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Saturday, July 31, 2004

The groups of summer #2

 
Foraging is how I would describe my efforts on these steamy days to find something to look at. Success hit me at Schmidt/Dean yesterday, where there's a mix of artists new and old, work I was delighted to revisit (some more so than others) and work I was delighted to discover for the first time.

Among the pleasures were three photos by Ida Weygandt of the fox hunt milieu of Chester County, PA (top, "Virginia Brown," Epson Archival Ink-Jet Print, 32" x 41"). Even in the heat of the day, I caught a chill looking at that claustrophobic photo, which is dense with cultural and human information.

Turns out the work came to Chris Schmidt's attention via photographer Larry Fink. She was a student of Fink's, has just graduated, and what you're looking at is her senior project. That alone makes this work notable--a gallery quality student project!

Also new and notable at the gallery were photos by Sam Worthington IV, a Virginia photographer with a strange landscape (left) that was created, in part, by peeling off a section of the emulsion and then replacing it, resulting in a weird, drapy what-is-it area in the midst of readable brush and weeds. Worthington, said Schmidt, won the Philadelphia Museum Prize at the Perkins Art Center recently.

Some new photos by Susan Fenton also hung on the walls--definitely worth a look-see.

So it's a photo trifecta--my picks of new work at that gallery.

There was also plenty of familiar work that I was glad to see again. (I won't mention people whose work I've seen quite recently.) I especially enjoyed the William Smith and the Kate Javens paintings yesterday.

Javens, who I have admire for her rich surfaces and for her bestiary paintings that are all about humans and their place in the universe, has a painting of a cicada, "Named for William Blake," that reminded me of a butterfly pinned in a case.

I was also pleased to see William Smith's panoramic landscape painted across a number of pages of an old astrology book. Smith has been painting over old texts for years using old-fashioned realist style and glazes, his trick being to leave some portion of the text revealed. Here he is particularly witty, having included a window to peek through to see the landscape, just like the landscape leaves windows to peek through to see the text (left, "Velocity of the Earth" detail).

And if you haven't been to Schmidt/Dean lately, this show is a chance to play catch-up with what's been showing there.

permanent link  libby 8:38 AM
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Friday, July 30, 2004

I dreamed I was a curator in my...

 
Here's some info for those of who curate or are thinking of curating an exhibit. The proceedings from “Curating Now: Imaginative Practice/Public Responsibility” are now available online for download in PDF format on the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative’s website: www.philexin.org

permanent link  libby 4:43 PM
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tracer art II

 

Libby's great post about Trace commented on all the obsessive, process heavy pieces in the big, 29-artist show at Rosenwald Wolf.

I agree with that. In addition I found that the works all seem to have coded meanings and refer to things not obvious without the Cliffs Notes. This is my attempt to do a little decoding. That's all. Mostly, if you have time and your imagination is warmed up, you should make up your own back story. That's always the best when encountering what seems like unbreakably coded work.



Take Roxy Paine's "Untitled" blob (top) made by one of his sculpture machines (pictured right). Paine's extruded sculpture, a perfect, impersonal, factory-made object, is both abstract sculpture and the perfect representation of a blob.

More beautiful than a car and both more -- and less -- sculptural, it's 100% art about art but about life, too. How about that slump -- pure gravity works on plastic just like it does on flesh. This could be a cartoon of an aging Henry Moore sculpture.

Bill Walton's small, packing case jammed with wood, "Spring crate," (shown left) somehow captured my fancy more than any other work in this very good show. The piece is modesty personified. It sits there self-contained and elusive, like a unique human being in a crowd, watching, hoping, ready for an encounter.



The small monolith drew me back to it like a magnet. I got on my hands and knees to see it better. If an art show could have a mascot (an embodiment of the ideas it contains) this is it. I've seen Walton's work at Becker Gallery, and recently in "Open" at Arcadia. (see my post) Walton uses simple materials, crafts things beautifully (he often makes his own nails) and explores the world of object making. There's a dignity here and a kind of Emersonian self-reliance.

Walton received the second Lois Fernley award from Arcadia recently. It's a big honor, and it's most deserved.

Kalipods and sprawl on the wall

Romy Scheroder's "Kalipods," platinum silicon mini-ghosts or stagmites echo Paine's blob. (shown right) Little white things placed on the gallery's steps and in one case growing horizontally out of a fissure in a wall, they're little whatizits. The artist told me they represent part of a story she's working on having to do with genetic engineering of new life forms that eat pollutants. (Kali is a fierce Indian warrior godess).

I, too, like Libby, needed help locating the little warrior pods but once clued it, Stella and I went on a little treasure hunt and found them. Without the back story, I would have guessed they were ghosts -- maybe of Leonardo daVinci and other artists known for their process-heavy works kind of checking out the show.



At the opening, Anne Seidman, artblog contributor and pal, told me several stories about her piece "Smart Move," the tape-on-wall work that sprawls across the gallery's signature curved wall. (pictured) The title, for example, comes from Uhaul, the moving company, as does some of the tape. In fact, "smart move" appears on some of the tape. The tape is a remnant from when the artist helped another artist move from one place to another. But there's other tape, also remnants, from installations including the artist's own, and an installation by Jim Hinz.

Seidman told me a story I only half remember now. Something about how she was reading a Frank O'Hara story "Why I'm not a painter," in which the author recounts seeing a painting by Mike Goldberg during two stages of its creation. Apparently O'Hara was horrified by how things had changed over the course of the painting's making.

And so here we have a new creation, recycling old creations with thoughts about the stages of creation (and the stages of moving) built into its making.



Finally, a word or two about Eileen Torpey's untitled ink drawings. The three works reminded me of cloth patterning, in one case compressed as if via computer program and in another case sprawing across the paper like unravelling thread.

The mark-making came together like calligraphy, many stylized marks trying to tell a story of something or other.



Torpey, a New Yorker, told me at the opening that she organizes a one-day art event called "Drift," in which a group of artists make temporary, site specific work, some of which is ephemeral. (She staged Drift on a Hudson river pier and some work floated in the river). Get in touch if you're interested.

That's more than you want to know and far less than what the show deserves in terms of back-story. But like I say, go look and invent your own stories. That's better.

And see my sketch in next week's PW for another extruded thought or two.
permanent link  roberta 8:30 AM
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Thursday, July 29, 2004

The groups of summer #1

 

The gallery scene is at its slowest during the summer months, with low-energy group shows everywhere. It's a time when galleries generally mine their storage and pick up a couple of experimental new prospects, throw them together and call it a show.

Imagine my surprise, visiting Gross McCleaf's "Philadelphia" exhibit, to see the Larry Francis paintings of our lives, quotidien, familiar Philadelphia locales practically flying off the walls. I thought no one even walked into galleries in the summer, let alone bought stuff (top, Francis' "Late Shadows").

Francis is one of nine painters of Philadelphia city scapes of various stripe at Gross McCleaf for the month. And each of them brought a different perspective or method to the task. Yet each was pretty straightforward and realistic.

While Francis' paintings are up against our noses from a sidewalk perspective, Mary Ledwith gives us long perspectives of gray-toned city streets embellished with light touches of improbable color, like a blue-topped City Hall. And Chris Zmijewski offers harshly lit, nearly noir, painterly but nearly photographic images of the streets we tread (left above, "Reflections of 15th Street," by Zmijewski).

Bird's eye views came from Alexandra Tyng, who paints the architectural works of man in their grandeur, from the towers of Center City to the Waterworks.

Another bird's eye view kind of work was Scott Noel's pastels and paintings (also with pastelly tones) of warehouse and industrial districts with parking lots and cars, no people visible. The hazy light of these pieces gives them life (right above, Noel's "Jany's in March").

 

 

Speaking of cars, David Shevlino comes out of the Philadelphia Impressionist school, but his subject matter is traffic with a Stuart Shils kind of juicy brushiness (left, Shevlino's "Green Sign"). 


 
 
Jim Williams' subject matter and snappy colors were a little surprise--the strange angle on steps and churches, the dwarfed people, the colors of not-quite nature (right below, Williams' "Pretzel Park Sketch").

And Joe Sweeney's one of those landscape painters who's really all about the sky above--the agressive white clouds, the indigo sky. And for the in-the-city but not-of-the-city crowd, Chris Nissen offers "Croquet" at what looked like the Germantown Cricket Club, plus Chestnut Hill.

People seem to love to buy portraits of the places they live, and this is just the show if that's what you want.  But it's a no brainer, and by that I mean it was merely what it was, nothing much to think about, but pleasing to the eye.







permanent link  libby 1:57 PM
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Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Inside and outside the museum

 
I returned today after yesterday's political rally for John Kerry in front of the Art Museum (oy, it was so hot there). The water bottles were cleaned up, the political banners removed (left, the rally crowd and Kerry with arrow pointing to his white head of hair).

Inside, I stopped briefly at the Jacques Lipschitz show out of a sense of duty. The work felt dusty--a dead end. When was the last time you saw someone create a sculpture that made you think, wow, that was influenced by Lipschitz? The politics, so heartfelt, the imagery borrowed from the ancient Greeks, felt ancient. Some of the work was interesting, but mostly, it felt dated.

On the other hand, I also stopped by the photo tribute to the late Michael E. Hoffman, who had been the photo curator for the museum since the late '60s. Although some of the work went back in time, it didn't feel in the least dated. I was struck by how much young photographers working today are still mining this work for inspiration.

In Irving Penn's "Gypsy Tribe of 16" (made from a 1963 negative) I saw Justine Kurland's commune shots (Penn's photo right, Kurland's photo "Wind Song," which is not a part of the show, below left). In Richard Misrach's "Dead Animals #79" I saw Sally Mann's dead humans. In Will McBride's "Ricky in His Sleeping Bag, Smoking", from 1984, I saw Alec Soth's "Sleeping by the Mississippi" series.

The politics of the past in these images also seemed fresh. Susan Meiselas' "Soldiers Searching Bus Passengers, Northern Highway, El Salvador" (1980), an image of the shadows of soldiers with guns, passengers with hands on head, cast on the flat rock and dirt wall cut into the mountain, brought me right to today's disturbances around the world.

Some photos were filled with magical realism; some were Americana or the English equivalent; some were landscapes, the best of them making you see the world around you with new eyes.

This was an excellent show with nearly 90 pictures. For more on it, see what Roberta wrote here.


permanent link  libby 6:16 PM
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On top of Old Faithful

 
If you caught the last Vox Populi show with John Stoney's cow-poop under glass sculptures (see post here), I thought you'd like to know that he has a piece in Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, N.Y. (Right, "The Problem With Airplanes").

I read in the New York Times last Friday that it's a scale model of Old Faithful that shoots up its own little geyser of water, timed to the real thing over in Yellowstone National Park. "Such a cannily simulated anomaly in Long Island City is delightfully surreal," wrote Ken Johnson in one of the mini-reviews.

permanent link  libby 5:59 PM
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Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Vive la difference

 
Paul Georges, the late artist whose floral paintings and jumbo allegory are on display at The More Gallery, puts Ann Craven's bird in the Altoids exhibit at the Morris Gallery of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to shame (left, "Cat and Pigeon and Arbor," by Georges).


 




 

Craven, whose birds come out of the pattern and decoration movement, are cloying and content free (see Roberta's post here). The birds have an impassive fashion-victim pose in front of floaty Pepto Bismol pink backgrounds (right).



 


 

Georges, on the other hand, seems to have a message beneath the gestural sprays of roses.  The trellises are a dark skeleton holding up the voluptuous beauty. The pigeon is aflutter with fear. 
The cat is a stalker.  And the sky is in the distance, refusing to interfere (left, "Rose Arbor").  Time is of the essence--a moment when everything is in bloom and the world is perfect, to be followed by loss of that moment. The roses will wilt, the cat may get the bird, the trellis may not last.

The brush work is juicy and direct. The red roses glow against the dark trellis and against the blue, green, yellow or gray swatches of sky which create a compositional balance. Both of these artists clearly looked at Japanese screen paintings, but only Georges picked up on the content, the attunement to the seasons, the metaphor for life short duration.

So there's a choice here between nothing and something.  I'll go for Georges' something.

For more on the Altoids Collection show, go here for Roberta's comments, and here for Libby's.



permanent link  libby 3:03 PM
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Voynich -- hoax or art?

 
We subscribe to Scientific American and while I can't say I read the mag, I'm a big fan of browsing the images -- always visually rich.

July's issue, which has some wonderful Hubble photographs of nebulae (dying stars), also had a back of the mag story about a mysterious medieval tome, the Voynich Manuscript.

The 200 page book of bound vellum is written in undecipherable code and illustrated with all manner of charts and diagrams, strange flora and fauna, and bevies of nude women bathing. (top image is page from the Voynich manuscript)

Now it may be that the Voynich, dating from 1470-1500 and lost and found over time surfacing in 1912 when Wilfrid Voynich, a rare book dealer, found it in Rome and brought it to the world's attention, is a book of mysticism. That's one theory.



There's another theory that the book is a 15th century hoax perpetrated by someone wanting to make a fast buck off of Emperor Rudolph II, who bought the manuscript for 600 ducats.

I wonder if it isn't rather a piece of medieval outsider art, made by the 15th century equivalent of Adolf Wolfli, someone possessed by a need to transcribe inner-fueled, incomprehensible stories who also is a whiz at drawing. (image left is a Wolfli drawing)

Here's a good website for more on Voynich. And here's more on Wolfli.

And check out Scientific American next time you're at the library. I swear the pictures are life imitating art.
permanent link  roberta 8:47 AM
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Monday, July 26, 2004

Forlorn, oh forlorn

 
Libby told you about the Altoids Curiously Strong Collection show at PAFA in her very good post and I'll be covering it in my review this Wednesday in PW but I wanted to put up a few images and add a couple thoughts here that follow on my remarks about the current fad for nihilistic, goth imagery among young artists. (top image is Aida Ruilova's video "You're Pretty")


Not to hammer the point too hard but this is a show whose affect is sad, with work that riffs on the trickery of things and the slipperiness of reality. Elizabeth Demaray's rocks that masquerade as baseballs are the light side of trickery, reverberating in lyrical, upbeat what if-ism.



And Brad Tucker's "Desktop," (left) which looks like a kid-made skateboard with a stack of obsolete floppy disks is also upbeat, not only because of its candy colors, but for its reference to childhood enterprise.

But the rest of the works here, from asianpunkboy's white and rhinestone-encrusted switchblade (a decorated murder weapon?) to Aida Ruilova's disturbing video "You're Pretty," (top image) tread deep waters without a life jacket.

Ruilova, featured in the Whitney Biennial in a -- sadly -- memorable installation of noisy videos about nasty interpersonal relationships, here, does a similar thing, in a mercifully short (36 seconds) piece that juxtaposes bizarre, repetitive, quasi-self-abusive behavior with sing-song mantra "You're pretty; you're pretty."



I suppose it might be a comment on advertising or reality tv and if so I applaud it. Akin in spirit to the Chapman brothers' transgressive works, it's a full-frontal assault of a piece. Maybe its true home is on television as an anti-commercial right after some Calvin Klein perfume ad.

Hernan Bas, also featured here and in this year's Biennial, creates drab scenarios where inky voids threaten to overwhelm solitary figures who may be next to each other but are completely alone in their thoughts and enterprise. (image right)



And Daniel Davidson's untitled piece (left) which on its face reminded me of two other draftsmen of existential cartoon art, Philip Guston and William Kentridge, might be drawing the universe today -- a little light, some drink, a chewed up plank of wood and books relegated to props.

I don't mean to imply any of this is bad art. Quite the opposite. It's good art but sour and medicinal. And it kind of wallows where we've been for some time now, down in the dumps.

I'm waiting for the explosion to the new level -- it's wrong of me to hope. And things never explode just kind of creep in. But I don't see a lot of evidence of creeping optimism at the moment and I could sure use some.
permanent link  roberta 8:00 AM
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Sunday, July 25, 2004

Traces of art

 
That Roberta just wrote about megaprints made me think about the tiny size of most of the pieces at "Traces," an exhibit at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery and the University of the Arts.

Seems to me I've been seeing a lot lot lot of tiny tiny tiny work. Can it be the gradiose gestures of macho art have fallen out of style?  Or is it just a function of the market.  Small pieces come at affordable prices.

And then there's the function of the sort of work this is for the most part--the obsessive process pieces that are so dense in effort and concentration that larger would be unthinkable.

Which is not a slam.  I liked so many of the pieces I saw in this show that I hardly know where to begin, what to include, what not to include.  So I'll start out by saying that just because I haven't written about a piece in this show doesn't mean I didn't like it.  But the number of pieces--nearly 50--and the number of artists--about 30--means it's a tough show to wrap your arms around.

For density of quality, I'd go to the lobby area, where I was happy to revisit some blackboard work by Jennie Shanker, happy to meet the block of wood from Roger Ackling, happy to find a Joseph Beuys that made me laugh and happy to see a Stuart Netsky up to his old tricks about skin (human existence?) and gay-itude.

Shanker's blackboard-painted stack of little vellum rectangles (left) brought me back to the way my teacher used to hang a layered stack of student work on the bulletin board. The density of the paint, grayed to chalkiness, on the skin-like paper evoked the touch of the wooden desks, the powdery erasers, the permanent marks on boards that were washed daily but rarely came fully clean. The little stack was a tear-off tablet or a notebook, its layers the years spent as a student, the size an evocation of small children.

Ackling's block of wood, "Sunlight on Wood" (right), was created with a magnifying glass training a pinpoint of sunlight on the block to brand in the lines, said Sid Sachs, gallery director there and the show curator. The process becomes all the more reason for looking at this tiny block. It evoked in me a kinetic response to the steadiness of hand and mind required. I was in awe. The Beuys piece, "Intuition," on the other hand, was the only Joseph Beuys piece I have ever liked--a box with lines indicating the width but bearing no relationship to the box's real width.



And Netsky's "Pansy Nosegay" (left) a nosegay image made with self-tanning lotion on vellum is about a whole bunch of things, from vanity to gay culture to Victorian culture to sickness and health.

In the main room. Gabrielle Kanter's jig-saw puzzle of wood knots pieced together had the element of surprise. At first, before the pieces become visible, "288 ft/ft"  (top) looks like a piece of wood with more knots than nature could possible offer. Then the how-she-did-it becomes visible close up. And then the craftsmanship and the amount of labor come into focus.


Next to it, Sharyn O'Mara's  cut paper web throwing its shadow on the paper behind it is another labor-intensive piece that wows with the energy and craftsmanship that went into the making (detail shown right). Which brings me to the subject of the show, traces of process.


 

 

 


The show, said Sachs, which is part of the Big Nothing extravaganza of exhibits around the city, originally was supposed to happen back in September, but he flip-flipped it with Jack Pierson's show because this one was such a nice fit with Big Nothing.


 

 

 


Changing pace from the small and obsessive, I got a kick out of Perry Steindel's soy sauce drawings (one of four shown left)and Janet Passehl's dirt, a white piece of cloth with a small stain, displayed in an enormous vitrine as if it were precious (right). What a good commentary on painting and the art world and the business of art and reliqueries.


 

I'm going to pretty much stop here, because  I know that Roberta will weigh in and also just because I feel I'm going to get repetitive about the small and the obsessive. I'm hard-pressed to say who did the work that was the most obsessive.  So many candidates, like Jacob El Hanani, Kim Jones, Mark Lombardi, Paolo Columbo, Tom Chimes, Ellen Torpey, Amy Podmore's hair drawings (right), etc. etc. etc. Much to love. The smallest work was Romy Scheroder's "Kalipods," which I couldn't find without Sachs' help.

On the other hand, Anne Seidman's wallscape, "Smart move" (detail right) was by no means little although it still bore the intensity of her mark-making practice in bits of tape bearing the traces of previous line installations she's made. Yes, she actually saved the bits of tape. And then with these obsessive traces of her past work, she's allowed in a dose of airiness,  enormous blocks of space, the antithesis of the dense markings. Voila. I saw land and sky.


permanent link  libby 11:42 AM
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Visionary prints and installations at Taller Puertorriqueno

 
Visiones from Postmodern Aztlán rolls into Taller Puertorriqueno this week with a group of 39 silkscreen prints from sunbelt activist printing studios, Coronado Studio (Austin, TX) and Self-Help Graphics (Los Angeles). (image is Alma Lopez's "La Llorona Desperately Seeking Coyolxuahqui" which refers to the unsolved murders of 300 Mexican women and girls along the US-Mexico border)

Also in the show are paintings and installations by local Latino artists Marta Sánchez (of Cascarones Por La Vida fame), César Viveros, Brujo de la Mancha and
Rocío Levito.

The exhibit, organized by Taller Gallery Director Anabelle Rodriguez, opens Friday, July 30, with a reception from 5-8 p.m. A panel discussion Saturday July 31 at 3PM will feature local artist Sanchez and representatives of the two print studios.

Taller, in the North Philly bario, is an outpost of juicy art and fresh perspectives. I've rarely been disappointed by an art encounter there. I'm going to try to make that panel discussion. See you there.


permanent link  roberta 10:53 AM
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Supersized Mc Prints at Tin Man Alley

 
Parodic paintings by Ron English knocking the McMarketing of food and toys and featured in the recent documentary "Supersize Me," have been converted into a portfolio of giclee prints titled "The MC Supersized Portfolio." (image is "Last Supper," with McJesus in the middle surrounded by tv cartoon favorites. There's a McStarry Night parody as well.)

Publishers Tin Man Alley (which will have a show of Ron English's work opening August 21) and Lineage Gallery are making the 4-print portfolios available now. Here's more information from Tin Man's Jonathan Levine:

Each print is individually signed and numbered by Ron English in an edition of 100. They measure 16'' x 22" and are offered in an elegant paper portfolio designed by Brad Keech of Pressure Printing. The set retails for $1,200.00.

Call or email Levine for more. (215-923-1418) tinmanalley@msn.com.
permanent link  roberta 10:04 AM
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