November 2005 Archive

PAFA goes shopping

From Robert Cozzolino [We've been hearing that PAFA's Robert Cozzolino and Alex Baker have been all around town looking at art and thinking about purchases. So I asked Cozzolino what they were up to. Here's his answer, which includes some local names, some not so local names and some stuff we've already reported:] …As for purchases — all I can tell you is that we have been buying some very exciting things at PAFA lately; and we’ve received some super-delightful gifts. We really hope the latter keeps happening because money runs out, and quickly (image, Vik Muniz’ “Charles Willson Peale”). ... More » »

Moscow, Malevich and Saddam Hussein

Sometimes I just reject art that’s difficult, but sometimes it makes me want to think and dig all the harder. Dig I did for Nick Muellner’s “Moscow Plastic Arts” photos at Arcadia University Art Gallery. The photographs are construction related–brutish concrete blocks, bricks, haphazardly layed out squares for concrete pours, bags of cement, upside down utility buckets, improbably stacked lumber or other material, etc. All were taken in Moscow in 2003 and 2005 by the Ithaca-based artist. The delicate tints add an otherworldly glow to these images; the manilla paper on which the photos are printed seem nostalgic, like dusty ... More » »

Delaney’s Younger Brother

Post from Rob Matthews Hey I love the Delaney show but it doesn’t make much mention of his brother Joseph.Here’s a link if you want more info on him. You can find other examples of his work online if you look around. I knew more about him than Beauford going to school in Knoxville since Joseph spent the last years of his life in K’ville. He died the year before I got there. The student center has his large NYC street scene “V-J Day, Times Square” on display. It’s about 8′x10′. (top image is Joseph Delaney, bottom image is Beauford ... More » »

Weekly Update – Delaney’s Embrace

delaneywashingtonsqwebOriginally uploaded by sokref1. Today’s Weekly includes my short review of the great Beauford Delaney exhibit at the PMA. Here’s the link to the art page and below is the article. And here’s Libby’s post on the show. (image is one of Delaney’s Washington Square images. Click the image to see it larger. There are four more images you can see larger on my flickr site.)Beau’s Monde Beauford Delaney’s paintings, with their vibrant colors and thick-as-icing paint, are complete seductions. I didn’t want to leave the warmth of their embrace, one that’s sun-kissed and rhythmic like Matisse, mystical like van ... More » »

Awesome Biennial News!

Zoe Strauss is in the 2006 Whitney Biennial!!! Here’s the artist’s email blast from the inbox last night, written in her inimitable deadpan style: UNBELIEVABLE NEWS.I WILL BE IN THE 2006 WHITNEY BIENNIAL.MORE LATER.YOU HEARD ME.WHITNEY BIENNIAL. WWW.ZOESTRAUSS.BLOGSPOT.COM WAIT, SERIOUSLY, THE WHITNEY BIENNIAL. http://www.whitney.org/exhibition/biennial.shtml YOU KNOW, THE WHITNEY BIENNIAL, AS IN THE WHITNEY BIENNIAL.LOVE, The full story on her blog is worth a read, too. It tells of the phone call that posed one question, (paraphrasing) “You want to be in the show?” and one answer, “Yes.” As Rob Matthews put it when he shared the news and the joy ... More » »

Tuesday This and That

Here it is almost December and the inbox is flooded with new shows opening, many of them with small works or art priced to move for the holiday season. Buy art not war. I’ll tell you about a few but check the inliquid site or newsletter for comprehensive and accurate listings. Staten Island digression But first a real estate story from Staten Island that came in yesterday. Tattfoo Tan, Malaysian-born, New York artist whose art appeared in both a group show and in a solo exhibit at Peng Gallery in the last year wrote to say that he and his ... More » »

A Philadelphia intervention at the Biennale

(Although artist Carol Moore was not invited to participate in the Venice Biennale, she went there to insert her art, an installation/interaction called “Riccordo da Gaspara Stampa /A Remembrance of Gaspara Stampa.” Moore is the director of the Summer MFA Program at the University of the Arts. Here’s her report:)E-mail and photos from Carol Moore Stampa (1523-1554) was a Venetian honored courtesan, poet and musician whose work (as well as the work of other women poets of the Italian Renaissance) has been the catalyst for the objects and installations I have been making since 1997 (image, finding handkerchiefs on the ... More » »

Photo-synthesis weird science

Wait ’til you read this amazing tidbit, sent to me by my buddy Candace, wherein bacteria work as a photosensitive medium to make images!

History mystery

pennstatue Originally uploaded by sokref1. About a year ago a colleague of my husband Steve’s, Alan Abrahams, gave us a set of historical mini-postcards that had been in his family and arrived in his mail from an aunt in England. Alan, who is from South Africa, was looking for some information on the cards. The little cards (each is 1 3/4″ by 2 3/4″) were from his grandparents when they had done an around the world tour some 80 years ago and obviously stopped in Philadelphia. I have scanned the ones I have and will be making inquiries at some ... More » »

Romania Redrawn

An offbeat group show at Photo West Gallery is worth the time of a visit. The show is filled with more than 35 pieces of art based on old propaganda photos set out for disposal outside a Romanian consulate and museum in New York. Romanian artist Irina Hasnas Pascal, on finding the photos, snatched up about 40 of them and got this idea to invite artists to make work inspired by the photographs (image, a travel postcard by Tara O’Brien, inscribed “Romania,” using one of the propaganda photographs of a town sanitized of its inhabitants to create an image of ... More » »