Today's Top Stop: Avish Khebrehzadeh

Map It:  Dupont Circle 

WE MENTIONED THE AVISH KHEBREHZADEH exhibit at Conner Contemporary Art earlier this month, but it's worth another mention, especially to anyone who lives or works near the Dupont Circle gallery.

Khebrehzadeh was born in Tehran, studied art in Rome and has shown in the U.S., in her native country, in London, Berlin, the Czech Republic, Israel, Switzerland and Denmark. So, like any true internationalist, Khebrehzadeh settled in D.C. In the 10 years she's been here, Khebrehzadeh has become one of her generation's most talked-about artists. She uses both her eclectic history and focused admiration for certain artists and schools in her work, the latest of which can be seen at Conner Contemporary Art, located in Dupont Circle.

A fascination with Giotto and with Piero della Francesca's 15th-century frescoes -- "These people were able to create all sorts of emotions with simple lines," said Khebrehzadeh -- and with the powerful visual lexicon of the Arte Povera movement of late-'60s/early-'70s Italy is evident in her mellow-toned, beautifully drawn pieces. The paintings are of humans or animals, depicted with sensual, evocative lines that are only one part of a literally layered narrative, full of mystery and communication.

"What's very important in my work is the simplicity," said Khebrehzadeh. "The ability to say the maximum with the minimum. I just give [viewers] a clue, and they can enter into the paintings in their own way." Her most expansive piece, "A Swim," combines painting with video animation and contrasts the grand theatricality of a movie palace with a figure's simple and solitary act of moving through water. "The movie is about a character who goes into the ocean -- it's like a journey, the journey of your life. But it also goes back to layering -- layers of identity. There are also layers in society, in culture."

The artist is understandably interested in questions of identity, and the fragile, almost faceless figures are at once familiar and anonymous, citizens of this world and possibly others. "Even if you spend a lot of time by yourself, you are fitting into society in a certain way," she said. "And within society, everyone is, in a sense, an outsider."

» Conner Contemporary Art, 1730 Connecticut Ave. NW; through June 17; 202-588-8750; gallery is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday. (Dupont Circle)
» MORE OF TODAY'S TOP STOPS can be found here.

This post was written by Express' Arion Berger
Image courtesy Connor Contemporary Art