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By Max Pizarro The Georgetown Current Wednesday, March 1, 2000, p. 28 "Reprinted with permission from the Georgetown Current and Max Pizarro"Two weeks remain for the Fraser Gallery's two-man show featuring Randy Asplund's science fiction acrylics and Scott Hutchison's surreal oils. On one wall, Asplund's painstankingly realistic depictions of the Starship Enterprise from the long popular "Star Trek" TV series, and of a Cylon fighter from the short-lived Star Wars copy "Battlestar Galactica" soar into focus. The Michigan artist originally made these paintings for the boxes of plastic models. Shown against brilliant backgrounds of deep space, the spaceships are striking in appearance. For every 100 Spock fans who show up at the gallery in support of their hero's vessel, there's bound to be at least one partisan of Starbuck's who attends on behalf of the surely depleted Battlestar Galactica crowd. In this, his first gallery exhibit, Asplund also shows other non-TV series-related works. These include "The Appeal," in which the artist depicts Death pondering the plea of humanity against the weightier demands of planet Earth. Then there's Hutchison, whose paintings stand on the wall opposite Asplund's. Hutchison's works are by turns comic and terrifying meditations on a world increasingly in the grip of machines, as small-sized human figures writhe desperately at the mercy of mechanical forces in more than one painting. One work, "Specimen," shows a human figure tacked into place under a glass case that could as easily accomodate a monarch butterfly. Another painting depicts a large, androgynous, presumably metallic human figure, slumped in a cabinet amid other utensils. According to Fraser Gallery owner Catriona Fraser, the paintings "exist in a Hutchison- made world on canvas where the artist tenaciously peels away layers of reality and fact to leave a bellicose yet memorable impression on the viewer." The Asplund-Hutchison exhibit will continue at 1054 31st Street, NW through March 15, 2000. © Copyright 2000 The Georgetown Current |
