artblog

Cannonball off 'yer back

libbyrosof@gmail.com (libby rosof) — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:26:00 +0000

Cannonball Press at work--Mike Houston on the little Vandercook (vintage 1938) letterpress, and Martin Mazorra (the blur)stabilizing it

Saturday's free The Shirt Off 'Yer Back event at Space 1026 offered a double freebie--Cannonball Press was there with a tiny little press, printing woodblock prints--you supply the t-shirt (if you didn't have one, they'd sell you one for $2). And Space 1026 supplied silkscreen prints for those who preferred.

There were no bad choices.

Here are our his and hers typewriters

Murray and I both went for a woodblock print of an old-fashioned typewriter. I'm thinking about adding some studs or something on the jeans shirt to complete my tough-girl image.

Check out my Flickr set for a sense of the event.

Moving day

libby and roberta — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:05:00 +0000

Hey guys, guess what? We're migrating the blog tomorrow from its current url to a new one. We expect to have a momentary hiccup in artblog but that's all, so be forewarned. Once the change is in place you will be automatically redirected when you enter our old address.

If you read us in syndication you will have to change to our new settings. We will be notifying the syndicators officially after we have the new url tomorrow.

Wish us luck!

Edvard Munch, tortured soul

roberta fallon — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 12:43:00 +0000

Edvard Munch photo
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Christina's World by Wyeth (see previous post) may not have been travel-worthy but Munch's Little Mermaid, the triangular piece that the PMA just acquired and featured in a show over the winter travelled just fine to MoMA to appear in the Munch exhibition. It sits high on a wall and looks great.

The Munch exhibit is large and enlightening. The artist was a tortured soul who had at least one spell in a sanitorium. What I loved best were the prints and works on paper. It seemed to me that the artist got real in the smaller scale and with the more intimate processes, and so while he played out his familiar themes of love and loneliness, somehow the prints and drawing are fresh and have less grandstanding than the paintings.

The show's up until May 8 and is definitely worth a visit.

Not the yacht man

roberta fallon — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 01:05:00 +0000

DSCN1694.jpg
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Tobias Rehrberger's Stealth boat/coffin at Petzel gallery. Click image to see it bigger. And see pictures of the inside at my flickr.

We stumbled into Chelsea's Petzel Gallery because I spied a big black whatizit through the window and wanted to go look. We had no idea. It looked like a huge, arty trash dumpster with orange handles here and there on the tippy top. I walked around looking for a door to peek inside but finding none I got bored. Then Steve said somebody's inside. I said how? He said, there's a door underneath. I said, hmmm, can I do this? So I crawled down on hands and knees and inched my way to the square portal. I stood up inside just long enough to know that it was a boat of some kind, with ribs, a ladder to a second floor and no furniture or portholes or anything. More like a coffin than a boat on second thought.

My note-taking was non-existent at that point so thank you artnet for this information:

The "Death Star" arrived in Chelsea a few weeks ago, or so it seemed to visitors to Friedrich Petzel Gallery, site of a looming black Stealth Bomber-like vessel, a boat actually, sitting on a heavy steel cradle and barely fitting in a space demarcated by column, wall and ceiling. Titled American Traitor Bitch, the boat is the work of German artist Tobias Rehberger (b. 1966), whose objects tend to be fabricated after a process of translation and reinterpretation. In this case, the design of the boat was based on the memories of the Danish-Vietnamese artist Danh Vo of the Danish tanker that picked him up as a small child, fleeing Vietnam with hundreds of other boat people.

Visitors to the gallery can climb up inside the boat, which is minimally appointed, though it has a few fittings in fluorescent scarlet. The electric and propulsion system remain to be installed, presumably by the buyer of the boat, which is priced at $250,000.

The boat was made of mahogany and in the back room were a bunch of what looked like wrapped Christmas presents on the floor. They, too, were made of mahogany.

The whole thing was less than and I just don't get the bigness of it. Although I did think the big black one resembled the evil twin of Holiday Home, the dearly departed Pepto Bismol pink hulk-like structure at the ICA so maybe it's got some architecture chops.

Al Hansen, freshest of what we saw

roberta fallon — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 01:26:00 +0000

Al Hansen
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

The back room at Andrea Rosen Gallery in Chelsea had a show of works by Al Hansen. I hadn't heard of him, or so I thought, but I loved the works. The room was full of female totems and female-obsessed works. There were fetish/torsos like this one, made of cigarette filters, that were great objects. There were also collage-maps made of cut up Hershey's chocolate wrappers. The logo was cut up into Her's and She's and Yes's and Hey's and the whole thing was a weirdly wonderful obsessive playland full of Western-made but African-feeling totems. The guard stopped me from taking pictures after I took two, here's the one, and at flickr is a shot of the Hershey's map of Africa.

My flickr pal Timothy B. Buckwalter reminded me that Al Hansen is musician Beck Hansen's grandfather. I remember reading about how Beck and his grandfather had a two-person show of their art a while back. If Beck's art is anything like this it's good. His music is good anyway.

The ugliness factor

roberta fallon — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 01:45:00 +0000

Matthew Barney
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Even before I knew it was Matthew Barney I knew it might be. Who else? An installation in a Chelsea gallery that snakes through four rooms and the entryway with huge objects made out of what appears to be fat or wax or some other dense repulsive material. This installation at Gladstone Gallery" has something to do with the artist's new movie, made with his wife Bjork. I'm not sure the sculptures were used in the movie but they probably were. That's the Barney m.o.

Steve said "Yuck." And that pretty much summed it up. The motif was nautical, the color was white or the off white lard color. There were ropes covered with white wax that connected things together from room to room, and basically it didn't cohere except as some Moby Dick-ish visual diary of a mad man.

I don't know but I wish we could get over this guy. Or more than that I wish Barney could get real and give us something meaningful that looks away from his navel and into the sight lines of the real world where people actually do work and worry about the rent money and have sons and fathers that go off to war and don't come back. Enough already.

Sarah McEneaney at Tibor De Nagy

roberta fallon — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 13:19:00 +0000

Sarah McEneaney
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Diagnosis/Surgery Cut, 2005, egg tempera on wood, by Sarah McEneaney. Click to see it bigger.

I missed last night's opening in New York but have to get up to the show. McEneaney's autobiographical paintings are artblog faves as is our girl Sarah. The gallery's website has images from the show but not this beauty -- the postcard image -- which I scanned. The exhibit's called Recent History and shows Sarah going through the past year, a hard one involving her bout with breast cancer. But Sarah is an empowered lady and somehow here, as with all her works, she exercises a god-like distancing from herself that allows the viewer and the artist to sit back and contemplate issues, think an occasional funny thought even, and not drown in a puddle of unhappiness.

My favorite work apart from this beauty (above) is on the gallery's website. It shows the artist standing in front of a red curtain -- ala Charles Wilson Peale showing you his museum. And in the background -- instead of taxidermied wildlife -- Sarah has placed specimens from the internal life of the body -- cells, tissues, etc. Very excellent art historical comparison and very amazing image of a woman educating herself and the viewer into some understanding of what it is to be on display and yet be in charge of it all.

Swoon'd

roberta fallon — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 14:10:00 +0000

Swoon, Alison Corrie, Solovei
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Detail of La Boca Del Lobo installation at Black Floor. As with all installations, it was hard to capture in one shot. My focus, as here, was on the micro-level. The cut-paper filagree which included lots of human heads, animals and patterning, was amazing.

Libby and I went to Black Floor Gallery yesterday morning to catch the last day of La Boca Del Lobo, the installation by Swoon, Alison Corrie and Solovei. Beautiful, shrine-like cut-paper installation with imagery having to do with a wolf and other animals, blood, and...I don't know I picked up wedding vibes ...of the deflowering the virgin variety. More pictures at my flickr set. And professional shots at Deitch Gallery website.

We were told the installation (the wall part was made on modular panels that can be de-installed and re-installed) may travel to England.

Sikander's spinning wheel

roberta fallon — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 16:19:00 +0000

Shahzia Sikander
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Shahzia Sikander, Dissonance to Detour, 3-minute (approx) video animation projected at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Click picture to see it bigger and go to flickr to see a few more shots of the animation.

After Black Floor yesterday I ran into the Fabric Workshop and Museum to see the Shahzia Sikander exhibition. The artist was in residence at the FWM and produced some new large works on paper. The one that stood out for me was an oversized book page (actually two book pages) that mimicked a miniature book but were wall-spanning in size. The imagery ranges from figurative to cartoony --all in one piece-- with decorative motifs that include checkerboards, antlered deer, and abstract shrub-like affairs. I think they're shrubs...they're pink, yellow and white and have been rendered in a cartoonish fashion to look a little like brain tissue as well as ornamental plantings. (I don't have an image, but look here at the FWM website for a write-up and some nice pictures of the paintings and a shot of the artist working on them.)

In an adjacent gallery, Sikander's 3-minute (approximately, by my timing) animated video Dissonance to Detour creates a spinning cosmos of imagery that goes from incomprehensible to vaguely landscapy with touches of Islamic characters caught up in the swirl. The piece has a musical soundtrack of swelling orchestral affect with a decidely Western and (probably?) New Age affect. The whole thing is pleasant and seemingly less pointed and political than some of her earlier works.

In its beauty and use of calligraphic script as a decorative motif I am reminded of the Kutlag Ataman animations Libby and I saw at the Armory show. (I saw the Atamans again at MoMA in the Without Boundaries exhibit, of which more later.) The use of script in art is as ancient as art itself. However using Islamic script as decorative motif strikes me as somehow assertive, and emblematic of a new take-charge attitude to something once sacred that is now able to be questioned and dethroned, or if not dethroned, at least put to use in non-sacred context.

The show's up until June 17. The artist's reception and gallery talk is Friday, May 5, 6 p.m.

Also at the FWM, Lonnie Graham's collaborative exhibition, A Conversation at the Table, (upstairs on the 6th floor) and that is on view until June 3.

Paper snippers across America

libbyrosof@gmail.com (libby rosof) — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:40:00 +0000

DSCN7964
Originally uploaded by libbyrosof.

Stopping in with Roberta to see the installation at Black Floor Gallery by Swoon, Alison Corrie and Solovei, I couldn't help but mull over how this was part of an art trend.

The three women who created the phenomenal La Boca Del Lobo installation are part of a phalanx of artists now snipping, following the success of Kara Walker and her silhouettes. Other recent snippers I've seen include Hunter Stabler recently at Pageant (see posts here and here), and Sarah Daub at Vox and at Arcadia's Works on Paper Biennial.

Since paper cuttery has international traditions as well as Western ones, its time feels just right amid art-world and commercial globalism.

These wonderful white patterns cut out at Black Floor, by the way, took the three women a week to a week and a half (night and day), according to Nick Paparone of Black Floor.

The three artists call up witch-y mythology along with Greek as they beg borrow and steal from art history, in an intense ritualistic brew. Alas the show is over, but that it was here in Philadelphia at all is noteworthy.

Here's my flickr set of photos on this installation, and here's Roberta's post (which also leads to her flickr set).

The Drop and the wave, Part 1

roberta fallon — Thu, 18 May 2006 18:51:00 +0000

Post by Amy Lipton

Installation shot from Exit Art's Group exhibit, The Drop. Installation view: justin beal, Brandon Ballengee, Tony Hamboussi, Artists Formerly Known as Women, Nancy Drew, Lucia Pizzani, Andrea Polli (jars in foreground)

THE DROP exhibition at Exit Art in New York could really be titled The Wave, as in a new wave of artists whose works are focused on ecological issues. The Drop, up now through June 10, is specifically on the theme of water. Not a moment too soon either, as current issues of Time Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired Magazine and the NY Times have recently devoted their cover stories to global warming and "green" issues. The contemporary art world has remained largely silent about these matters, but maybe this is about to change? The Drop is inspiring in that it covers a wide range of topics under the umbrella of Water. The show includes 26 artists and art collectives whose works examine various issues regarding the global water crisis. The key word in this exhibition is interdisciplinary, as many of the artists are working not only collectively with other artists but also with scientists, environmentalists, conservationists, government agencies, and citizens in order to tackle important water issues in specific regions. This dialogue between disciplines is the only way to begin solving our environmental problems and artists are catching on to this wave of thinking.

These rain and water-related song fragments appear on The Drop's Curatorial Statement page. I like the references.

Artists works in THE DROP address global warming, pollution, water shortages, over-building, government regulations, and the privatization of water and public lands. The artworks and installations in the exhibition inform the audience about the global water crisis and propose ideas as to how we can reclaim, restore and co-exist with our natural environment. As ecological art has been a focus of my work for the past several years, I've singled out examples of some of the works in the show that inspired me to write.

The entrance to Exit Art's cavernous space opens the show with The Dam by Arbuzo Virtmanis. Constructed out of cardboard and tape, this dam transports us metaphorically as well as physically through the entrance consolidating the sprawling exhibition into one unit. It empties its flow of visitors directly in front of the swamp, Bob Braine's High Swamp of Manhattan (similar but smaller to Braine's High Swamp of Lower Merion created last summer for the Main Line Art Center's exhibition "Past Presence: Contemporary Reflections on the Main Line")

Installation shot from Drop. Arbuzo Virtmanis, Bob Braine, Aviva Rahmani, Ann Rosenthal & Steffi Domike, Christy Rupp, Fidel Sclavo

High Swamp (pictured above, the red structure with the plants in it) is a type of repurposed-infrastructure or architecture-landscape furniture. Humorously mimicking our vernacular industrial scenery, Braine has created a generic architectural structure that functions as a genetic reservoir for flora and fauna - a pocket ecosystem that would otherwise be entirely displaced. High Swamp also represents an ecologically functional monument to our indigenous surroundings.

Related to High Swamp is Jackie Brookner's art in a pond. This living bio-sculpture titled I'm You is made of mosses, ferns and other plants growing on a stone and concrete form. Water mists over the sculpture, plants transform pollutants and toxins into nutrients and cleanse the water below where fish are happily swimming. The finger-like shapes of I'm You are based on microscopic structures that are found in some mosses. Their uncanny resemblance to human hands is a reminder that we humans are part of and related to larger natural patterns.

More music from the curators� statement. You'll just have to hum along.

Moving along past the dampness of swamps and misting mosses we come to Christy Rupp's Public Water Bar- 5 Borough Taste Test & Visitor Vote Registry, an approachable and tempting sculpture for thirsty art travelers. The piece consists of 5 water dispensers for tasting samples from each NYC borough. Each viewer/taster can register their preference on a clipboard, helping to gather data. This blind test will determine which borough can boast the best tasting water. NYC is supposed to have one of the best tasting tap water systems in the country, this may be because it's one of only 4 cities nationally where the drinking water comes unfiltered directly from it's own watershed land that has not been over developed (the other 3 are Boston, S.F. and Portland, OR - progressive cities all).

Addressing another environmental concern about the threat of overdevelopment is Lillian Ball's Leap of Faith. Her video/sculpture is based on an ongoing community project that is working to preserve a 12-acre wetland on the north fork of Long Island, NY. Projected onto a patch of sand, the video documents the delicate, endangered ecosystem of the Great Pond Wetlands and Dunes including wildlife, plants, and predators. This community based, activist artwork encompasses politics, conservation organizations and real estate interests.

Installation view Brandon Ballengee, Peter Fend, Aviva Rahmani (fish on left)

Centrally located and visually dynamic is Brandon Ballengee's large tower of glass specimen jars, Prelude to the Collapse of the Atlantic Food Chain. Ballengee's work of the past several years has been focused on the decline of various animal species, this one takes a look at the food chain of the Atlantic Ocean. The tower consists of preserved jars of decomposers and producer species on the bottom tier. These are followed by a level of consumer species and finally, top-level predator species. Empty jars are placed throughout the pyramid representing species we have already depleted or extinguished completely. Over the past century, over-fishing, global climate change and habitat alteration have been destroying this interconnected pyramid.

Aviva Rahmani, justin beal, Lillian Ball, Tony Hamboussi, Nancy Drew, Lucia Pizzani, Artists Formerly Known as Women, Brandon Ballengee

Nearby and related to Ballengee's towering testament to declining sea life is another fish tale installation by Steffi Domike and Ann T. Rosenthal. Based in Pittsburgh, this artist team have been collaborating on projects concerning waterways and their geographic, cultural and historic narratives. Their inclusion in The Drop is titled Recipes for Catch & Release. The artists invite viewers to choose their favorite fish recipes from color-coded recipe cards that feature popular species of fish but they also include health advisories indicating how often the species can safely be eaten. The installation includes photographs of fishermen with their catch, a kitchen table with microscope, and a dissected white bass with organs in petri dishes for viewing with the microscope. Recipes for Catch & Release uses irony and humor to address the high levels of contaminants in our waterways and to understand how they become concentrated in the fish we eat. (to be continued tomorrow)

--Amy Lipton is Curator of Art at Abington Art Center and a regular contributor to artblog. Read about her Abington shows here and here. and read her last fall's Chelsea roundup here.

The Drop and the wave, Part 2

roberta fallon — Fri, 19 May 2006 10:28:00 +0000

Post by Amy Lipton

[Ed. note: This is part 2 of Amy Lipton's report on The Drop, the water-themed exhibit at Exit Art in New York. Read Part 1.]

No exhibition about water would be complete without veteran Ocean Earth Inc founder and collaborator, Peter Fend. Fend has been working for 30 years as an artist/inventor attempting to bridge the divide between art, science, architecture and engineering. His many proposals and projects are all working towards the goal of protecting and revitalizing polluted ocean water and finding sustainable alternatives for energy such as harvesting ocean algae. His piece in this exhibition Circulatory System with Global Feed (Indian, Pacific, Atlantic) uses satellite video imagery and drawings to demonstrate
how rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are effecting the ocean's circulatory system.

Detail of installation. Bob Braine's high swamp and Arbuzo Virtmanis' cardboard entryway.

From swamps, wetlands, fish and oceans we travel along in this exhibition to deserts, dry lands and water scarcity. Artist Basia Irland lives in arid New Mexico, a place where water and its conservation is a very relevant issue. In her Atlas Scroll Series, Non Potable Drinking Water, Irland uses photo transfers of water-borne diseases and parasites to document pollution found in drinking water supplies around the world. Vibrio cholerae, Shigella, Plesiomonas shigelloides, Acinetobacter baumanii, are a few of the bacteria names of water-borne infections she prints on luxurious pieces of silk that hang on the wall like scrolls. Their beautiful, colorful images are in stark contrast to the dangerous organisms they depict. Each year, over 5.2 million people in developing countries die from water-related diseases each day.

Detail of installation. Christy Rupp's 5-borough office watering hole for sampling New York water.

Sant Khalsa lives in another parched area of the country, San Bernadino, CA. Her photographic series, Western Waters addresses the commodification of water as consumer product and human desire - a never-ending thirst. With over 200 photographs in this series, Khalsa documents the growing phenomenon of retail water stores in the southwestern U.S. in mostly generic strip mall settings. This contemporary phenomenon and the success of these stores is based on consumers' fear that their tap water is not safe to drink. Her starkly beautiful black and white photographs remind us of Dorothea Lange's documents of another dry era, the dustbowl. They may serve the future as historical document of what could soon become commonplace in our society.

Detail of installation. Nancy Drew paintings of water bottle labels.

Interested in similar issues but using painting in a playful pop style is artist Nancy Drew. Her large wall installation of 100 small paintings are based on graphic images from bottled water labels she's found from around the world. They add a colorful playfulness to this otherwise mostly green, blue and brown exhibition. Painted in flocking and glitter, Drew's paintings portray the absurdity of commodifying one of our four basic elements.

Eve Andr�e Laram�e is a Brooklyn based artist, but for her work, Fluid Geographies she's been doing research in the way of mapping water problems in Northern New Mexico. Since 1949, the Los Alamos National Laboratory has disposed of 17,500,000 cubic feet of radioactive and other toxic wastes in the arroyos surrounding the labs. Laram�e's photographs, text and documents show the effects of the waste on the Arroyos and the Rio Grande watershed. Much of this waste was buried in cardboard boxes and steel drums, in unlined pits and shafts and the lab continues this practice today. Directly downstream from the labs are indigenous people's lands, and their cancer rates are 60% to 80% higher than in any other state and national reference populations.

So as not to end on an entirely depressing note, I feel that The Drop succeeds as an exhibition by alerting us to the seriousness of the global water crisis through the use of varied visual art forms. Exit Art received over 500 submissions for this exhibition and narrowed it down to a concise show with a wide range of artists. In all their different styles and practices, these ecologically attuned artists weave a common thread of concern for the preciousness of our most valuable life-giving substance. Art can't change the world, it's said, but in this important show every little drop can make a difference in changing attitudes and perspectives.

--Amy Lipton is Curator of Art at Abington Art Center and a regular contributor to artblog. Read about her Abington shows here and here. and read her last fall's Chelsea roundup here.

Inspired Utility: Clay at Main Line Art Center

roberta fallon — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 14:00:00 +0000

Kris Nelson
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

This invitational group show of (in theory at least) utilitarian clay objects is a cool cuppa on a hot day. I saw it yesterday at Main Line Art Center and it hit the spot. Unfortunately it's around only til June 13, but for you...I took pictures of almost the entire exhibit and so you can catch it virtually here if you can't make it out to Haverford in the flesh between now and then. High points-- in a show with where pots and cups seem now to be decor items set in display trays to look great on your buffet table, and is display now considered utility??-- are Jill Bonovitz's sublime plates which evoke fly-overs of the earth on a cloudy day, Matt Nolen's Rococo-like "painted" urns which sample from art history and deliver gorgeous scenes and voluptuous figures, Kathryn Narrow's old-fashioned vases with soft, flocked-like surfaces and gorgeous color, and George Johnson's bird-adorned pots which have whimsy and earnestness and a little of the outsider about them.

It's a big show with 29 artists all from the mid-Atlantic region but the delights keep coming so it's a great way to spend an hour. Kris Nelson's unusable coffee cup (pictured above, click image to see it bigger) with the hole at the bottom and what appear to be sperm swimming towards it just cracked me up. Inspired Utility indeed. The show's curated by Gail M. Brown.

I've been meaning to do a studio visit with George Johnson since I saw his piece at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last year. Note to self: Get on the stick will ya.

Shanker+Santoleri+students=what a mural!

libbyrosof@gmail.com (libby rosof) — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:44:00 +0000

A sphinx and a globe illustrate the history and geography section of the mural, Dewey's World, by Jennie Shanker, Paul Santoleri and an army of kids--some high school from the Mural Arts Program's Mural Corps under the instruction of Eric Okdeh, and some younger students from the James R. Ludlow School

The corner of 6th Street and Girard Avenue is too noisy for a dedication ceremony. But until it began, bunches of people milled around the Ramonita G. de Rodriguez Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, admiring a spiffy new mural recently completed with help from a parade of people.

The mural, made of mosaic tiles and glass, transformed the boxy, municipal-brute box of a building into something that captures the eye and the imagination. Named Dewey's World, after the 10 categories of the Dewey Decimal System (a theme suggested by a librarian), it is part of a larger project to bring art and beauty to Girard Avenue.

Among those in the Mural Corps helping to create the mural were (left to right) Nyamah Thomas, Nathan Garrett (behind her), Drew Scott, Shemise Evans and Carl Scott

Inside the library after the ribbon cutting, artist Paul Santoleri explained how his glass mosaic tree branches were designed to reflect the DNA double helix. DNA, he said, was the "most important discovery we've had in our existence...and lets us delve into our inner space." He added something about delving into the inner space of the library, too.

Artist Jennie Shanker said: "One year ago, the most vibrant thing [at 6th and Girard] was the gas station across the street." She worked with students at Tyler as well as neighborhood children from the James R. Ludlow School, Mural Corps students (an intensive arts education program for high-schoolers) and their instructor, artist Eric Okdeh to create the ceramic tile portion of the mural.

Mural Corps member Shimese Evans, a CAPA student, ended her speech saying, "As the mural will be on the wall as long as the library building lasts, the experience [of making the mural] will be with me as long as I last.

After all the speechifying (which included Free Library head Elliot Shelkrot and of course Mural Arts doyenne Jane Golden), musicians played, dancers danced and people nibbled.

For more pictures, go to my Flickr site here (it's part of my Philadelphia set) and to Roberta's, here.

Renovated Bollinger

caitlin — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:04:00 +0000

Posted by Caitlin

Matt Bollinger is back with his second solo exhibit, �Recent Renovations,� which opened May 31^st at Rodger LaPelle Galleries.

The 31 paintings in this exhibit are thematically consistent with the raw, edgy representation of American life that was visible in Bollinger�s exhibit last May 2005 (see post here). However, he has expanded his subject matter from figure drawing to include more landscape-driven works, such as �Flood,� a response to Hurricane Katrina, and �Grocery Aisle,� a small painting of a supermarket.

"Afternoon in July" (Oil on canvas, 120� x 96�)

Of notable mention is the diptych �Afternoon in July.� The two halves of the painting appear to represent a before and after sequence, with the color progressing from a warm, passionate red to a colder green. Oddly, although the figures involved are in intimate surroundings and erotic poses, their faces do not betray the expected signs of passion or enjoyment. Both appear desensitized to the sexual act in which they are performing, and the tone of the painting is more lonely than loving.

"New Growth" (Oil on canvas, 37� x 63�)

A painting with very different subject matter is �New Growth." At first glance it is hard to tell whether the scene is of construction or destruction, with cranes and dirt occupying a large portion of the space. Sketchy figures could represent the present, while red lines and silhouettes suggest the future growth of the house. Overall, it would seem that the negative impact of the activity on the environment overshadows the good of the creation of new residence.

The paintings offer a bleak look into the lives of the young men and women that Bollinger depicts, (note, he repeatedly uses himself as subject). The everyday is exploited to become almost nightmarish, although his use of color and interesting perspective are quite beautiful. You can see more images on my flickr site here.

Bollinger, a 24 year-old Missouri native, has sold 104 paintings in the past year, while he lived in Philadelphia. He is currently studying for a master�s degree in Rhode Island.

Matt Bollinger: �Recent Renovations� Through June 30^th. Free. Rodger LaPelle Galleries, 122 N. Third St. Wednesday to Saturday 12 to 6 pm. 215.592.0232

-Caitlin Gutekunst is an artblog intern.