For Assimilation/Dissolution, three D.C. area artists engaged in an intensive collaborative project exploring issues of gentrification and identity.  Over the course of six months, Jefferson Pinder, Christopher Hoeting, and Jeffry Cudlin generated a series of 30 works, all equal in size, but disparate in terms of media and imagery.  Every ten to fifteen days, each artist would generate a new artwork; they would then swap these pieces and craft responses to one another’s efforts.  The resulting paintings, videos, collages and combines follow a pattern of call and response, speaking to one another in a definite, escalating progression.

As the collaboration proceeded, threads running through all of the work became apparent.  Techniques and approaches unique to one of the artists were often co-opted by the others.  Loaded or charged imagery appeared here and there throughout the cycle—everything from unscrupulous real estate developers to Sambo images.  Where such high-wattage icons were employed, they often deflected comment as much as they invited it—thus illustrating the difficulties of having a conversation not in words, but in images and objects.  Sometimes the artists reconciled themselves with these images, re-contextualizing or re-imagining them.  Other times they pushed aside their collaborator’s original intentions, burying symbols under accumulated layers of process.

Ultimately, the creation of the works in this show became a metaphor for the development and redevelopment of neighborhoods in the city--of the tangle of intentions, designs, and hidden histories that create a sense of both place and self.  This collaboration opened a discourse between these three artists; it ultimately opens another discourse for the viewer.

ASSIMILATION/DISSOLUTION appeared at Flashpoint Gallery in Washington, DC, from January 19th to February 25th, 2006.  The exhibition was made possible in part by a grant from the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities.  It was reviewed in the Washington Post by Michael O’Sullivan (“Stealing the Show at UMD”).