Studio Gallery is open to the public Wednesdays, Thursdays, & Fridays from 1pm to 6pm and on Saturdays from 11am to 6pm. Masks are recommended but optional. To schedule a guided visit, please contact director@studiogallerydc.com or call (202) 232-8734.

Writ On Water

Micheline Klagsbrun

Curated by Aneta Georgievska-Shine

April 23rd - May 17th, 2025

WRIT ON WATER explores the instability of memory and identity. In recent years, my focus on immigration and displacement has deepened my awareness of the significance of ”papers”— documents of passage (visas, letters), family photographs, spiritual texts — fragile yet integral to our sense of self.

I think of my late grandmother’s photo album, my family’s only surviving archive, and the scraps of memory it preserves. I think of what other refugees have carried with them: the remains of a Bible abandoned in the border desert, love letters folded in a pocket, a crumpled photograph tucked into a wallet.

I imagine these precious documents as they change over time — floating, dissolving, disappearing underwater. Yet water, too, holds memory. As words and images dissolve, they drift into the unseen world, preserved in other forms.

My mixed-media works are layered with these scraps, reflecting the elusive nature of identity and remembrance. Many of them begin with the human body as a foundation, inscribed with its own history. Some of these drawings have lifted off the page—expanding, crumpling, and transforming into three-dimensional objects that float in space, like fragments of a book that will never be put together.

In the Lower Gallery

Conceal Reveal

Robert Cwiok

Curated by Gaby Mizes

April 23rd - May 17th, 2025

The Conceal Reveal Series continues my interest in collage and the use of envelope materials that have had a real-world use.  My intent is to transform the security patterns designs which conceal the contents and reveal something else through unique collage compositions. I combine the varied patterns within other geometric shapes forming intricate compositions in an intuitive creative process.  My collages serve as maquettes and are recast as archival pigment prints.  In this way I am able to combine the freshness and spontaneity of collage to achieve my goal of meaningful and lasting work.

DIRECTOR’S CUT

Iza Thomas

Curated by Gaby Mizes

April 23rd - May 17th, 2025

Movie directors’ artistic visions initiate and effect conversations about mortality and pain as well as rebirth, romance and joy in the human condition. I have taken those visions and philosophies of six directors that I adore: Kszysztof Kieslowski, Jane Campion, Akira Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, Agnieszka Holland, and Stanley Kubrick and put them on canvas. My goal was to distill the effect my favorite movies of these directors had on me.

In the Garden Gallery

Fragments of Memory

Amity Chan & Lynda Andrews-Barry

Curated by Iza Thomas and Robert Cwiok

April 23rd - May 17th, 2025

Fragments of Memories brings together two artists whose practices navigate the complex intersections of memory, identity, and place. Through paintings, sculptures, collages, and video installations, Amity Chan and Lynda Andrews-Barry explore how personal histories and political realities shape the landscapes we live in, both real and imagined.

Drawing from her upbringing in Hong Kong, Chan reflects on everyday spaces such as residential buildings, schools, and malls, using personal photographs to reconstruct a childhood shaped by cultural rituals and rapid urban transformation on canvases. Her manga-inspired paintings speak to the cultures she grew up with and her diasporic experience in the U.S., as well as the desire to preserve cultural memory in the face of displacement.

In parallel, Andrews-Barry responds to the political atmosphere of Washington, D.C., using snow globes, mixed media collages, and video installation to examine collective memory and national narratives. Her works translate the volatility of current events into intimate, symbolic forms that call for action and self-expression.

Together, their works reveal memory not as a static archive, but as a shifting terrain shaped by place, time, and the politics of remembering.