TO MARCH 29
Greg Hannan condemns the idea of seeking refuge from sin in remote communities. “You’re foreign matter, and someone’s not going to like it,” says the Washington-based artist (whose Making a Saint #1 (St. Theresa Avila) is pictured). Hannan should know: He went to Nova Scotia in the ’70s after burning out as a “narcotics-treatment official.” He’s gone back seasonally ever since. His found-objects assemblages made of slices of splintered wood, corroded rubber, sea glass, and buoy parts, many artificially aged with salt and urineare invariably metaphors for the evil he sees in communities of all sizes. There’s the small-town villainy of denial and intolerance, exemplified in a dessicated skate carcass whose folds have collapsed into a ghastly, human leer. And there’s evil on the macro scale, represented in pieces like Abbadon and Logo. An extrapolation of a toy soldier, Abbadon is military dogmatism personifiedit has no head, and its torso faces ass-backwards. The piece is a mockup for a Belfast memorial, never built because town officials feared their working-class Protestant citizenry would do its creator harm. In Logo, Hannan mocks the human tendency to cover ugliness with affable words and images: However you want to describe the loathsome, leechlike piece, the thing itself remains unchanged. These works and more are on view from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday, and by appointment, to Saturday, March 29, at Signal 66, 926 N St. NW. Free. (202) 842-3436. (John Metcalfe)