artblog

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Cloudy doppelgangers

 

I was clearing out my photo library, moving things to cds and off the computer. You know, trash, trash, move, duplicate, trash. After the big purge, I noticed this nice pair of images left side-by-side in iPhoto. One image is a wall installation by Nami Yamamoto at Vox Populi, from a show several months ago.


The other is a photo I took out a plane window when flying out to the Midwest last month. I believe we were somewhere over Ohio or Michigan. Both images make me smile and I offer them as the sweetness of serendipity...something I can't get enough of.

permanent link  roberta 11:01 AM
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Friday, November 28, 2003

Picks for lawyers

 
I think the penchant for Philadelphia representation in the galleries must reflect the abundance of lawyers here. They all need the touch of an original-but-safe work of art for the office walls, a sure-fire way to impress a client and project gravitas.

In spite of the archaic approach, I thought some of the work had a hint of deeper thinking than I'm gonna make me a pretty landscape or still life or figure study.

At Artist's House, in a show closing Sunday, Leigh Gustafson's landscapes (shown above, "Geneva Mooring") seemed to ponder the universe and water as a symbol for reaching beyond the path of life.

Artist’s House is part of the PAFA alums network, and so it’s no surprise to see this traditional kind of work here. I’m not sure why so many people are doing it, in this day and age, other than the flat-out accomplishment of making something beautiful to look at. It’s unfair to say that all the work that has archaic looks is hidebound and lacks thought. But it does seem fair to question the choice to take so unoriginal an approach, and not to question it.

The show at Artist’s House includes three other artists as well.

Michael Allen's "Freight Train" (shown right) also raised path of life issues – like where the hell did that path go, anyway. His atmospheric charcoal on paper drawings of places were the standouts in his work.

And Anastasia Pollard's "Slayer" (shown left) was a standout among her figure studies and portraits for merging the classical portrait style with some modern content. The subject merging into the ultracool blackground was full of rock star attitude.

The Luis Borrero paintings, lovely sepia-toned oils, look like they were made in Italy 200 years ago in style, and sometimes, alas, in content as well. Only when Borrero moves to quotidien subjects that raise questions of why the old-fashioned painting style does he reach beyond.

The Old Masters of the Western Canon are not the only kind of been-there-done-that approach that seems to be all over the galleries here, lately. There are Old Masters of the African-American Jazz-Influenced Paintings Canon that seem to crop up a lot in Philadelphia. They too are especially nice for a lawyer’s office.

So over at ArtJaz, the pick of the show of work by George Nock was "Heat" (shown) a cast sculpture of baseball great Satchel Paige. The elongated figure mixed heartfelt hero-worship with comic style that snapped me to attention in a show full of work that looked far too familiar.

At Pentimenti, the show “Urban Light” of Tezh Modaressi’s paintings, again is beautiful, with mysterious titles taken from the Persian “Book of Answers.” The image shown is “They Sit With an Answer.” Other than the pleasure of interior light beautifully rendered, I didn’t get much out of this. The settings didn’t offer enough of a story to get me beyond the great paint, the excellent expression of light, an ordinary bare room.

For me, it’s the content as well as the beauty that brings me back to a painting, the suggestion of a back story plus some visual ambiguity. I’m looking for something that tells me about the world—physical and sociological—that we live in, something that tells me about the human condition. And I'm looking for some edge that suggests we're not in safe terrain, that we're challenging assumptions.

I hope I’m not selling all these paintings short, for they all showed accomplishment and beauty. But I can't help but think there’s got to be more to art than this.




permanent link  libby 12:06 PM
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Thursday, November 27, 2003

Unkindest cut of the turkey

 

As a special treat for Thanksgiving today, I present both John Currin's turkey day surprise and Norman Rockwell's, and I have to say they both repel for different reasons, although I would go for the sentimentality of Rockwell before I'd take a bite of that raw, anti-Rockwell turkey that Currin serves up.

There's a lack of generosity in the Currin, a revulsion not just toward the turkey but the people, whose scrawny necks and pointy noses make me think of their unity with the bird. Hey, they look a lot like Frank Purdue, dontcha know!

Rockwell, on the other hand, offers cloying sentimentality, which this time he hasn't undercut with humor. He's put the bird in its place, center but ignored by the guests, who are laughing together, paying no attention to the piece de resistance. Rockwell offers sanity, generosity and affection--he's saying it's all about the family relations, not the damn bird or eating.

Of course, Rockwell's got the magazine illustration affect, whereas Currin has the Old Masters affect. But style seems beside the point. The point is in the iconography.

If I'm choosing a Thanksgiving icon, why select the bitter and nasty? Hey, I like Thanksgiving and I like people and their foibles.
permanent link  libby 10:28 AM
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Wednesday, November 26, 2003

Dispatch from the north pole (8th and Girard, that is)

 

I caught up with Kait Midgett at Project Room yesterday and it sounds like the artist/fabricator’s cooking on all burners these days. Midgett’s business, mold-making and casting sculptural objects, is hopping with projects
-- for Virgil Marti (including his new piece for the Whitney Biennial);
-- for Gabe Martinez (for his upcoming Art Alliance performance/installation, Dec. 13);
-- for Pepon Osorio (for his 2004 ICA show -- in the big, downstairs space, by the way, Midgett says). (image top is Martinez's photo "Gabe, Lee and Patches," 1998)

On the art side of things, next up at PR is “The Making of Bling Bling” in which Midgett will re-create the magic of the one-day art show up at the Tacony-Palmyra flea market -- booth, art stuffs and all, inside the PR space. (Who made work for Bling Bling? As it turns out, a lot of PR’s best buddies -- like Jim Hinz, Pepon Osorio, Mark Shetabi and others).

“The Making of Bling BLing” kicks off at the PR holiday party Dec. 19. (Speaking of kicking, Midgett’s kicking herself that her party’s scheduled for the same night as the opening of Spector’s Red Dot. I suggested she get some minivans and shuttle folks back and forth. Volunteers?)

This year, in the spirit of holiday craft shows everywhere, Midgett's commissioned Stuart Netsky, Joy Feasley, Takatomo Tomita and Jane Irish to make little sculptures that’ll be cast into multiples as holiday candles. She’ll sell the candles -- and other PR “merch”(t-shirts, drinking glasses, etc.) at the holiday party. (image of t-shirt (design by Charles Burns) and glass (design by Clint Takeda) are Project Room "merch")


If you like “merch” check out this New York holiday art/craft party Midgett told me about. It's called “La Superette” and it takes place on two days in two different galleries. Here’s the details, fresh from their press release.

“La Superette” Dec. 14, 1p.m.-7p.m. at Deitch Projects, 13 Wooster; and Dec. 20, 1p.m.-10p.m. at Participant Inc., 95 Rivington. (for more on Participant, read this nice New York Press interview with founder Lia Gangitano.)

Here's the facts, quoting:
“La Superette is an annual celebration, a sale of original functional art favoring process, not art prices. The 6th Superette...will feature...a variety of products, live DJ’s, music, performances, refreshments, and installations of over 90 artists. This year’s performances include:

--(Dec. 14-Deitch Projects): DJ rhizome, Tom Roe, Bebop, Seth of English Kills, Satyrday Knights and Mighty Robot.
--(Dec. 20-Participant Inc): Human Hair, Mondo Mondo, St. Felix Station, Ecobot, Jollyship the Whiz-Bang, The SB, Chris Jordan, and Bruce Lee Secret Agent Society.

And all that sounds like a lot of ho ho ho.
permanent link  roberta 10:23 AM
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Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Holy merda

 

Brian Wallace wrote in with this information about a (now) antique poop art project. Italian artist Piero Manzoni put his stuff in a tin can, and marketed and sold it as "merda d'artista" back in 1961.

I learned at a CBC Arts News Site dated July 8, 2002 that: "The Tate Gallery has paid £22,300 ($52,000) for 30 grams of the feces of Piero Manzoni, a 20th-century Italian concept artist." The article went on to say among other things that the Museum of Modern Art also had a can... and that some of the cans had exploded.

permanent link  roberta 5:51 PM
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Nice and old

 

I'll echo what Libby said below, that is, when running around Old City the other day to look at art, I too had the feeling that many works were treading water. It's like there's a spark missing these days from work appearing in Philadelphia. Everything's all very well done but ...is it me or has somebody popped the balloon?

That said, I did get excited when I saw Romi Sloboda's Korean-influenced prints and collages at LaPelle. (image, left, is "Offering Jar," mixed media, collage on canvas) Beautiful and full of dignity, the mixed-media prints and collographs had a decorative edge. But in their accomplished play with materials and their obvious adherence to old-world art-making (most of the images were of jars), they were seriously contemplative. Technique alone made me want to get up close and keep looking (what looked like hand-made paper was worked both sides and occasionally had collage elements like string).

Then there was a series of small works on mylar that was a complete surprise. (image, right, "Grass and Shadows Black Variation" silkscreen, collage)

Not only did these works not adhere to the eastern motif, but with their edgy, agitated ambiance, they were contemporary as today's news. Nice range in a solo show.
permanent link  roberta 11:12 AM
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Poop is hot

 

Andrew Jeffrey Wright’s art has always had a scatological substream running through it. I thought it was just him. But the other day I heard an interview with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on Fresh Air and it made me think of poop as more of a mainstream phenomena. Is poop cool or what. (image is cartoon from Wright's zine, Bowel Movement Quarterly.)

Of course poop is not art unless you re-contextualize it, right? Take it out of the bathroom and it’s...well more than poop.

The more I thought about poop, the more I remembered it as a real presence in the art world. Tom Friedman’s poop on a pedestal sculpture is surely not only about body functions. Paul McCarthy in his Santa and the elves piece, so memorable in a Whitney Biennial of a few years back, uses the stuff to connote a host of swinish behavior.

(As for those who write about art, they use poop, too -- witness Tom Woolf’s memorable coinage for outdoor public sculpture “the turd in the plaza” in “From Bauhaus to Our House." Everybody thinks it's funny -- but it's kind of serious too. For more on the art-poop context, check out this lively talkback feature hosted by Charlie Finch at Artforum, which starts out with a mention of Wim Delvoye's poop machine Cloaca and goes on in a funny/humorous scatological way.

Anyway, Wright’s scatology (which is mostly underground in his great show at Spector) surfaces in the animated “White bear, brown tail,” a short, action video featuring a teddy bear and a Tootsie roll. Where Wright goes with his poop is right into the realm of humor, where it fits nicely.

All this pooping around is just art transgressing social norms, something it's supposed to do, I guess. I wonder if poop needs its own category in the history books -- portraits, landscapes, poop...Maybe it's time.
permanent link  roberta 10:08 AM
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Old masters vs. olde peculiar

 
I nearly didn't write about some work I saw at Vox Populi a couple of weeks ago. I had gone there to check out the Surveillance Camera Players video clips (see two previous posts, Nov. 4)--most enjoyable and funny, but only one note, afterall--and took a quick look at the other work, took a couple of photos, just in case, and then took my leave and my thoughts in another direction.

But the work of Max Lawrence and Jesse Goldstein had struck a quiet chord that I got louder in recollection. What had seemed thin at first blush suddenly seemed just incomplete.

What made me revisit and rethink was this month's packet of Old City shows of conservative paintings and drawings, all treading ground pounded by earnest artistic feet since the 16th century. Very Philadelphia--beautiful, likable, well-done and unoriginal.

Lawrence and Goldstein's installation, "Olde Peculiar," on the other hand, was totally original. In their vision of rowhouse neighborhoods replete with past incidents remembered by long-term residents, the brick patterns give way to patterns from Persian minitures, each home a mogul palace, the old residents peering out from their windows as men in black prepare to invade.

The rowhouse paradise, with its little trees and Crayola colors, is under seige, the bad memories a permanent threat.

The silkscreened cutouts whomped on the wall to create a little neighborhood feel to me a little flimsy. But that chord is resonating and I hope there's more to come.

The sign at Vox said the show was Lawrence's (in collaboration with Goldstein)--Vox supplied the parentheses. As I long-time collaborator, I always want to know how other people operate. Lawrence said the work was pretty equal with both of them bringing in the patterns and cranking out the work. But because he was the Vox member and not Goldstein, Goldstein got parentheses. That gives the wrong impression. (Lawrence took exception to this comment about attribution. A follow-up post, "Sorta wrong," appears Tuesday, Dec. 2.)
permanent link  libby 9:27 AM
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Sunday, November 23, 2003

Nexus' community gallery

 
The back room on the second floor above Nexus has been created into a nice little installation space that's being curated by a group of people from whom we can expect pieces that are not old-masters retreads.

The group comprises independent curators Julie Courtney and Amy Schlegel, Elyse Gonzales (from the ICA), Kevin Reay (from pogozine.com) and Jacqueline van Rhyn (from the Print Center), who are selecting work from artists who have signed on to InLiquid.com's artists pages.

This show, "Untitled (corner)," by Sharyn O'Mara, is swell to look at--a fiber-optic hive lighting up a dark corner. The object, about 7 feet tall, has a cocoony quality, with a nice, wave-punctuated surface.

O'Mara states on the accompanying blah blah that she's interested in the relationship between land and language and in activating forgotten spaces. This piece seems to have no relationship to land and language. And I don't really know why this particular corner calls for activation. But I did like the almost religious glow of the piece.

One of the two people who tipped me off to see this piece was a neighbor whose Halloween spiderwebs on her front porch are noteworthy for their sculptural drama. I thought there was a resemblance in the webby white filament affect.
permanent link  libby 5:00 PM
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More background worth noting

 
Post from artist Emily Brown

The etching you write about [Nov. 16, in reference to a piece in Brown's show at Gallery Joe]... is in fact a fallen branch, an image especially meaningful to me in October of 2001 when I was first working with Master Printer C.R. Ettinger.
The first state of it is a line etching. The one of which you've written is a later state, worked a year later, which has tones through the addition of spit bite, aquatint and a trace of dry point.

Coincidentally, the day I began working on the latter state, Sept. 11, 2002, a heavy dark wind storm knocked over the tree directly outside Ms. Ettinger's print studio - seeming a tiny but disturbing anniversary echo.

--Emily Brown's work will remain on exhibit at Gallery Joe until Dec. 20.

permanent link  libby 4:30 PM
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Sneakers up

 

Here's a photo of those sneakers Shelley was talking about
[see post earlier today].


permanent link  roberta 3:51 PM
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Real estate update

 
A couple of months ago we tried to confirm rumors that Highwire Gallery, part of the complex of co-op galleries that includes the Clay Studio and Nexus, was going out of business, but we had gotten the wrong wire. What's really happening is the Clay Studio is expanding, thereby pushing Highwire out of its space, according to artist Peter Kinney, one of Highwire's founding members.

So Highwire is searching for a new home, and is looking at space in the Gilbert Building, on Cherry Street, said Kinney. That's the building that's home to the Fabric Workshop, Vox Populi and the Asian Arts Initiative. As someone who treks from gallery to gallery looking at art, I'm happy with any space that's right near other galleries. It makes for some synergy, and makes it more likely that a random viewer will drop by for a look. That particular building has elevators, which would make Highwire accessible to a wider audience (but there are still a few front steps into the building).

When I stopped in at Highwire, I found Kinney doodling with mud on paper, mud being his preferred medium, while he babysat the paintings for fellow Highwire founding member Joe Plagemen. I confess to having not much of a sensibility for whether work is made of natural or otherwise wasted products. Some of the pieces, many of them bark rubbings, were nice to look at("Liferiver" detail shown, charcoal brickette on what looked like a bed sheet), but mostly, even when the images captured, the drapy sheets depressed me.

So if someone else who follows this kind of work and thinks I'm missing the boat here has something else to say, please weigh in.
permanent link  libby 10:52 AM
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In the street

 
post from Eric McDade

Since we're on the subject, I thought some of you might find this interesting, if you aren't already aware of this site: http://www.toynbee.net/

permanent link  eric 10:50 AM
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Found up on the wire

 
Post by Shelley Spector

The best public/found art I have ever seen in Philly is right in front of my gallery, SPECTOR, on Bainbridge between 5th and 6th. It is a pair of sneakers -- actual size -- that are made out of plywood and attached to each other by a shoelace. Someone made them and threw them over the telephone wire. If you don't look carefully they seem 3D and real, especially since someone threw a real pair next to them. There is another pair at 3rd and South. [Ed. --stay tuned for pictures of these sneakers coming soon.]

I noticed them about five years ago and have tried to find out who made them. Does anyone know?

--See Shelley Spector's art online at her website. Spector Gallery's current show is "Declasse" solo and collaborative work by Andrew Jeffrey Wright of Space 1026.
permanent link  roberta 9:33 AM
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