March 2005 Archive

Quilt surprise

A closer walk with thee

fudge, carl I missed most of the 1970s pop music scene, being completely immersed instead in Bix Beiderbick, Jelly Roll Morton, Cole Porter — and Beethoven, due to my then boyfriend now husband Steve a serious amateur trombone player and music fanatic. It was during that time that we discovered Bobby Short’s music when we heard it playing in a record store in Madison. It was love, total and complete which even resulted in a pilgrimage to the Cafe Carlyle when the price of the cover and two drink minimum wiped out our student savings but who cared we were ... More » »

Flat truth, flat lies

ore-giron, eamon Just thought I’d add one more thought about Eamon Ore-Giron’s excellent one-man show, “Mirage,” at the Morris Gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (for more, see Roberta’s story at the Philadelphia Weekly here, and my post on the artist’s talk). The land is flat–a stripe of land. When he uses two or three stripes of land, they indicate depth and distance. There, the shift of receding colors is not gradual but expressed in flat stripes. On top is a stripe of sky above. For the most part, perspective is not an element. The bodies are ... More » »

Scope finals

bramson, phyllisAfter seeing so much work at Scope New York, I think it helps to have what I saw marinate a little, just to see what work has stuck in my mind as special for one reason or another. Focusing on artists whose work was new to me, here’s my short list of additions to Roberta’s list of faves (see post). I’ll start with Chicago artist Phyllis Bramson at Claire Oliver Fine Art. Her over-the-top paintings of kitschy chinoiserie with indian minature patterning, sexy pop imagery and obscure narrative suggestions practically leap off the walls (left). Bramson, who is in ... More » »

Spring round-up and Rand up

My Spring round-up piece is in today’s Weekly. Here. It’s going to be a great season. Here’s what’s on my list of must sees: –Trouble in Paradise at Abington. (We’ve told you about it here and here, too.) –A Closer Look 6 at Arcadia. –Challenge 3 and Challenge 4 at Fleisher Art Memorial.–Jim Houser‘s solo exhibit at Spector.–Pandemonium, the audio installation by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller at eastern State Penitentiary. Archie RandAnd today in the Editors’ Choice section of the paper (i.e., the listings) there’s my short take on Archie Rand‘s bible paintings at Borowsky Gallery. Here. (Those ... More » »

Shadows, falsehood and deceit

Time’s winged chariot is drawing near for the March shows. So let me put up something quick about the work at Vox Populi that will leave before April. berger, jonathanIn the front rooms were a show by the gloriously decorative Kate Abercrombie, “Four O’Clocks and Morning Glories,” Kelley Roberts’ faux-tographic “fauna,” Roxana Perez-Mendez’s video installation “Puerto Rico Airlines,” and an installation, “Bridgehead,” by Brian Dennis who is having his final show at Vox after 15 years (after all, Vox is an emerging artist coop). Abercrombie’s gouache’s and hand-printed wallpaper installation are exuberant overgrowths of flowers invading and concealing our interior ... More » »

Pretty in pink, hold the ketchup

da corte, alexThe Window on Broad is always a tough space to put art. The glare on the glass there is formidable. Alex Da Corte’s “The Death of All Things Beautiful,” a droopy stuffed pink horse embelleshed with flowers, holds the space, where it will remain until April 22. The horse is a sort of memento for childhood and beloved stuffed toys ultimately abandoned, as well as a memento for that innocent devotion between child and animal. The surprising size, floral appliques and color–normally, horses are male in the imagination, safe but sexy partners to preteen girls–pushes the horse into ... More » »

The home shows

A couple of shows far off the beaten track seem to me to be another sign of life in the contemporary art sign.hironaka, nadiaRoberta and I went to a show in curator Sean Stoops‘ apartment (up until May 15, hours and location below). Stoops, who works at the Asian Arts Initiative, created a group show, INHABIT, inspired by post-modern domesticity and various aspects of 21st century apartment life, installed in an actual living space- the curator’s apartment. The resulting display of painting, installation, prints, sculpture, and multimedia is hip and lively, with lots of solid hits. Ultra faves Video artist ... More » »

Back to the streets in a book

cianni, vincentI first saw Vincent Cianni‘s black and white photographs at University of the Arts’ Sol Mednick Gallery in 2003. The body of work the Brooklyn photographer and teacher was showing was called “Southside,” and it represented Cianni’s photos of a group of Latino in-line skaters from his Williamsburg neighborhood. I thought Cianni’s photos did for Williamsburg what Mary Ellen Mark’s did for Seattle — capture the angst and thrill ride that is urban adolescence. (Read my PW sketch here.) Last week I got a card from Cianni announcing that his series of Southside photos is now a book, “We ... More » »

Me, myself, my house

barnes, richardIt’s an old cliche that we are what we eat, what we wear and what we live in. So an exhibit that riffs on housing or buildings like “Building References” at Rosenwald Wolf Gallery is, of course, about human beings as much as it is about architecture. So for example, Richard Barnes‘s two large black and white photographs of an almost windowless shed, one a side view; the other a front view, seem like anthropological specimens…or those police mug shots from the front and side. The ambiance is spooky — the shed floats in an inky void and evokes ... More » »