artblog

Saturday, May 01, 2004

The people's gallery

 

People were actually standing in line to purchase printouts of Zoe Strauss's photographs. That's the line to your left, underneath I-95 at Mifflin Street in South Philadelphia, where Strauss set up her self-produced art gallery.

Strauss was selling her work at $5 a pop, which doesn't mean her photos aren't terrrific. (She was in Arcadia's Works on Paper show this winter, in case you forgot). The price and quality help explain why people were lining up. Besides, everyone likes a bargain.

The photos are deadpan shots of the world as we fail to see it. All the stuff that we delete out as background becomes her subject.

The prints were posted on the I-95 support columns for a two-hour art show, today; miraculously, the space took on some of the aura of her photos. Each column had its own ideosyncratic pits, markings and cracks. Overhead, the hum of the autos on the interstate, also a background noise that we don't pay attention to, was punctuated by tires hitting the seams in the roadway.

The printouts, posted a max of one per column side, are up with water-soluble paste, and after the show they will remain until people or the elements pull them down.

This democratic approach to art was a big hit. People of all ages showed up, and some looked like South Philly locals.

The logistics were carefully thought out--of professional gallery quality. To figure out what print you want or what it's named, Strauss numbered each one in sidewalk chalk on the paving underfoot (there were 153 images!). On the reverse side of the list of prints, she also had a grid-like map showing which column had which print.

It took Strauss six months to prepare for the show, she said.

During the show, I heard that Strauss had recently gotten a commission from Peter Shaw for these pictures to hang at the St. James, a building going up at 8th and Walnut. She confirmed the news and said they'll be framed and will hang in the hallways.
permanent link  libby 7:11 PM
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Friday, April 30, 2004

Where the money goes

 

$899,782 AWARDED TO 10 PHILADELPHIA ORGANIZATIONS.

Artblog learned that tomorrow Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative (PEI) will announce nearly $900,000 in awards to Philadelphia area art institutions for exhibits and planning.

Ten grants have been awarded: Five for exhibitions ($802,220) and five for planning ($97,562) for a total of $899,782. That brings to nearly $6 million PEI's investment in the local art community over the last seven years.

The five exhibition grant recipients are:

* Asian Arts Initiative ($200,000) for Chinatown In/Flux, site-specific projects by seven artists including Philadelphia's Mei Ling Hom
* Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts ($161,730) for a site-specific installation by New Yorker Ellen Harvey using video projections, mirrors and wall drawings to comment on PAFA architecture and art (image top just a few inches wide mounted on construction siding on East 59th Street in Manhatten is from Harvey's "New York Beautification Project")

* Abington Art Center ($122,490) for a site-specific exhibit by artist J. Morgan Puett on the Quaker notion of the "everyday" as sacred
* Philadelphia Museum of Art ($118,000) for a historical exhibition Pontormo, Bronzino and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait
* University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives ($200,000) for a survey of the architecture and design of Antonin and Noemi Raymond

Abington Art Center, Asian Arts Initiative, University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts are first-time recipients of PEI grants.


Planning grants went to these five:

* The Print Center ($18,397) for a camera obscura exhibit with artists Ann Hamilton, Vera Lutter, and Abelardo Morell (shown is Morell's 1997 camera obscura image* of Times Square)
* Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, The University of the Arts ($19,165) for an exhibit on overlooked women Pop artists
* The Fabric Workshop and Museum ($20,000) for community art initiatives
* Institute of Contemporary Art ($20,000) for exhibit of artists influenced by German artist Martin Kippenberger
* The Rosenbach Museum & Library ($20,000) for exploring artists' interventions and performances at the museum

We at artblog are bowled over by PEI, which has dragged the Philadelphia art scene into the 21st century, bringing in such shows as "Wallpower at ICA" and the upcoming Olafur Eliasson installation at Arcadia. (Image is Eliasson's installation seen recently at the Tate Modern. Eliasson's will do something quite different for Philadelphia.)

By the way, PEI is an arm of Pew Charitable Trusts which also brings us the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, which should be announcing its 2004 recipients in early June.

* copyright Abelardo Morell
permanent link  libby and roberta 1:45 PM
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Big Bang

 

We got a heads up from Chris Vecchio the other day about a great sounding show of sound art so we thought we'd make some noise about it.

The show, "Subtle Nothings" at Borowsky Gallery, is part of the ICA-sponsored "Big Nothing." Vecchio, who shows at Nexus, is the local boy we recognized in a lineup that includes powerhouses Meredith Monk (shown with Ann Hamilton in their piece "Mercy") and Liz Phillips.


Vecchio's doing an installation, called "Sparkly Cube" (shown above). It's an interactive piece that samples from a wide range of sources including police scanners, popular music, short wave and CB radio, and shared audio files.

Techno wizard Vecchio says he's done tests on the new object. "Judging by preliminary tests conducted in my living room it should be a lot of fun. You pick up the cube and rotate it to navigate through an array of over 500 sound samples."



Other artists featured in this show: Andy Holtin, Antenna and David McQueen. Ray Rapp (shown "Strobe"), also in this show, is currently featured in the "Working in Brooklyn" exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The show runs from May 2nd to August 15th. The opening reception is this Sunday, May 2nd, from 3-5PM.


permanent link  libby and roberta 10:51 AM
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Thursday, April 29, 2004

Barnes, Barnes, Barnes in three places

 

[Note: I was in Rosenwald Wolf Gallery looking at the Creative Consumption exhibit (more on that later) when Gallery Director and artblog contributor Sid Sachs told me he had the perfect solution for the Barnes Foundation. (For Barnes reservations, by the way, read this. 45-60 days advance reservation required for May)

Here’s Sachs’ proposal, which, I think, is pretty great. Bold emphasis is mine.]

Sid Sachs’ proposal for the Barnes

1. First, bring the collection downtown to the Parkway. More people will be able to see it without restrictions. The collection gets retrofitted so it’s shown just the way it is now (In other words the same formal wall arrangements, being careful to achieve the complete Barnes ambiance—including those lunettes to house the Matisse murals). Include an auditorium and space for contemporary programming in the building. That could also generate its own interest and funding sources. (image left is Van Gogh's "Nude Woman, Reclining, 1887, in Room XIII of the Barnes)

That is what has been been done with other historic collections such as the Kroller Muller, the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum etc. . Have Pew, Lenfast , and other foundations pay for the move and increase the endowment. More educational activities and programming will assauge the students who insist the Barnes is an educational institution. More museums on the parkway it will provide a critical cultural mass, a destination, and generate money. That will make the Philadelphia community happy.

2. Kerfeal goes to Merion. (In other words, move what’s stored at Kerfeal to the Merion buildings.) The Barnes is already climate controlled so all those objects will benefit from it. New formal relationships can be generated and new narratives created for the educational component of the foundation. Since this work has never been seen, even those who know the Barnes will come to see this new development.


That gives the Barnes two revenue sites and if the mission is education, you now have two education sites. Build the City Ave. entryway which will help get visitors in and out without disturbing the Latches Lane neighbors. Keep the Arboretum in all its glory. (image is honey from the Barnes arboretum. $7.25 -- order online) This keeps the Merion neighbors -- who now seem to want Barnes in their neighborhood -- happy.--Also, the PMA or other institutions could loan some modernist works Picassos, etc. that they don’t have space to exhibit and that compliment the Barnes esthetic at a Merion Kerfeal/Barnes space, giving them the ability to interact with the Barnes, which they say they want.

3. Sell the Kerfeal, Chester County land and buildings to the state and/or county. That way you maintain the land as open space (prevent more development) and wind up with a building to use for administrative offices, foundation archives, and or cultural and heritage space. Ten million dollars will pay for the improved access to the Merion site.

4. This proposal is a win /win situation for all involved. No bankruptcy results, no sales of art works are required, more people see all the collection, more people are educated, and the institution grows and is made more stable by a larger board and the generation of new revenues. (I thought it ironic that Peter Schjedahl thought the Barnes was a gem that shouldn't move yet he had never visited the collection until recently. Do we need outside interference in community issues?) --Sid Sachs

--images from Barnes Foundation website
permanent link  roberta 7:07 AM
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Lost and found

 

Kent Latimer emailed me recently and asked me to come preview his new work, debuting this Friday in an exhibition in his loft home gallery. (See Latimer's nicely-done website for more images and biographical information)

I had seen -- and liked -- the artist's found object sculptures previously at SPECTOR and later at the Painted Bride, but that was a while ago and I was curious about what the artist was up to.



"Schoolboys" (pictured top) which I saw in 1999 in "More is More" at SPECTOR, made a kind of inspired poetic use of the discarded materials -- in this case the writing arms from school chairs. You can't get the scale in this picture but the work is very large, and the paddle-like planks come together as just about perfect figure-widgets, which is about what school children are.


The work made me laugh and filled me with awe at the simplicity and rightness of it all.

What Latimer showed at the Bride in 2000 had moved slightly into the land of wordplay coupled with found objects. In "Anagram #1," (not shown) a scavenged police barricade (blue and yellow sawhorse and cross bar with the words "POLICE LIMIT" stencilled on) was transformed by wordplay into a barricade that said "ILLICIT POEM." (images top and right are new work -- "Untitled" 2003 -- a baby's crib held up by plastic bowling pins)

Latimer told me he had been travelling around the country for a while, making art and having success showing it in places like Chicago. He told me that he was affected by the September 11 attacks, which on the one hand made everything seem transitory and hopeless and on the other freed him from the impulse to hold back. If the world could end tomorrow what have you got to lose in trying to make a piece of art?

The artist, 38, who grew up in North Carolina and speaks with a hint of that upbringing, said he was hoping to make a gallery connection in Philadelphia where he's lived for eight years.


Latimer lives in a vast second-floor space on the 1300 block of Walnut. Part of the space is bed-sheeted off as a kind of art gallery. Whitewashed floor boards, whitewashed walls and sheets where there were no walls -- it was a believable, in fact a pretty great space to show art. And while the loft was crammed to the gills elsewhere with discards and whatnots -- occupational hazards of the trade -- the living/working/exhibiting space, which ran the entire length of the building, reminded me of Basekamp's vast second floor space on Chestnut St. (image right is new work, "None of your business")



Latimer's work reflects a comfort level with words and objects that comes of time spent with people who value words and have a wry sense of humor. He told me he played Scrabble a lot as a child and that his father did a lot of those word scrambler games.

He also writes some poetry and confessed that he's persnickity about which objects he uses and when. In fact, I buy that. While people tend to think of found object sculpture as "easy" or something tossed together quickly. The best work -- like this -- shows great restraint. It may look effortless but chances are, it's been thought through every which way -- mixed and matched -- until just the right relationship comes together to tell a tale or at least suggest one.


Right now, Latimer is mining greeting tags, those "Hello My name is" sticky-backed things, and by cutting them up, and changing the letters around he's made a series of works that turn "hello" into a number of new things. "None of your business" transforms a pinata of a burro into a "hell"-papered object (hello minus the o). Under the burro is the pile of "o's." sitting like a pool of pee? or small mouths open to receive candy? (image above right)

Other uses of the stickers show up in a grid formation of stick-like objects. The grid of objects and words felt like subversive parodies of flash cards from the international symbol-granting cartel. On the other hand, a piece with a blue cloud, sticks of rain and a wave suggests a a Japanese print done by a computer. (images right and left)

The artist gets many of his materials from dumpsters, or from the street. He's got one piece that uses a discarded bullet-proof vest he found in a dumpster outside City Hall.


My favorite is a pink flamingo-esque creature made from discarded styrofoam store display numbers. (image left)

I liked its evocation of the LOVE sculpture. Latimer said he'd love to see it cast in all its pinkness in a monumental scale. I think it'd look great in front of City Hall.

Latimer's two week exhibit Open Studio is at 1318 Walnut St. The opening is Friday, April 30, 6 pm-9 pm. Closing reception is Sat. May 15, 2 pm-6 pm. You can also see the work by appointment. Call 215-284-0705.
permanent link  roberta 5:54 PM
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Nothing begins

 

I got my first taste of "The Big Nothing" yesterday at the "Responsa: Eileen Neff, Jennie Shanker, and Richard Torchia" exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art--the small art gallery on North Broad Street in Congregation Rodeph Shalom.

"The Big Nothing," if you don't know what I'm talking about, is an ICA-organized, city-wide series of art shows with the theme of nothingness. In addition to an exhibit of heavy hitters at the ICA, opening to great fanfare this weekend, there are 36 other venues around town that are putting forth their own takes of artistic expressions of nothingness during the next three months, and you need a map. Oh, there is a map. It's cute as pie (produced by alt-art practitioners Andrew Jeffrey Wright and Thom Lessner), a part of a key-lime green guide that took me 45 minutes to get through.

But putting the big picture aside (Roberta's previous post, by the way, is also about the Big Nothing), the show at the PMJA had some interesting takes on nothingness in the three installations on display.

Digi photographer Eileen Neff's 7-foot tall (my guess) view of the synagogue pews, framed by a faux archway to suggest a view through a door, suggests the people who sat, sit, and will sit in those spaces. It also suggests with its stretched perspective and its edge-to-edge, top-to-bottom nothing-but-pews an infinity of pews ascending to heaven in step-like progression. The light glancing off the pew backs is exaggerated just enough to suggest some heavenly magic and some presence of souls here on earth. Neff's piece manages to provide both visual satisfaction and a rich world of metaphors.

Jennie Shankar's griddy "Mortar," which almost divides the gallery space in two, is a minimal metal framework, a drawing in air, delineating the mortar that used to hold the stones in place on the synagogue's original Frank Furness building. To put it another way, the stones are not there, only the pattern of the mortar, front and back. The original building is gone, replaced in the 1920s by the current building.

The references here are to the absence of not only the original synagogue building, but also the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. To see this piece is to think Wailing Wall, and to miss something no longer there. But it's also to recognize and glorify the role of the mortar -- or something that's so visually subsidiary that it's almost invisible -- in keeping the stones together, which in turn suggests a parallel to a religion (the mortar) and its people (the stones). Anyone familiar with the ritual of the Passover seder has thought about mortar, but maybe not quite in this way.

The antithesis of materiality of mortar is Richard Torchia's "Busted Rainbow," which uses colored gels to transform the recessed fluorescent lights that illuminate the gallery's barrel vault into a rainbow--the biblical sign of a promise to Noah from God to never flood the world again. The suggestion that a promise from God has been broken or is no longer there opens the way to any number of interpretations, depending on your personal obsessions about the state of the world and your personal take on whether God is an absence, a presence, or a big nothing.

When I came to see the show, which was curated by Matt Singer, one of the women in the office looked at me speculatively and asked me if I knew what to expect. After that intro, I expected a big nothing. But the three pieces all offered up something, to varying degrees.

The same woman asked me to mention the hours: Mondays to Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Friday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., but please call first, 215-627-6747.

P.S.: The introductory information on the wall explains the meaning of responsa: a system whereby individuals' questions about life and faith are answered by rabbis. The system, still in practice, dates to the Third Century, and the Q&As then become a kind of commentary referred back to by later rabbis.

P.P.S. Which brings me to "Sonja's Legacy" at Drexel University's library, billed as an art show but in fact really a memorial to Sonja Fischerova, a young girl who died at Auschwitz, leaving behind her drawings and paintings as her legacy. This is not a Big Nothing show, but it's about absence and loss. The work, though childish, has some chilling images--once you read the explanation--and the exhibit, which includes only facsimiles of her art work as well as examples of other anti-Nazi literature and art work (including a couple of outstanding political cartoons by Arthur Szyk)--was moving, personal, and historical.
permanent link  libby 5:52 PM
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Rats!

 

While working on an a-list preview of the ICA's Big Nothing, for today's PW (that's the new branding of the Weekly by the way), I contacted Curator Ingrid Schaffner to get a little morsel of news about the show. Schaffner, whose idea the show was, emailed me excitedly about this last minute entry, "Knot," a component of Katarina Fritsch's "The Rat King" which made a splash at DIA in 1993-94. (When I looked it up in Dia's archives, I was shocked to see the dates of the exhibit. The big piece (the rats towered above you in the white space -- must have left a big impression. I thought I had seen it much more recently.)

Schaffner said "Knot" (the knot of tails which is inside the circle of rats) is owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and it hasn't been seen since its showing at DIA. In case you're wondering, the rats won't be at the ICA. Just the "Knot." (sorry, I couldn't find an image of "Knot.")

In a follow-up email, Schaffner told me they had just uncrated the work and weighed it, and the five-foot in diameter piece weighs 700 pounds!

All this rat news reminded me I heard a wonderful interview on Fresh Air on April 5 in which Terry Gross talks with author Robert Sullivan about his new book "Rats."

Sullivan, whose forte is those long, digressionary pieces in the New Yorker, previously wrote about whales, human-kind's best-loved animal. As a follow-up he said he thought he'd study our most detested and feared mammal the rat. You can listen to his interview here at Fresh Air's website.
permanent link  roberta 8:27 AM
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Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Pentimenti of city walls

 


Pentimenti Gallery looks great in its new locale on Second Street. I was passing by a couple of days before the current exhibit opened, and voila, the show was good to go.



Some large paintings and drawing on mylar caught my eye first. The works by Kiki Gaffney, all untitled, reminded me of the interior walls of rowhouses exposed by demolition--rectangular traces of plaster, paint and wallpaper on a shared brick wall.


These pieces, with their beautiful layers of paint, their opacity and translucency, and their graphite wallpaper-pattern drawings seemed to mourn a place that has left just a trace of itself. How appropriate to show these in a gallery named Pentimenti, I thought.

Sitting in the back of the gallery, working on her artist's statement, was Peggy Gyulai, whose oils were part of a group called "16 Atmospheres for Paint and Piano," all painted to classical music. These paintings did capture the atmosphere of their source.

For example, the predominantly white triptych with its icy clouds opening to deep space was based on Satie's "Pieces Froides." Satie, said Gyulai, was a minimalist with a severe aesthetic whose music influenced minimalist art.

Gyulai's other triptych, based on a Debussy piece, had a watery feel, with reflections of skies. It brought to mind a little too literally Monet's waterlily paintings.

The tradition of painting to music always seems to have a number of followers. I'm thinking here of Jeff Waring's work. But ultimately these paintings, beautiful and rhythmic though they may be, seem more about how they got made than about the final product.

The third artist showing at Pentimenti was Susanna B. Speirs. I liked the waxy quality and beautiful green-yellow of her pears and the frosty translucency of her branches as well as the swell shadows the objects cast on the wall. I also liked how the pears and branches suggested people. But I'm not sure why they were hanging by wires off some great-looking industrial harware. The work reminded me of people hanging off gibbets--but that's about all.
permanent link  libby 5:20 PM
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Monday, April 26, 2004

Bi-coastal curating and why we love London

 
Carol Vogel in the NY Times reports this morning that Whitney Museum Curator Lawrence Rinder is leaving to become: "dean of graduate studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where he was a founding director of what is now called the Wattis Institute, the college-run space for exhibitions and programs."

Rinder apparently missed his old haunting grounds. But he's still going to hang out at the Whitney -- he'll be an adjunct curator. He's got a big retrospective of art mechanic and techno wizard Timothy Hawkinson coming up in February for example. (Read about Hawkinson at PBS's Art 21 site) (image is Hawkinson's "Emoter" featured, I believe, in the 2002 Whitney Biennial)

Whitney boss, Adam Weinberg is apparently looking at several curators in his search for a replacement, including : "Elizabeth Sussman, a former Whitney curator who left in 1998. ...[who was] curator of the 1993 Whitney Biennial."

Why Philadelphia is not London in spite of double decker buses


Hey Philadelphians, read about London, a town that values the arts so much it just established a new financial initiative to support arts organizations even more. Read today's Guardian story.

Here's what London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, had to say about it: "London is a magnet for the creative industries, which are worth around £21bn. We want to ensure that they are able to thrive in the capital".

And Philadelphia Mayor John Street said what about the arts? He'd like to cut $2.5 million from the Art Museum's budget just for starters. Read this if you want to write the Mayor and tell him not to cut the arts budgets. (Read Liz Spikol's amusing story about riding this bus around Philadelphia.)
permanent link  roberta 8:04 AM
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Sunday, April 25, 2004

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARTBLOG!

 


Dear everyone, we are now one year old! Here's a cake for all of us. Love, from Libby and Roberta
permanent link  libby and roberta 11:09 PM
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