ice Cream," a series of memorials to the evanescent pleasures of the frozen dessert, carved with deft trompe-l'oeil skill out of marble, alabaster, limestone and soapstone. Like the others in this show, he's a master of his craft, though he's still figuring out what to say with it.

People often complain that art schools don't teach the fundamentals anymore. "Introductions4" is proof that they still do.

Introductions4 Through Sept. 6 at Irvine Contemporary, 1412 14th St. NW (Metro: Dupont Circle) Phone:202-332-8767 Hours: Open Tuesday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission: Free