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Posted by libby

A couple of shows I enjoyed today that are worth a First Friday visit if you haven't seen them yet are manga mouseketeer- inspired Dalek and Swiss import Criss Cross. Add them to Roberta's First Friday choices (see post) and you'll have more than enough good stuff to see (image right, "Untitled" by Dalek, acrylic paint on wood, 30 x 30 inches).
dalek
New York artist Dalek, in "Buried Hatchets" at 222gallery borrows the superflat look and Mickey Mouse ears of Takashi Murakami's Mr. DOB, creating edgy "Space Monkeys" with rapacious grins. This particular series is full of stylish but wonderful ceruleans, pistachios and pinks, plus machinery that looks like old-fashioned turntable parts-- needles or cartridges and arms and counterweights. The monkey nose morphs into records or CDs that bounce around.

Most of the work is acrylic paint on wood, but there are some on old LP covers and corrugated boxes (left, a painting on an LP cover of West Side Story, with Space Monkeys chewing off Maria's and Tony's heads).


Plus there's product, manufactured by local entrepreneur Larry Mangel at Cerealart. We've got your mass-produced Dalek Space Monkey figures, Space Monkey shower curtains (in cerulian or pistachio), and space monkey skateboard decks. This art, which is particularly well suited to the commercial end of things, still charms and amuses. It will remain up until July 29.
trepp, judith

On the more serious side, at Pentimenti, five Swiss artists with abstract and minimal strategies serve as a reminder that East is West and West is East and art is global, these days, just like the economy. I particularly liked Judith Trepp's Asian and Japanese-inspired drawings. The most basic lines in pressing proximity become sexy promises of contact (right, an untitled Trepp of ink and egg tempera on Indian paper).
eitle-vozar, maria

I also went for Maria Eitle-Vozar's porcelain houses of cards, which seemed fragile and off kilter, ready to collapse at a breath. Some of the cards have holes in them suggesting windows and leaky roofs or worn-out floors. But all of them suggest how vulnerable we are, for we are the cards and the cards are us (left, "Cardhouses Villages II," 12 x 9 x 4 inches, mixed media, porcelain).

Others in the Swiss contingent of the show are Karina Wisniewska, Susanne Keller and Vera Rothamel.

In the back spaces at Pentimenti are the regular Pentimenti artists--Franco Muller, Kevin Finklea, Steven Baris, Kathryn Frund and Richard Bottwin--whose work is showing simultaneously at Ute Barth Gallery in Switzerland, part of the trade between the two galleries. Some new Baris and Muller pieces went up today to replace sold paintings.

The show has another week before the gallery closes for summer vacation.

permanent link   libby 11:10 PM
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Posted by libby

Email from Zoe Strauss



I just had to write to fully agree with you, Roberta. What the hell is that installation? Mediate this! (see previous post)

(Quaker Oats box image complements of Strauss, who speaks in photographs).

--Photographer Zoe Strauss recently won a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.strauss, zoe

permanent link   libby 5:28 PM
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Posted by roberta

[Ed. note: we got an email from Paolo Bartolli of spurse explaining a little about their project "The Lost Meeting." Here's Bartolli's note and my follow up to him. Bartolli is referring to my review of "The Lost Meeting" in this post.]

Letter from Paolo Bartolli

Dear Roberta, After reading your review of the project, it was clear to me that your time spent trying to understand our Installation in the course of an hour was virtually impossible and not doing your experience of it any justice.
spurse
On a fundamental level, this project is about mediation of the world, specifically in the "everyday." It was a perfect entry into the particular Quaker history involving the schism between the Orthodox and the Hicksites which was also a question of mediation in relation to how one could experience a relationship with God, which, I am sure you are already aware of.

In this sense, mediation is what has been, and is being produced in our Installation. It is not about producing beautiful art objects in the world, but rather about producing a “thing” in the world i.e., an activity (process) of invention through mediation.


This project is about the Quakers yes, as a history from which to embed the genesis of thought with regard to mediation, but it is not about the Quakers as a way to reify a particular history that is quite often misunderstood and romanticized.

What this project does best is expose a complexity of history that is certainly not stagnant (the Quakers are still with us today, the Little Meeting is currently being used, etc.) and activates it through a process of invention to get at the "everyday" in what could be a profoundly different manner.

Again, this project is certainly not about producing an art object (with regard to the art teacher reference) but rather it is about producing a thing, Mediation.

Please check out this weblink for another basic understanding of the project. And please, feel free to stop by again, or contact us at spurse@hotmail.com. Thank you for your thoughts.
--Paolo Bartolli, spurse

My reply to Bartolli

Dear Paolo, thanks for writing. I agree with you that your project is producing a thing in the world and that it is a mediation. Perhaps I was laboring under the false assumption that what you were producing would also be an aesthetic experience. I guess you're telling me that an aesthetic experience was not the intent.

My basic question about "The Lost Meeting," and I guess I still have it, is what relevance does it have to me as a viewer who is outside spurse. The project has an insider/outsider dichotomy that makes me uncomfortable. As an outsider looking in I'm afraid what I saw was confusing, chaotic, and disappointing.

As for mediation, I just don't get how taking an archived object and running it through an algorithm and generating a pattern (for what?) has anything to do with me. What is the point of the mediation? Call me a Midwest pragmatist but I was looking for an end result of the mediation and all I understood was that the patterns would be used for new spurse projects. That self-generating aspect of the project seems like what goes on in academe (laboratories and the like).

But this project, sponsored by a group that funds exhibitions, PEI, is not an academic project or laboratory and should be measured on some level as an exhibit, even if it is an exhibit that is itself a process and a mediation. And as an exhibit that is a mediation I think it disappoints because it is not clear and seems not to be able to communicate to an audience outside itself.

Anyway, life marches on and I'm afraid I won't have time to make it up to Abington again. But I wish you all well and thanks again for writing. --Roberta

permanent link   roberta 4:03 PM
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Posted by libby

Post by Gil Kerlin

kerlin, gil
[Editor's note: Artist Gil Kerlin, co-owner of Gallery Joe, recently returned from China where he taught English and maybe learned a little Chinese. Here's a report from his experiences there.]

Quzhou is a small city in Zhejiang Province six hours west of Shanghai. I arrived there on March 1, 2005 to take up my duties as an English teacher at Middle School Number 3. I taught 22 classes a week with 50 or more students in each class. My students had studied English for 5 years and had a good working knowledge of the language although they had had few opportunities use their English (right, Gil, second from left, poses with some students).

Most of my students came from rural villages around Quzhou. They lived in spartan dormitories at the school and took classes 6 days a week beginning at 6:30 in the morning and ending at 9:30 at night. Every other weekend they returned to their villages to see their families.


The first assignment I gave them was to write about a single event in their childhood. I received hundreds of stories--poignant stories, funny stories, harrowing stories, sad stories, . From these stories I learned that my students generally had the run of their villages and surrounding countryside when they were young. They were free to roam with their friends. Many expressed nostalgia for the freedom of that time in their lives. There were touching stories about fishing with a grandfather, raising pets, and mischief (remaining pictures taken in Gil's classroom) .

There were also stories of the grim realities of rural poverty: accidents, harsh punishment for misdeeds and the death of loved ones. My students were coming of age at a time af dramatic change in China. They were proud of their country's emergence as a great industrial power but also mindful of its terrible environmental cost . They had seen clear rivers where they once fished and swam become dark and lifeless with pollution. They had seen the graceful architecture of China's past replaced buy concrete boxes. They were caught up in China's rush to modernize but, like us, they were also dismayed by what they saw.

I would like to share a few of their stories with you.

My Childhood
by Wu Liang Xin

I was born in a remote village but it was very beautiful, I think. A small river runs through my hometown. There is a large area with many stones by one side of the river bank. On the other side there is a mountain with a lot of bamboo.


When I was a little girl I was both lovely and naughty. Now and then my little friends and I played together near the river. When we felt tired, I was really happy when I lay on the river bank for a long time just looking at the white clouds floating slowly in the sky. Then we laughed and called loudly to the mountain and watched fish swim in the river. I could swim freely in the river. I could go fishing at sunset or catch crabs with my friends.

In a word, it was a paradise for children. I love my childhood very much. I love my hometown deeply forever.

A Cat Lives in the World
by Yu Xue Ming

I had a friend, a special friend, not a person but a cat. He taught me a lesson about living in the world.

My cat was a naughty one. He liked to climb things. One day he climbed up to a chimney but he couldn't climb down. He cried out to me but I could do nothing but worry. Suddenly, he jumped down like a leaf falling slowly from a tree. To my surprise, he was fine and hadn't been hurt at all.

Now I know that we must be completely ready to grasp chances and do our best every time. At least we must keep ourselves from being hurt.


My Grandfather's Fishing Skill
by Xie Zheng Min

When I was a child I liked to go fishing with my grandfather because he had special fishing skill.

When we arrived at the river, my grandfather always sat on the bank of the river drinking some wine. Then he poured rice, which was mixed with wine into the river where he wanted to throw his fishing line. After a while he began fishing and stared at the bobber. Several minutes later the bobber began to sway in the water. It went up and sown and then disappeared under the water. My grandfather immediately pulled on the fishing rod. the fishing rod vent because the fish was very big. The fish struggled and my grandfather let the fish tire itself out. When the fish was tired my grandfather pulled it out of the water easily. Then he continued fishing.

By the time the sun set plastic bag was full of fish.

Fishing with my grandfather is one of the happiest memories of my childhood.

Catch Fish
by Fu Tong Ling

When I was a child I liked to catch fish in a very small stream. It was only a third of a meter deep but the size of the fish was not small. The water was very clean and cool. I could catch 30 to 50 fish at one time.

When my basket was full of fish I felt very happy and went home satisfied. The fascination of catching fish can't be described in words.

But now there are no fish in the stream or even in the river. Why did they disappear? Where did they go? I think they died. Factories put water in the river without purifying it.

Today I have a dream. I dream that the lively fish will come back.

--Artist Gil Kerlin, with his wife Becky, runs Gallery Joe

permanent link   libby 12:29 PM
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Posted by roberta

On my way to see "Silver Garden," at the PMA, the wonderful photography show I told you about here, I stopped in my tracks in the crafts corridor right outside the Julien Levy ramp. What's up now is a sample of some really amazing work from the Contemporary Crafts Collection, including, and here's the news, work by ceramic artists represented by the new Hurong Lou Gallery in Old City.

I had just spent time at Hurong Lou with the gallerist and his assistant, the artist Blazo Kovacevic, and they brought me up to speed after a fashion on the fine art clay scene. (Lou previously was Gallery director at Helen Drutt Gallery and when Drutt closed Hurong decided he needed to open a gallery of his own. His artists include many from the Drutt stable). Anyway, I'm going back to Hurong Lou today to see a new show but I want to float a bunch of images of beauties I saw at the PMA that will be a warm up to a post and a PW story I'm going to do on the new craft gallery. (top image, from PMA, is "Middle of Somewhere" 2002, glazed porcelain, by Korean-born artist Sun Koo Yuh. I had seen a similar piece at Hurong Lou.)
yuh, sun koo
I don't know how often the PMA rotates the selection of works in this corridor but I've always found many happy moments here studying works that have nice interplay with each other.


Here's a bowl by Jill Bonovitz, "Softly Sighing," 1989. I saw a similar bowl at Hurong Lou with a 2005 date on it I believe. Hurong told me that the artist, known -- to me at least -- for her anthropomorphic white porcelain vases with tiny legs, was making bowls again. No more cha-cha dancing vases.
bonovitz, jill

"Osiris Vegefrogged," 1973, glazed earthenware by David Gilhooly. The piece, small, colorful and frog-like sits next to a large green-glazed bust by Robert Arneson titled "Portrait of David (David Gilhooly) from 1977. Arneson is one of my all time favorite ceramic artists. You'll have to see his piece in person because my photo is too fuzzy even for me to put up with. (you can't tell from this shot but you look down on Gilhooly's humble mound of vegetables which must be maybe 12" high)
gilhooly, david


"Olive Oropendola on Bucket," 2001, glazed stoneware, by George Johnson. No words can express. So sweet, so funny.
johnson, george


"Head" by Rudolf Staffel, glazed stoneware with incised decoration, 1938. and "Double Face Jug and Candleholder," 1993, Cleater C.S. and Billie Meaders. The big news is the Staffel, whose paper thin "Light Catchers" are what I think of when I think of his ouervre. Here, a very heart-felt piece, pre-Civil Rights era, with an image of a lynching on top of the dark ceramic head. Amazing, haunting, disturbing and beautiful.

This is a small selection from a much larger installation. I highly recommend a visit.
staffel, rudolf
meaders, cleater and billie

permanent link   roberta 9:02 AM
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Posted by roberta

Post by Brent Burket, artblog New York correspondent


And now, a little sympathy for the filthy rich. I'm pretty sure that the only people who go to the galleries in the 57th Street area are critics, art students, a couple artists, and people who carry their money around in trucks. That's a shame because some of the best art in town is up there.

Two recent shows are good examples of that.

Disturbing the Peace at Mary Boone

The Hilary Harkness show at Mary Boone's 5th Avenue gallery is the doll house birthing/killing floor we've come to expect from her. Notoriously and understandably slow in regards to her output, Harkness made a show that’s a collection of drawings, paintings, and a few things in between. It's far from stop-gap though. In fact, it's essential viewing. [Ed. note: View the busy microcosmic worlds here and on the gallery's website, fans, for the show closed June 25.]

(top image is "Air Raid" 10 1/2" x 10 1/4", graphite, oil, watercolor/paper, 2005; and left above is "Flipwreck," 13" x 22" oil/wood, 2004)

I like that her work disturbs so many people from so many angles. Is it the substitution of women in predatory roles that have historically belonged to men? Is it the naked power plays that still appear in the absence of men? Is it that the women in her work are shown to have power, or more to the point that they have all the power?


These are all interesting questions, but mostly I like that her work is so well done, both technically and intellectually. It dares you to analyze it, but it doesn't really care what you think. It's too involved with itself for that. The real power here is wielded by the artist, a woman in full control of color, line, and yes, her odd little tableau world of birth and bullets, water and sand. Crack that whip, Hil. Turn that knife.

(image is "Heavy Cruisers," 18 1/4" x 20 1/2" graphite/paper, 2004)

Master and Commander Schutte at Marian Goodman

An artist that exercises a similarly high level of control in his work is Thomas Schutte. The results couldn't be more dissimilar but he too places the viewer in the voyeur's seat in his new show at Marian Goodman (up to July 2).

Schutte's austere archictectural models for 'One Man Houses' were a jolt after the obsessive details of Harkness. That's not to say that Schutte doesn't have his own obsessions. The perfect form would be one of them. But the perfect form for what? That's something that we'll figure out as we go. (image is "One Man Houses" 2003, metal, plastic, mirror, mixed. house: 15" x 57 5/8" x 50" crate 50" x 66 1/4" x 58")

With Schutte's work there is always a feeling of something left behind; something present, gone, and possible. In this work where future use is implied, there is a sense of the past that lies ahead. The viewer first peers into this world of 1:5 scale models in the front gallery. There is a smaller scale representation of the houses arranged in community in the middle gallery.

When I walked through the full-scale model room in the back gallery I felt like a camera's eye, documenting a room with an already-unfolded secret. After the giant's vantage point of the first two galleries, I was keenly aware of my own size and perspective -- my own humanness --when I was walking around the model room. I had become the one man, and the house wasn't the room as much as it was the created memory that was surrounding me. (image is "One Man Houses III," 2005. house: birch, mixed. 71" x 39 3/8" x 69 1/2" crate: 41 3/8" x 48 5/8" x 72")


schutte, thomas
Some would argue that Schutte's body of work and the materials he uses are an indictment of the American art world. I find that he hits a broader mark than that. Nietzsche's idea that progress is an illusion comes to mind. By keeping his forms and materials on such a rudimentary level he reminds us of that. By taking us to another place and time, he tells us exactly where we are. (image is "One Man Houses" installation 2005)
harkness, hilary
--Brent Burket is an art collector and writer who lives in Brooklyn.

permanent link   roberta 7:47 AM
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Posted by roberta

My review of the Do-Ho Suh exhibit at PAFA and the FWM is in today's paper. Here. I love Suh's work for its embrace of community and for what I see as ambiguity expressed about the relationship of the one and the many. Suh comes out of Korea and a Buddhist tradition, and the works can be read in that context but I think his depth comes from the openness with which his pieces can be read by a Western eye.



My take on "Paratrooper II" at PAFA, the piece made in collaboration with the FWM, is that it's about the relationship of the past and the present. The whole thing is ghostly and still and to my mind quite unlike the two other works which are vigorous and show struggle. (top image is "Paratrooper II." Photo by Aaron Igler)

Suh is one of the most exciting artists working today. Zhang Huan is another. These artists transcend the East/West dichotomy in art by making work with human concerns whose metaphors speak beyond borders. Among Western artists, Pepon Osorio and Kara Walker do similar humanist magic in their works. (image is "Paratrooper V". Photo by Aaron Igler)

suh, do-ho

"Paratrooper V" and "Screen" are up at FWM through Sept. 17 and Paratrooper II is up through Aug. 21 at PAFA's Morris Gallery. And, by the way, don't forget there's no charge to get in to the Morris Gallery however if you want to see the rest of the museum you pay the bucks. Here's Libby's post on Suh. (image is "Screen" detail. Photo by Aaron Igler)

Sketches
Don't miss these emerging artist shows opening Friday:

--"Nexus Selects" the first annual competition for Philadelphia art school seniors organized by Nexus Gallery, up only through July 10; and
--"Point of View" an emerging artists landscape show at Vox Populi curated by Vox executive director Yana Balson, up til July 30.

Editors Choice

In the listings, my blurb about the local Cerealart hitting Manhattan with an exhibit at Chelea's Perry Rubenstein Gallery (through Aug. 12.) Larry Mangel's enterprise -- which commissions toys for grown ups from artists like Marcel Dzama (action figures -- see image) and Yayoi Kusama (polka dot pillows) -- is a natural outgrown of Mangel's earlier product line, Bozart Toys which features a dollhouse by Laurie Simmons and a chess set by Karim Rashid.

A-list
Yes I was wordy this week. The A-list has my preview of the new show, "Eccentric Space" opening Friday at Freeform at MBN Studios. That show's up through Aug. 17, but best to see it at the opening Friday, July 1, 6-10 pm. Leslie Mutchler, whom we've written about when her work was in the "Pulp" show up at Tyler will have her tabletop piece in the show. (see artist's list at left for more on Mutchler) And come out to say 'bye to Leslie and her partner Jason Urban (we've written about him, too) who are leaving Philadelphia for twin jobs in Carbondale, Illinois teaching at Southern Illinois University. Stay in touch y'all.
dzama, marc

permanent link   roberta 4:58 PM
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Posted by libby

After receiving an email alert from Ron Klein, I stopped by Bird Park to look at his newest black inflatable, "Doing." What I saw was the Darth Vader of balloondom, bobbing and weaving in the wind.
klein, ron
I was happy to see a new piece of outdoor art in the little pocket park that Gallery Joe owner Becky Kerlin had put on hiatus for a while. (Klein's gallery is Pentimenti. Here's my post on his last show there).

"Doing's" dark presence--a sort of pumped up, double-headed bishop with a scrunched cravat or obi in between--had a seriousness that the light, balloon quality undercut and augmented all at once--bringing up thoughts of black holes, still air inside, air outside and playfulness.

Suddenly the cravat, and the head covered with brown netting became a costume or a uniform of some alien space sentry.

And in Bird Park, behind the iron fence, "Doing" had an inner bounciness and presence that confinement failed to quench.

I wondered whether "Doing," the name of the piece, rhymed with stewing or with Gerald McBoingBoing. Here's Klein's answer:

Doing, not doing, refers to the act of non-action versus action. The piece is motivated by the wind to "do" or achieve motion.

When there is no wind it is "not doing" These words to describe my feelings were inspired by Taoist literature and philosophy. Not doing is as important as doing. In music silence is as important as noise. Doing, not doing is an act of life. Both being equal and necessary, as is this sculpture.

To me it is beautiful both as an action and non-action. Part of the magic of the piece is it's interaction with nature, or in this case the wind as it motivates change. I think of this sculpture as having tremendous energy given to it by wind and friction and also contemplative or meditative energy given to it by non movement or stillness. ...

The fishnet ...........I worked with indigenous fisherman weavers in Burma and made many nets as party of a large project called Burmese Nature in 1997-98. This project has been shown several times and has a video that accompanies it which documents the project in Burma. I used one of the nets for this piece. This net forms a cocoon over the inflatable and allows it to be hung. The piece is hollow, only supported by AIR (as such the wind is a primary ingredient both inside the piece and outside).

Klein, who mostly works in black or white, has created an anthropomorphic plumb bob, blown by nature in unplanned directions, its weightlessness making gravity nearly null. The leaden, hardware quality of a plumb bob is completely contradicted by the materials here.

In a funny way, I am also reminded of Richard Artschwager's blips, the Klein reminding me of an exclamation point that creates a dark hole in the urban landscape.

I asked Kerlin whether Bird Park was back in the art business. Here's what she answered:

I guess Bird Park is back in operation. Following Ron is an event for the Fringe and then, hopefully, a piece by a local architect. I'm waiting for a proposal -I think it will be a go. - probably in October.

"Doing" is a nice piece to celebrate the park's return to the art world, looking peaceful in the jittery urban landscape, dressed in all black like an artist.

And speaking of new spaces, I got a note from Rob Minervini who has his first solor show coming up at a gallery I wasn't aware of yet: Darius Gallery 116 N. 3rd St.

permanent link   libby 3:47 PM
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Posted by libby

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts has just opened a major drawing show filled with wit and vision (left, local comic book artist Charles Burns' front cover drawing for 'Black Hole,' issue #7).
burns, charles
It's part of the good news of some of the things going on at PAFA.

The show is "Light, Line and Color," 237 works on paper from PAFA's collection, some of which are brand new, some of which have never been seen, and some of which have not seen for a generation. It's in the new Fisher Brooks Gallery on the first floor of the new Hamilton Building, a gargantuan space that has been reconfigured into more manageable spaces (see my post on the space when it opened).

The really good news is that this exhibition marks the first major curatorial effort here by PAFA Assistant Curator Robert Cozzolino. Cozzolino (see Roberta's post including some words on Cozzolino and his arrival) said when we took the tour of the exibit on Friday that his academic field of interest is recent painting and graphic arts. But right after he arrived at PAFA, he was assigned this show. He admitted his surprise but then ran with it, examining each of the 12,000 paper pieces in the archive. He has created a coherent and ebullient show that traces art historical themes in American prints and drawings and other paper media while incorporating plenty of what is going on in paper today.
cozzolino, robert
To have gotten a curator of this quality with this ability to view the past and the present is just great news for PAFA and Philadelphia (right, local artist Randall Sellers' postmodern take on bathers, "Untitled 4," pencil on Bristol paper, 5 x 7 inches, from the Figure Study part of the show. Sellers shows at Spector Gallery).
sellers, randall
The tour

Cozzolino chatted away as he took a small group of us, including Roberta and me, around the exhibit. Occasionally, the exigencies of last-minute installation issues drew him away as we ambled around the gallery, but the show stood on its own without need of pumping up, and Cozzolino proved to be a source of all sorts of information, like the number of pieces in the Academy's paper archives--12,000 pieces. "I went through everything, every flat-file drawer."

Cozzolino said the exhibit is "a snapshot of the strengths of the collection."

There's not much overlap with the last such survey, curated in 1986 (by Kathleen Adair Foster, who is now curator of American art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art). The lack of overlap between the two exhibits is partially because since then PAFA has "bought really well and has gotten great gifts," Cozzolino said. Those additions all make the collection more cohesive, he added. "I've also bought to fill in gaps. And [PAFA Curator of Contemporary Art] Alex Baker, who buys contemporary art, has bought some since September."

Looking at the bright side of what it means to have small budget to spend on art, Cozzolino said, "We can do works on paper really well and show what the academy tradition has really meant."

The show is divided into six sections. (I have to confess I gave The Academic Tradition section short shrift.) We started with portraits and self-portraits. One of the images making its debut here is the John Singleton Copley "Portrait of John Scollay," (acquired in 1987, too late for the previous show).
wood, grant
Nearby, an outstanding Grant Wood, "The Good Influence," is a portrait of the town gossip in the book "Main Street," for which Wood did a series of drawings. The subject is painted with a wicked twinkle in her eye, in the background a church that looks a lot like the one in Wood's "American Gothic." The funny juxtaposition of the holy and unholy zings along with the stylized graphic punch and cartoony portraiture that also make "American Gothic" such an icon (left, "The Good Influence," black carbon pencil, India ink and white gouache, about 31 x 24 inches).
benton, thomas hart
Other highlights were "Aaron," an outstanding portrait of a heavily lined face with corrugated forehead by Thomas Hart Benton, and Red Grooms' "Portrait of Fritz," a reminder of that underneath his cartoon exterior, Grooms is a German Expressionist. A pair of disturbing magical realist drawings from Pavel Tchelitchev and John Wilde are both recent acquisitions. Nearby, Wilde's notebook documenting his nervous breakdown as a soldier in World War II is shown here for the first time (right, "Aaron" by Benton, a 1941 lithograph, about 13 x 10 inches).

A trip through time and taste

The section Rural Vistas and Urban Spaces told a number of stories, including industrialization and its affect on both the landscape and the city, and the changing tastes in landscape subjects and painting styles.
albee, grace arnold
Grace Arnold Albee's "Entangled Tractor," from 1945, as well as influential artists' artist Marshall Glasier's "Fantastic Landscape" together with the more visionary Charles Ephraim Burchfield's loopy watercolor and charcoal "Purple Vetch and Buttercups" (aargh, this one's a period piece) belies the terms "realism" and "landscape" and reinforces the limitless ability of imagination (Albee's tractor wood engraving, above left, and Glasier's pen and ink landscape, right).
glasier, marshall

Near the Burchfield, Stuart Davis' idyllic "Sand Cove," which is the signature image for the show's banners and brochure, is a beauty and nothing like the jazzy geometric work for which he is known.

davis, stuart


In some ways, this painting, with its patterns and designs, is more like the Kate Abercrombie print from the Philadelphia Print Collaborative than like any of the landscapes in the show (left, Davis's gouache "Sand Cove," and right, Abercrombie's untitled mixed media print; Abercrombie shows at Vox Populi).
abercrombie, kate


The urban views included a terrific political cartoon from Herbert Johnson, "Yes, These Gangster Assaults on Helpless Babes Should Make Us Real Cross," made for the Saturday Evening Post ca. 1930-44. Cozzolino, whom we had lost for a while, turned up as we gazed at the Johnson. "I'd love to do a Herbert Johnson show," he mentioned. He admitted to having lists of shows he was dreaming of based on his explore of the deep deep archives (left, Johnson's cartoon).
johnson, herbert
A non-precisionist painting from Charles Demuth, "Vaudeville Dancers," had the power to surprise, especially with a more typical precisionist piece right nearby. Cozzolino offered some gossip--that Demuth, a diabetic, was not taking care of himself, but Dr. Albert Barnes got him into regular treatments (right, "Vaudeville Dancers").
demuth, charles

A nearby group of coal and industry related prints and paintings also caught my eye, including "Koppers Coke" by Victoria Hutson Huntley, Willie Birch's "Promise Land" (which was a gift of the Brandywine Workshop in 1989, by the way), and Alfred Leslie's "Coal Pile near the Ohio River" (left, "Koppers Coke" lithograph).
huntley, victoria hutson


Well, at this point, even with the checklist of works, I've lost my sense of categories. So let me just say I loved Janet E. Turner's "Black Vultures" linocut and Stuart Homer Frost's "The Tree House" pen-and-ink, which both stopped me dead in my tracks. (Maybe these are visionary landscapes, a category I cannot find on my checklist). I don't know if Paul Santoleri (now showing at Projects Gallery until July 31) is familiar with Frost, but they have a lot in common with eachother as well as with MC Escher in their approach to the spatial (right, "The Tree House").
frost, stuart homer
The Language of Abstraction section included a small, intense Franz Kline, "untitled," the delicate, Asian-inspired "Memory of the Rains in Uruapan" by Sonia Sekula, and a small Lenore Tawney, "Mother of All Aeons," a woven paper collage with a cosmic sky (left, Kline's "Untitled" pen and ink).
kline, franz
At this point I fell right off the categories, but who cares? There's so much terrific work in this show that I just want to give it a thumbs up.
burwell, charles
Modern times

But let me blab about a few more things: The hilarious "Pussy and Herbert: Their Second Date" by Gladys Nilsson comes out of the Hairy Who. It's an image of people as cartoony animals with sweet pink genitals doing the dance of romance (right, "Pussy and Herbert: Their Second Date").

nilsson, gladys


Speaking of the Hairy Who, Cozzolino mentioned that PAFA just bought a "great Jim Nutt" from 1969 from Fleisher-Ollman Gallery. It's a reverse painting on a window shade, he said, and gallery still has it--up now at Art Basil.
nutt, jim



Nilsson's playful psycho-sexual watercolor is right near three terrific local items from the 2004 Philadelphia Print Collective collection--Ben Woodward's lithograph "Whatever it Takes," Charles Burwell's silkscreen "Variations," and the Kate Abercrombie mentioned before (above left, Burwell's "Variations;" Burwell shows at Sande Webster Gallery; and right, Woodward's "Whatever it Takes"; Woodward shows at Spector Gallery).
woodward, ben


Contemporary Strategies includes the terrific Charles Burns at the top of the post, two flip books from Richard Tuttle that are anything by flip and my fave, an outrageous Kara Walker printed silhouette, "African/American," a recent purchase, which talks to a 1910 proper silhouette portrait of "William Merritt Chase" by Kate P. Parker nearby. Walker's bush-woman commentary on racial and sexual stereotypes, positioned just a few feet away from all those traditional nudes in poses of simpering false modesty serves as a nice reaffirmation that contemporary art is not about preserving tradition any more than it's about rejecting it. That's a false dichotomy. It's about transforming tradition so it says something fresh, important and pertinent in a way that's new. In art, like in all communication, the medium is the message(left, "African/American," 1998, linocut, 46 x 60 1/2 inches, printer's proof from edition of 60).
walker, kara

permanent link   libby 5:47 PM
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Posted by roberta

We were just speaking of the Kramlich Collection of video art (see post on NY Times story) and yesterday I got a note from Dan Byers of the Fab Workshop and Museum.

The Fab is showing works from the Kramlich collection, right now -- as we speak. "Single Screen Selections of Rare Film and Audio from the Pamela and Richard Kramlich Collection" will run in two parts, between now and November, 2005. Here's the link to the Fab page on the show.

Part One, June 18-Aug. 21, features works from the 60s and 70s by artists who are better known for work in other fields: William Allan, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Henning Christiansen, Christof Karlhofer, Sigmar Polke, Ed Ruscha, Gilbert and George, and Bruce Nauman. Performance-based and process-oriented, the works, many of them collaborative, are experimental and should be surprising and of interest to all of us video maniacs. Here's the big surprise: Sigmar Polke making video, or audio????? Hard to imagine.

Part Two, Sept. 9-Nov. 12, features video sculpture, including work by Larry Clark, Mariko Mori, Dara Birnbaum, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Dan Graham, and Alan Ruppersburg. Once again, here's a surprise. Larry Clark made a video sculpture???

About the Kramliches, the press material says they "began collecting video art in the 1980s and established the New Art Trust to encourage the scholarship and conservation of new media art." Works from the Kramlich Collection have been shown publicly at the San Francisco MOMA in 1999 and at PS1 in 2002-2003.

The press release doesn't say where the works are on exhibit in the museum but it must be the 5th floor, where they have a video lounge. And also a large gallery space. The Fab has always been a big video art emporium so it is fitting that the Kramlich's collection is in residence for a while. Kind of like a home away from home.
(image is video"Food Print Film," c. 1969 by Ruscha. 16mm color film transferred to video. Running time: 30 minutes. Image courtesy Pamela and Richard Kramlich Collection.)
ruscha, ed

permanent link   roberta 10:58 AM
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Posted by roberta

I was reading my favorite blogs last week and came across a project that I just love at J.T. Kirkland's Thinking About Art. (You remember Kirkland from that email interview I did with him last month. He's the young, self-taught artist who drills holes into carefully selected wood from Home Depot and makes magic HD never envisioned. Here's part one, part two and part three of that 3-part interview.)
keiser, duane
Well the artist's at it again. Subverting a commercial product, Microsoft's "Visio," to do his bidding as an art tool. He's creating digital prints in editions of 10-25 and selling them for $20 or $25 each. And they're imbued with the same kind of stillness and questioning about relationships and voids and chasms and wholes and parts that I love in the sculpture/paintings. Plus, with the prints you get some color! (top image is Kirkland's first Visio print, "Underneath.")

I had to have one.

I emailed Kirkland and this is what he said about the project.

As for the prints, yes, they are an ongoing series. Really I consider them to be studies for my Organic Minimalism but in the end I think they function as nice, finished pieces that give a little glimmer into my aesthetic. Plus they're fun to do.

Here's the post that started it all.



They're actually all drawn using Microsoft Visio which is a tool that consultants, techies, etc, use to diagram process flows, org charts, swimlanes, etc. On my new project at work I was introduced to Visio and must use it everyday to document these types of things for the client. After a while the artist in me took over and I began to explore the possibilities of using Visio for other purposes. Soon enough I started cranking out these sketches and I thought it would be great to post these on the blog for a mere $20. It'd allow new collectors to buy affordable work and would allow more people to own something I made. I won't get rich off this project any time soon but I think it's win-win for everyone. (image is "Jail")

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I post one print (each print is done in an edition of 10-25).

First person to email me and want it gets it. Perhaps a week or two later I'll post another print from the same edition for those who were too late to get the first one. Also, periodically I plan to have a BONANZA day where for a certain timeframe people can email me to buy a print from any edition that I've already published on Thinking About Art. (image is "Three Holes")

I must be fair though, this isn't really "my" idea.

Duane Keiser, a brilliant painter in Richmond, VA, started the first blog for these purposes (as far as I know of). That's where I got the idea. His site can be seen here: His wonderful little paintings are $100 each and I own three of them!

(image is yesterday's painting (sold) from Keiser's site. Keiser's paintings are postcard size oil sketches done on site.)

Open your pocketbooks all you fledgling collectors and take a chance on Kirkland's inventive, playful, extraordinarily good prints -- at incredible prices. And check out Keiser's accomplished postcard paintings too -- they're pretty great and great value.kirkland, jt

permanent link   roberta 9:13 AM
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Posted by roberta

Post by Brent Burket, artblog New York correspondent

Zach Feuer is giving Mary Boone a run for the title of Hardest Eye On 24th Street.
oswald, john
Columbia grad Dana Schutz is the most celebrated star here. As much as she lived up to her hype, for me the Tom McGrath show that followed hers was even stronger. Feurer has kept the pressure on since then, without a single false step. I really can't recommend this gallery highly enough. (As a bonus I have it on good authority that Feuer is a class operator who treats his artists with a high level of respect and fairness. Imagine that.)

When I'm gallery hopping in Chelsea I usually find myself drawn back to this gallery for a second look before heading home. In the gallery's last show, the upside-down no-side-up sex depicted Tim Lokiec's work was refreshingly sexy. (top image is "Untitled" 2005, mixed media by Lokiec, and right is detail) It's the exact opposite of a Cecily Brown experience. Even when Lokiec isn't overtly displaying the sex it's hinted at or hoped for. Art that turns my libidinal crank (Rothko, Karin Davies) is always welcome. Maybe it was just the Spring talking but one thing is for sure: at Zach Feurer (LFL), blooming seems to be the only option.
lokiec, tim
Feigen, no wait, Shainman

This Saturday, I went to see the new group show at Feigen Contemporary on 20th Street, but before I got there I was distracted in an almost miraculous way by a show at the Jack Shainman Gallery.

It was the last day of a 3-person show, and I noticed the name of John Oswald who is best known for his plunderphonic sound experiments. He's transferred his attention to video art and in doing so has created one of the best works I've seen this year, "Chronophotic." (image above left)

I find so much of video art to be, in the end, disappointing. Jeremy Blake changed my mind about the possibilities of the genre this year, and now Oswald has brought it home. Oswald has always been a master of layering and juxtapostion. He took one of the most boring rock bands in the world, The Grateful Dead, and made their work thrilling with his release, "Grayfolded," a collage of 100 separate performances of their epically static Dark Star.
howard, ridley


None of his gift for the graft has been lost in this move to the visual realm. Ironically, the basis for this video piece is still photography. Two photographs were taken of each subject, one nude and one clothed. The artist shows each image at varying degrees of visibility, overlaying over 100 of the subjects on the screen at the same time. People appear and disappear slowly, their two images cross-fading with each other and simultaneously with the other subjects going
through their own set of shiftings. Like a good painting the more I looked at it the more engrossing it became. (detail of Oswald's Chronophotic)

In a perfect moment (And I swear I'm not making this up.), just as tears had come to my eyes, I was approached by the artist who happened to be in the gallery. Artist feedback should always be this good. In discussing my reaction I told him how much bad video art I've seen and how this work is one of the bright spots in a long, dimly lit hallway. He told me that this was reason he created "Chronophotic." When viewing video art he always found himself thinking I'd rather be looking at a good painting.' Yes! And there we were, doing just that. I would love to comment on the other two artists in the show, Michael Snow and Pascal Grandmaison, but I wasn't even able to look at their work after all that wonder. Sorry about that, but not really.

Feigen, no wait, Feuer, no really Feigen


Staggering out into the sun I made my way down to Feigen Contemporary to see the aforementioned group show, Life and Limb. I'm almost always pleased with what I find on the walls here, and this time was no exception. A painter from the Zach Feurer Gallery, Ridley Howard, had a fine painting right inside the door. All those hard lines around soft things. I was off to a good start. (image is a Howard painting)

There were two gloriously twisted Inka Essenhigh silkscreens. Another highlight in the show was the creepy and gorgeous pastel by Nicky Hoberman. (image right is a pastel, "Untitled (Chair and Owls)" by Hoberman and below is detail) When visiting this gallery I always go downstairs where they show works by gallery artists that are separate from the current shows. At the bottom of the stairs there were four smart and funny drawings by David Kramer. Another predictably excellent Jeremy Blake C-print stretched across the north wall. Come to think of it, these two artists couldn't be less alike and it's a good example of one of the strengths of this gallery.


When I first started to visit Feigen I thought their program was all over the place, but then I woke up and realized that it's just one thing: good. And that takes nothing but focus on the part of everyone that works there. The gallerists at Feigen have a passion for their artists that is refreshingly not muted by the pretention that I so often find in Chelsea. Come to think of it, you could say that about all three of these galleries.

And I do.

Next up, a little pity for the filthy rich and a visit to the edge.

--Brent Burket is an art collector and writer who lives in Brooklyn.
hoberman, nicky

permanent link   roberta 6:22 PM
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Posted by roberta

You may have seen yesterday's great NY Times feature story by Edward Lewine about collectors living with their video art. Here.

I'll summarize my favorite bits. It's quite a long, informative story that gets into the cost of owning video art and more interestingly how to weave it into your apartment or, in one case, garage. (image is Doug Aitken video installed in a garage)
aitken, doug
The piece focuses on a couple of collectors, like the Kramliches of San Francisco who have their house filled with video art. They own 250 pieces, for which they spent millions according to their curator. The best, behind the scenes information is about how the couple got started collecting video. Quoting:

The pair, who married in 1981 after just seven weeks of courtship, began collecting art when they discovered they had nothing in common (my emphasis). In consultation with curators from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and their adviser, Thea Westreich, they chose to amass video art, because it fit in with Mr. Kramlich's interest in technology, the museum needed patrons in this area, and there was little competition from other collectors (my emphasis).

Another collecting couple highlighted are Norman and Norah Stone, who installed a work by Doug Aitken in their garage. The story says they worked with the artist who distilled his original 5-screen, 1,200 ft. video installation into a one-screen version. When they want to watch it, they park their 2 Porsches and their BMW wagon on the street.

Both couples own work by Matthew Barney. The Kramliches also own Gilbert and George and Bill Viola works.

There's lots of talk in the story about what you might expect -- video art being intrusive into a person's life. There's the challenge of fitting the tv screens or projections into your living space; and the even bigger challenge of dealing with the medium's sound and the constant movement of the imagery. Video art becomes like a 2-year old needing constant attention -- and frequent naps. Or in one of the best quotes in the article,

"They remind me of my Jack Russell terriers," said Norman Stone. "You can't ignore them."

I think personifying video art as an active 2-year old or a frisky dog is right on the money. There's room in most people's households for that kind of energy -- as long as there's an adult in charge of the remote, the leash, and the naptime schedule.

permanent link   roberta 7:42 AM
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