2026 The American Mosaic

June 27 - August 29, 2026 EXTENDED THROUGH OCT 17TH!

This exhibition brings together eight artists who have been associated with the gallery. 

Together they represent the diversity that we celebrate on the 250th birthday of the United States of America.

Vian Borchert ~ J. Ford Huffman ~ Lauri Menditto ~ Philippe Mougne ~ Sabrina Pedreira ~ Roberto Werebe ~ Tisha Balesi Wood ~ Helen Zughaib

REVEIWED BY MARK JENKINS From: discerningeye@substack.com

THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE DON’T FEATURE notably in “2026 The American Mosaic,” Watergate Gallery’s apolitical semiquincentennial exhibition, but sculptor J. Ford Huffman makes much of another color troika: red, yellow, and blue. Those primaries serve as individual backdrops for a set of three black stars inset with secondary-color blocks, and decorate a mostly white model of a structure that looks like a Mondrian painting repurposed as a midrise building. It’s one of several pieces evoking early-20th-century artistic developments that were more European than American.

Another of the eight artists, Helen Zughaib, colorizes the light-hued stone of the Washington Monument in a print that’s one in a series internationalizing local landmarks by superimposing vibrant patterns from Middle Eastern fabrics. (Some of these were also seen in “Diasporacity,” a Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library show that closed last month.) The effect is jaunty and playfully disorienting, and entirely compatible with Roberto Werebe’s multi-hued, rakishly geometric renderings of buildings and other subjects (including a trippy tiger).

Elsewhere, blue dominates, notably in painter Vian Borchert’s octet of near-abstract seascapes. Sabrina Pedreira’s tropical land- and waterscapes are also heavy on blue, but the largest is white-on-white, with frond-like shapes incised in the pigment. A more expansive, if muted, palette prevails in Tisha Balesi Wood’s two small expressionist paintings.

Pedreira’s sculptural picture is as sleekly stylized as Phillipe Mougne’s Cubist-style steel statue, a spindly mashup of man and machine. Since they’re made of found objects, Lauri Menditto’s sculptures are funkier. The artist studs lengths of driftwood with reclaimed Potomac River glass, yielding symbolic creatures that appear both bristling and precarious. These are mosaics of a sort, locally sourced but otherwise -- like the rest of this show -- only incidentally American.