Sign up for our free newsletter

TO SEPT. 14

Remember that guy in your high school art class who kinda kept to himself and drew weird—but extraordinarily skillful—fantasy scenes that seemed to be inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and the animation scenes in the movie Pink Floyd: The Wall? Well, that guy grew up to be Jeff Kromer. Ozone Studio—a cozy gallery that opened at 14th and P Streets this summer—has mounted a one-man exhibition of more than a dozen of Kromer’s charcoals and pastels on paper. Kromer, in his artist’s statement, calls his work “a cross between surrealism and expressionism,” and that’s as good a description as any. Though he tends to specialize in heads and bodies rather than mechanical forms or landscapes, Kromer’s visual vocabulary is deeply personal: Scary clowns, Medusas, cubist bodies, and screaming heads predominate. Jack of Hearts—nicely mounted in the gallery’s shop-front window—may refer to Kromer’s childhood passion of performing magic tricks. His skull-like Head features the exposed, gritted teeth and expressionist color strokes of a Willem de Kooning Woman. Other works exude the alienated rage of characters in a Francis Bacon painting, and Mother and Child (pictured) features a suckling infant that looks suspiciously like a grown man. Kromer’s cobalt blues and electric greens are so carefully crafted that they look almost airbrushed—a style as distinctive as his subject matter. “Jeff Kromer: Drawings and Pastels” is on view from 4 to 8 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday, to Friday, Sept. 14, at Ozone Studio Gallery, 1404 P St. NW. Free. (202) 986-5749. (Louis Jacobson)