December 14, 2019 – February15, 2020
Opening Reception Saturday, December 14, 2019, 7pm-10pm: RSVP HERE
In Treasure. Trash. Pleasure. Play. artists Joseph McCloskey, Imogen Thomas, Gabriela Mary, Lilian Merrill, Natalie Slater, and Vica G.H. respond to commodity culture with an assertion that alchemy resides only in our changed perspective: Objects discarded by the masses and salvaged from oblivion are imbued with opulence as their trash essence is embraced by the artists.
October 5, 2019 – November 30, 2019
Opening Reception Saturday, October 5, 2019, 7pm-10pm: RSVP HERE
Sweet but Psycho, Once upon a time, in this avant-garde fairytale known as STRANGELAND, BUNNi and GOATFACE find their two worlds collide while exploring the superficial construct of reality. To celebrate their new co-dependent relationship, BUNNi and GOATFACE welcome visitors to a sweet but psychotic housewarming party into their handmade dreamlike installation at OLLY OLLY.
May 25, 2019 – July 20, 2019
Opening Reception Saturday, May 25, 2019, 7pm-10pm: RSVP HERE
In Somewhere Between You and Me, young nonbinary transgender artists intimately seek to understand and bring understanding to what it means to experience life as a nonbinary person: the desire to connect, little room for uninfluenced exploration of self, isolation, tenderness, whatever it is to exist while trying to discover who they could've been without the initial, culturally imposed pressure to exist as man or woman, and who they are despite that ongoing pressure.
May 2, 2019 – May 11, 2019
Opening Reception Thursday, May 2, 2019, 6pm-8pm: RSVP HERE
XYZ explores how personal narrative and expression shape the way we relate to one another. Engaging ideas of multiplicity, repetition and diversity, XYZ aims to celebrate the personal and unique experiences of the individual. This selection of portraiture, illustration, photography and video art investigates the commonalities of experience, turning ‘me’ into ‘us’ and ‘I’ into ‘we.’
March 16, 2019 – April 27, 2019
Opening Reception Saturday, March 16, 2019, 7pm-10pm: RSVP HERE
Special viewing hours Fridays and Saturdays from 11am-3pm
In Self and Others, Jeff Duka’s works position and consider the self as nebulous, an ephemeral and temporal network. The muted opacity of his portraits suggests the occult and ever-shifting balance between what we do and do not share about ourselves, as well as between what we are and are not permitted or able to know about others.
September 15, 2018 – November 3, 2018
Opening Reception Saturday, September 15 2018, 7pm-10pm: RSVP HERE
Special viewing hours Mondays & Thursdays from 11am - 3pm
This body of work sets out to unite my visual contemplations on femininity, power and sexuality. In a way, it is somatic therapy - reuniting the body I have been at war with my whole life with my fluctuating sense of self. Taking back my ‘self’ from my dissociative states and claiming my sexuality as empowerment rather than using it as a form of self-harm.
May 12, 2018 – July 28, 2018
Opening Reception Saturday, May 12 2018, 7pm-10pm: RSVP HERE
Special viewing hours Mondays & Thursdays from 11am - 3pm
Rooted in a disembodied exploration of hyphenated identity, Mojdeh Rezaeipour's ephemeral mixed media works take us on an archeological search for wholeness and belonging. In Fractal Futures, she engages with space, the body and natural elements to invite us to consider transformation through fractal imagination. Working with nature as both a medium and a muse, she examines her own process of healing individually and interpersonally, and continues to pose questions about what makes change possible on a collective, universal level.
January 31, 2018 — March 3, 2018
Public Reception Wednesday, January 31, 2018, 7pm-10pm: RSVP HERE
Celebrating the primal orgasmic energy of creation, Olly Olly is pleased to present The Alchemy of the Sex Witch and Other Tales of Love. As we continue to heed the call and power of playfulness let us immerse ourselves in an extravagant cuddle coven dripping with crystals and glitter and infused with sacred obscenity, sacral chakra energy, sensual revelry, spell casting, and the radical, alchemical powers of bliss, joy, pleasure, laughter, empathy, and community.
October 14, 2017
Public Reception Saturday, October 14, 2017, 4pm – 6pm: RSVP HERE
The Youth Art Re-Imagining Community Project presents a series of banners created by local high school students to promote equity and social change. The Youth Art Re-Imagining Community Program—a partnership between the Fairfax County Department of Neighborhood and Community Services and Police Department, and George Mason University School of Art—represents a unique intersection of youth art and social change established to address social and racial inequities in youth opportunity.
July 22--August 19, 2017
Reception - Saturday July 22, 2017, 8pm-10pm
Because sometimes the darkest hour calls for the brightest lights, Olly Olly presents Beyond the Blacklight, an all-blacklight group show curated by Tariq Omar. Because we can’t allow every moment to be an existential crisis. Because we need to heed the call of playfulness and light. Because night. Because summer. Because love. Because we know you’re truly dazzling and deserve to be bathed in glowing purple and surrounded by vibrant fluorescent sensations.
May 20--July 8, 2017
Reception - Saturday May 20, 2017, 7pm-10pm
Talk Show immerses us in a world of glitter, harvest gold, shag carpet, and mad talk. Inviting us to explore corporate media bias as well as reconstruct and deconstruct the role of the public intellectual in 21st century U.S. life, politics, art, music, and thought, Talk Show juxtaposes laugh track fueled soundscapes, gluttonous green room indulgence, 1970s faux glamour kitsch decadence, collaborative conversation based performance, and inclusive deep listening.
February 4-March 18, 2017
Reception - Saturday, February 4, 2017, 7pm –10pm
The world's major religions all have similar themes of the world coming to an end, signaled by an unimaginable battle, a period of intense turmoil and chaos, leading eventually to messianic redemption. In addition to the major religions, some groups, movements and uprisings that have eschatology at the core, catalyze these beliefs into an outright revolt. End-of-the-world beliefs encompass struggles with mortality, group fates, connectedness and inform utopian/dystopian philosophies.
November 26, 2016 -- One Night Only
Reception - Saturday, November 26, 2016, 7pm – 9pm
Who says size matters? We do! And we’re featuring teeny tiny artwork on the walls of Olly Olly! Can’t afford a grown up piece of art? Don’t cry about it! Adopt a Baby Canvas!
October 1 – November 5, 2016
Opening Reception - Saturday, October 1, 2016, 7pm – 10pm
Olly Olly is pleased to present Flesh. Flesh continues a tradition of spirited and revelatory sexual discourse. Come and join us for fearlessly erotic invocations of self-care, sustenance, desire, openness and joy that ask us to slow down and savor a multitude of sexualities, bodies, genders and mindfully empowered and embodied creative energies. Experience a playful and biting irreverent peepshow juicy with truth. Flesh unravels the politics of pleasure and celebrates unrestrained expressions of sexual freedom and liberation in the face of ignorance, repression and misogyny.
August 27 – September 17, 2016
Opening Reception - Saturday, August 27, 2016, 7pm – 10pm
Olly Olly is pleased to present Lush Life. Co-curated by Yue Li, Lush Life is an immersive and experiential hyper-color art exhibition that creates a dreamy world of luscious extravagance. Deliciously subversive and absurd, Lush Life interrogates materialism, contrasts excessiveness with art-world sustainability, and connects the artistic fantasy to the mundanity of the artist’s day-to-day life and practice.
July 23 – August 20, 2016
Opening Reception - Saturday, July 23, 2016, 7pm – 10pm
Olly Olly, an alternative art space in Fairfax, VA, is pleased to present Making Space, co-curated by Anne Smith. Making Space is an exhibition of artists whose work investigates an awareness of built space, especially the unexpected peculiarities found in rigid structures of architecture and infrastructure. Built structures able to be measured and marked on a map or blueprint become more complex and open-ended in the work of these artists. A wall, a window, a road, or a curb are shown as more than a nameable quantity, but contain tension, uncertainty, humor, and wonder.
May 21, 2016 – June 18, 2016
Opening Reception - Saturday, May 21, 2016, 7pm – 10pm
Olly Olly is pleased to present Manifesto, an exhibition of five new collections of art by the artists of the Bunnyman Bridge Collective. Featuring sculpture, installation, painting, collage, photography, video, multi-sensory pleasure participation, and embedded sub rosa performance, Manifesto will put on public display private obsessions ranging from hedonism to metamorphosis, from pollution to esoteric science, and including the assertion that we are all sacred.
February 29, 2016 – March 31, 2016
Opening Reception - Saturday, March 5, 2016, 7pm – 10pm
Olly Olly is pleased to present Domestic Territories, a new exhibition of art curated by Sarah Irvin. For the exhibition, Domestic Territories, DC area artists were invited to consider how they negotiate the use of household space with their children. The work in the exhibition investigates physical and emotional spaces that are separate, shared or disputed.
January 30, 2016 – February 27, 2016
Closing Reception - Saturday, February 20, 2016, 7pm – 10pm
Olly Olly is pleased to present Embracing the Power of Artistic Practice, a new collection of art in conjunction with Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC 2016, a book arts and cultural festival taking place throughout the Washington, DC area from January through March 2016 commemorating the 2007 bombing of Baghdad’s historic book selling street. Inspired by the couplet of 10th century Iraqi poet Al-Mutanabbi, “If you see the lion bare its teeth/do not assume the lion is smiling,” Embracing the Power of Artistic Practice features work in a variety of mediums by six DC area artists.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
One Night Only Event
Who says size matters? We do! And we’re featuring teeny tiny artwork on the walls of Olly Olly! Can’t afford a grown up piece of art? Don’t cry about it! Adopt a Baby Canvas!
Join Olly Olly and our fabulous co-curator Jennifer Crawford on Saturday, November 28, from 7pm-10pm for Baby Canvases Five!
September 26, 2015 – November 7, 2015
Closing Reception - Thursday, November 5, 2015, 6pm – 9pm
Olly Olly is pleased to present Threshold, a new collection of art inviting the viewer to wander the ambiguous borders of liminality and its edge regions to enter realms of fluidity that exist between dream and reality, drifting and arriving, fragmentation and continuity, desire and satisfaction. Featuring printmaking and performance, Threshold will also explore the interplay of bodies through ritual, the making of art and meaning, passageways, points of access, and transition.
June 6, 2015 – July 18, 2015
Opening Reception - Saturday, June 6, 2015, 7pm – 10pm
Olly Olly is pleased to present a new art exhibition, Ephemeral, inspired by the elusive here and now, and the role of delicate forms of reality at play in the understanding of emotion, life, and meaning making. On Saturday, June 6, 2015, from 7pm to 10pm, spend an evening with the artists:
March 28, 2015 – April 11, 2015
Opening Reception - Saturday, March 28, 2015, 7pm – 10pm
Olly Olly is pleased to present a new art exhibition, Cut/Tear. This exhibition of new work invites you to question and understand notions of embedded ideas and situations torn asunder and reassembled to form a multitude of hybrid worlds and uncanny juxtapositions. On Saturday, March 28, 2015, from 7pm to 10pm, spend an evening with the artists:
January 24, 2015 – February 6, 2015
Opening Reception - Saturday, January 24, 2015, 7pm – 10pm
Olly Olly is pleased to present its inaugural pop-up art exhibition, Bodylore, an exploration of the human figure and an investigation into the body as social construct, tradition, myth, and fairytale. On Saturday, January 24, 2015, from 7pm to 10pm, spend an evening with the artists: