Mark Jenkins | December 10, 2024

The math is a bit more complicated in "Two X" than the Hemphill Artworks group show's title suggests. The selection presents 14 artists (six of them deceased) paired as seven duos. Several of the contributors, however, are represented by multiple works. Also, some of the pieces -- all made between 1960 and 2024 -- speak articulately to ones to which they're not officially linked.

Wayson R. Jones's "Kinshasa," for example, is an abstract 3D painting, rendered in two tones of blue, that's offered in dialogue with an untitled Leon Berkowitz picture whose soft, flat hues flow from blue to red to yellow. But the craggy relief forms in Jones's painting suggest the wave and criss-cross patterns in two white-on-white Robin Rose sculptural pictures. And Rose's icy palette harmonizes with the minimalism of a Ruri Yi painting that neatly arrays 12 lozenges in close shades of white and off-white.

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December 11, 2024

HEMPHILL presents “TWO X”, a group exhibition exploring the interconnectedness of art across generations. Running through December 21, this show invites viewers to reflect on how the dialogue between works by artists from different times can illuminate the shared essence of artistic expression.

Instead of adhering to conventional categorizations like period or style, “TWO X” focuses on pairings that highlight the personal and communal resonance of art, asking visitors to consider the broader narrative of creativity that connects us through time and across cultures. The exhibition aims to foster an appreciation for art’s enduring role in human experience, regardless of its context or origins.

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Book Event & Signing
HEMPHILL Artworks

November 23, 2024
11 am

HEMPHILL is pleased to announce Julie Wolfe's newest publication in collaboration with Pan & The Dream, The Beholder.  Please join us on Saturday, November 23, 2024, for the book event & signing with artist, Julie Wolfe.

Click here to RSVP

The Kreeger Museum
On view October 26, 2024 - February 1, 2025

HEMPHILL is pleased to share The Collaborative | The DMV Collects the DMV on view at The Kreeger Museum through February 1, 2025.

This exhibition is presented under The Collaborative, a program developed by The Kreeger Museum in 2021 to support Washington-area artists.

HEMPHILL Artists Featured:

Rush Baker IV, Leon Berkowitz, William Christenberry, Steven Cushner, Gene Davis, Mary Early, Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, Jacob Kainen, Kevin MacDonald, Renée Stout, Julie Wolfe

Click here to learn more.

Occurring between full night and sunrise or between sunset and full night, twilight is the soft glow from the sky when the sun is below the horizon. This phenomenon is caused by the refraction and scattering of the sun’s rays from the atmosphere.

Twilight 1, captures this moment with lines of radiating color that appear to be floating in the heavens. It is also reminiscent of the Magnitude of Equality series with rays of color that serve as systems of equal representation. 

~Julie Wolfe

Please stop by the gallery to see Twilight 1 hanging in the front office.

JULIE WOLFE
Twilight 1, 2020
acrylic on canvas
36 x 48 inches

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November 13, 2023
Author Rosana Lukauskaitė
Published in Review from Lithuania

Meanwhile the exhibition ‘The Glow’, curated by Agnė Jonkutė and shown at the Pamėnkalnio galerija until November 4, delves into the essence of colour within minimalist art... Julie Wolfe’s Summary of Evidence transforms pages from William Matthews’ 1939 book Climate and Evolution into a visual study of change and endurance. By treating the pages with chlorophyll and subjecting them to sunlight, Wolfe creates a natural gradation of green hues, an artistic commentary perhaps on the interplay between knowledge and the inexorable forces of nature.

Click here to read the full article.

October 6 - November 4, 2023

HEMPHILL is pleased to share Julie Wolfe's inclusion in LACONICA: THE GLOW at Pamėnkalnio Galerija in Lithuania. The exhibition was curated by Agnė Jonkutė and is on view from October 6 - November 4, 2023.

The idea for the exhibition came from a rethinking of the strict black/white monochrome of the 2021 Laconica Biennial exhibitions, which led to the contrasting choice to reflect on the meaning of colourfulness in the language of minimalist art...

The Glow is one of the events of the Laconica biennial of visual art. The Biennial was conceived as a space and a platform for artists who develop minimal/minimalist ways of thinking, using such keywords as reduction of form, reserved narrative, abstractness, aesthetics of silence, etc. The events of the 2021 Laconica Biennial were interested in the links between monochrome and minimalist poetry. This year's exhibitions focus on the field of phenomena of colour and olfactory (scents) art.

Special Collections Gallery, Charles Marvin Fairchild Memorial Gallery
July 17 - October 13, 2023

HEMPHILL is pleased to share Julie Wolfe's inclusion in Scientific Illustration: Sampling Across the Collections at the Special Collections Gallery in the Georgetown University Library.

This exhibition brings together some of the most magnificent examples of scientific illustration in the Booth Family Center for Special Collections, as well as some of the more curious and most speculative. Works of art, influenced by and influencing the sciences, share space with the illustrations throughout the exhibition.

Click here to learn more.

Please join us in the gallery for a Book Signing Event to celebrate Julie Wolfe's newest launch, Apophenia.

The forthcomimg book, Apophenia taps into the optical unconscious to reveal something essential about perception.
Through juxtaposing images across the pages, patterns emerge through free association, unleashing apophenia—the process by which humans make meaning out of incidental images.

There will be a limited number of books available for purchase at the event on June 15, 2023.

Join us in the gallery for a conversation between artists Julie Wolfe and Tim Doud on the occasion of Wolfe's Exhibition "Opposing Forces," on view September 10 - October 29, 2022. Wolfe and Doud will walk visitors through the gallery to discuss the conception of Wolfe's newest body of work and the sequencing of the artworks in this exhibition.

Doors will open at 10am and the program will begin promptly at 10:15. Please note there will be no seating provided, the speakers will move throughout the gallery during the talk. Attendance is limited and reservations are required.

Since 1998, the ART TALKS series at Hemphill has included educational lectures on topics such as collecting for beginners, artist talks, and panel discussions on issues in contemporary art.

This event is Sold Out - Register for the waiting list

Join us in the gallery to view and discuss Julie Wolfe's recent limited edition artist books and folios incorporating silkscreen, digital printing and collage. Recent publications include Cradling the Singing Bird (2022), Wonderland: The Optical Unconscious (2022), Completing the Bestiary (2022), Travelogue (2021), and Wildfires & Dreamfields (2020).

Conversation with Collector Laura Roulet featuring Nekisha Durrett and Julie Wolfe

May 26 | 11am-12pm EST

Collector Laura Roulet will lead us on a virtual slide tour of her collection of works on paper. Joining her in conversation will be DC-area artists Nekisha Durrett and Julie Wolfe.

Click here for more information.

Created in conjunction with the Julie Wolfe exhibition at HEMPHILL, this video surveys the suite of five prints on display in the gallery and explores the artist's process of creating the limited edition Artist Book, Wildfires and Dreamfields.  

Artist: Julie Wolfe
Copyright: Visual: HEMPHILL Artworks, Music: Ledah Finck 2020
Photography & Video Footage: Julie Wolfe
Video Editing: Hannah Davis
Music: The Hands & Cambium Composed by Ledah Finck 
Performed by Ledah Finck and Nick Saia

View on Vimeo

This coloring book was created during the shelter-in-place period of 2020. Thanks to the artists for their participation and inspiration. Art endures and so will we. Be well and thank you for continued support. 

Please enjoy this short video detailing the conception and evolution of Julie Wolfe's new series, Opposing Forces. Created during the isolation period of COVID-19, Opposing Forces asks questions without fixed answers. Wolfe reassembles the building blocks of geometry, mathematics, color theory and perception to probe us, provoke us, and propose that images can teach us about ourselves in ways that words cannot. How do we un-think color or form? What compels us, chaos or order? Are we innately drawn to one or the other and, if so, what does that say about us as we chart our experiences and reactions in the face of uncertainty?

JULIE WOLFE
Opposing Forces
2020
acrylic and ink on found book page
13 1/4" x 19 1/2" each

by Mark Jenkins, Washington Post

by Kaylee Dugan, Brightest Young Things

Julie Wolfe’s newest publication, Dream Sequel Series: Under Their Gaze We Become Creatures will be available for purchase on August 1, 2019. Recent prints, paintings and drawings are juxtaposed with images from the artist’s collection of second-hand books based on outdated psychoanalysis theories, art history and natural science. The photographic images are reordered, distorted, merged and arranged into the book in a way that stages random associations between facing pages that might be in dialogue and taking on new meanings.

For a limited time, a curated selection of new paintings, drawings, book pages and prints by Julie Wolfe will be installed in the gallery's viewing room. Email us at gallery@hemphillfinearts.com to schedule an appointment. 

Please join us for a viewing of Landview Effect, a new series of art books and print portfolios by Julie Wolfe, on Saturday, April 21 from 11:00am - 1:00pm. 

Stephanie Rudig, Washington City Paper

"This isn’t just a Color School roundup, however: The show includes artists deploying color to completely different ends, like the trippy pattern-based work of Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi, as well as some varying landscape photography artists like Anne Rowland and William Christenberry."

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"The third paradise the D.C. artist seeks is one in which nature, technology and humanity all flourish. She evokes this in pictures that suggest both organic and electronic systems, or by juxtaposing black-and-white photos with areas of pure color."

Claire Voon, Hyperallergic

"Julie Wolfe tries to make sense of the natural world by gathering and categorizing all kinds of sights and objects that offer no scientific information but inspire search for meaning, like puzzles."

Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper

"As a painter, Julie Wolfe doesn’t rely on any single visual system. Light and color are abundant in “Language of the Birds,” Wolfe’s solo show at Hemphill Fine Arts, her third, but those qualities are sometimes all that carries over from one work to the next. If Wolfe were a bird, she would be a hummingbird, moving from flower to flower in a way that looks frenetic but betrays precision."

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"Housed in some 500 glass bottles stacked on metal shelves, the water, sediment and vegetation samples on display in the window of 1700 L St. NW look like a science project. But the contents of the jars, illuminated from behind, also glow with vivid reds, purples and blues, resembling a color-field painting that has been disassembled and liquefied."

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"Several mini-shows nestle within “Represent,” Hemphill Fine Arts’s 20th-anniversary exhibition."

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"If the personal is political, these grandiose, dysfunctional structures are calling artist-citizens to take to the streets (or, more likely, cul-de-sacs)."

Matthew Smith, Washington City Paper

"The show focuses on artistic civic engagement—artists that are out of their studios and walking the streets. Mostly culled from the gallery’s stable of artists, 'Artist-Citizen' presents works that speak through the city itself."

Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post

"For millennia, pigments were derived directly from plants, metals and gems. More recently, synthetic dyes were developed, and human-made contaminants began discoloring the natural world. These are among the motifs of 'Rewilding,' Julie Wolfe’s show at Hemphill Fine Arts."

Kriston Capps, Washington City Paper

"'Rewilding,' a solo show by Julie Wolfe at Hemphill Fine Arts, gestures at an ambivalent state between nature and civilization: reclamation, either in terms of preservation or, perhaps, something darker and more apocalyptic.

Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post

"With this title, the Washington-based painter of nature-themed abstraction questions our disconnection with nature, inviting us to reevaluate our place in it."