Mount Vernon may make up in gallery space what it lacks in retail space, but a new multimedia facility at the 800 block of N. Charles St. is trying to make a bridge between the fine arts and commercial design.
The Mission Space gallery, a corporeal part of the less-tangible umbrella of Mission Media, Inc., is currently hosting an exhibit of photographs by Bruce Willen and paintings by Frank Lombardo.
Willen chose Baltimore as the subject for many of his photographs, but this is a Baltimore that most of us haven't seen up close - particularly parts of the city's industrial districts,.
Willen not only tries to focus on forgotten buildings of the modern age, but he also manages to make us look at them differently. The night-time photographs end up making the most banal objects, and buildings and scenes seem awash in color and geometric abstraction. In many of the pictures, the texture of pavement seems almost fleshy, adding an organic element to the otherwise-plastic-and-concrete images depicted in his works.
The photographs are broken up by Frank Lombardo's paintings - mostly portraits - that call attention to what the artist himself describes as the "relaxed confidence" of the painted subjects, whose names make up the titles of the works.
The muted colors of the flesh - dotted, strangely, by reddish splotches - and surroundings of these paintings are an interesting accompaniment to the photographic works, and vice versa.
Both artists are MICA students, although Willen might be better known to young Baltimoreans for his Modest Mouse concert posters and work on some of the images used to publicize the Johns Hopkins Film Festival.
Although I still don't get what Mission Media, Inc., does, exactly - besides their Web and print work, they now have an audio studio - we can thank them for being one of the most exciting additions to the Mount Vernon gallery district. And besides the visual art, since June they've been staging some mighty fine rock shows.
To find out more about Mission Media Incorporated, visit http://www.missionmediainc.com.
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