September 2006 Archive

Weekly Update – Heat in the galleries

This week’s Weekly has my essay dealing with emotional heat in some local art. Below is the copy and here’s the link to the art page. For more pictures of these shows check my flickr sites for Saving Faces, for Caleb Weintraub and Mauro Zamora, and the ICA. Libby has some good shots of the ICA show here. Heat and Why It MattersTaking posterity head on. Kara Walker’s cut paper and projected light piece in Fables at ICA. In today’s global art scene—where a Malaysian artist making abstract paintings in Brooklyn can show work in a Philadelphia gallery­—it’s hard to ... More » »

Opulent treasures; don’t miss it!

Check out the incredible opulence here. It’s one of the smaller pieces. Ecuador, attributed to Bernardo de Legarda, 17th-18th c., carved, gilded and polychromed wood, and repousse silver, 31 1/8″ high We’re going to get around to reviewing the exhibit of Latin American colonial period art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the by-and-by, but we’re so excited about the imagery, we wanted to show you some of our pictures. They are the tip of the iceberg. Much of the work in Tesoros/Treasures/Tesouros: The Arts in Latin America, 1492 – 1820, is religious and a funny mix of European ... More » »

Cut Up and Newly Pasted

“Cut&Paste” is an exhibit about collage and reinvention. Images, both still and video, are taken out of their context and manipulated into something new: a reflection of the artists’ own imagination. Five artists, Anita Allyn, Ellie Brown, Kent Latimer, Eric Lendl, and Caroline Shields participated in the exhibit at Falling Cow Gallery. Ellie Brown’s Found Book Collages Ellie Brown’s found book collages tell a story about her sexuality. All but one of the pages inside are glued together; the inside cover features a collage of mixed media, which represents the story within. Apparently, each book represents a past relationship, and ... More » »

Goodbye, Spector! Party this Friday

A Helping Hand, limited edition print by Jim Houser, $35, available at the party Friday night. Back when Shelley Spector announced the closing of her gallery she promised she’d have a going away party this fall. Well here it comes–this Friday, Sept. 29, 7-9 pm at 510 Bainbridge St. Mr. 10 Fingers, seen here at the opening of Jim Houser’s last exhibition at Spector, will play music. Goodbye Spector is a b.y.o.b. celebration with Ben (Mr. 10 Fingers) Woodward dj-ing and a continuous slide show of artists, art and happenings from the gallery’s 7-year run. A limited edition print by ... More » »

Pepon Osorio in Sao Paolo Biennial

Detail, Trials and Turbulence, ICA, 2004. Photo by Aaron igler Artist, blogger and artblog pal Rob Matthews emailed to say he’d heard that our town’s Pepon Osorio was in the upcoming Sao Paolo Biennial and that what he was showing was his 2004 ICA installation Trials and Turbulence. Wow! In an email Osorio, new-minted Pew fellow and 1999 MacArthur fellow, confirmed it. Trials and Turbulence, detail. Photo by Aaron Igler “Yes indeed, I’m leaving on the 28th and I’m also taking two Tyler students with me,” wrote the artist who teaches at Tyler School of Art. We at artblog are ... More » »

September serendipity — lilacs!

Philadelphia lilacs, sept. 24, 2006 I was trimming a scraggly lilac bush and these three little blooms fell to the ground. How sweet they smell and how happy I am to see them! That is all.

Aftermath: Joel Meyerowitz at Ground Zero

Joel Meyerowitz speaking at the Philadelphia Free Library on Tuesday. Steve and I and our friend Ann went to hear Joel Meyerowitz speak at the Free Library Tuesday night. Meyerowitz, a photographer known for his pioneering color street photography of New York (he was in Kate Ware’s awesome Mavericks of Color exhibit last year at the PMA. See artblog posts here and here.) talked about his book new “Aftermath,” which depicts his eight and a half months of photographing Ground Zero after the 9-11 tragedy. Meyerowitz’s talk never dipped into maudlin sentimentality but was instead full of ideas about history, ... More » »

Fables at the ICA

Christopher Myers en costume. One of the highlights at the ICA opening was Christopher Myers en costume. Here’s a shot of him. Myers is one of four artists in Fables, a mini show curated by the 2005-2006 Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow Naomi Beckwith for the Project Room in the ICA. Beckwith selected the artists–all of whom can be labeled artists of color–because they rewrite history (personal or not) with their work. Outside of my quibble that all artists rewrite history in some sense, I loved this little show. Myers was one of the reasons. His display of masked costumes for ... More » »

Fertilizers: Laurie Olin and Peter Eisenman in the ICA

The I-beam forest, part of Peter Eisenman and Laurie Olin’s Fertilizers installation at the ICA Well, Fertilizers is no Holiday Home, the pink-and-white architectural fantasy structure by Caroline Bos and Ben van Berkel, that showed at the ICA last winter. But the ICA’s newest architecture/design commission has a number of pleasures. Fertilizers redraws the space in the galleries. Here’s a shot of the side of the ramp. (The color is way off–the peach is really white; the colors in the room were so intense, they confused my camera’s magic color sensors). Fertilizers, a collaboration between architect Peter Eisenman and landscape ... More » »

Fortuyn’s passage of time at the ICA

Laser-cut paper garlands curtain the window. Speaking of decoration, Irene Fortuyn’s ramp project at the Institute of Contemporary Art uses a wallpaper-like motif to not so much transform as to decorate the ramp. Fortuyn talks to the opening-night crowd. I suspect today’s focus on decoration is fallout from the Iraq fiasco and the felling of WTC. Fortuyn’s ramp project sums up the urge to decorate while Rome burns. She takes the ashes from ash trees to create the wall pattern. And she takes another wood product–fragile newsprint–to create the curtain of decorative garlands that hang in the window. The international ... More » »