Voice Mail, by Orly Cogan
In light of Roberta’s post on copyright, it seems like just the right time to mention that Recycled, the show at Projects Gallery until the 25th, includes art using materials borrowed from elsewhere, including coloring book pages. I’m trying to imagine the young artist who did the coloring, taking artist Tom Judd to court for infringement of intellectual property rights.
Meaning of Life #37, by Tom Judd, 12 x 12″, oil/collage/panel
Anyway, a some new faces are showing up at Projects. Included in the new crowd is Orly Cogan, a sewer of recycled artifacts–this one a tablecloth. Cogan was in the O Show, one of those exhibits that we keep referring back to, because so many artists whose work interests us were included. Or maybe because we invested great energy to see it, driving to SICA at the Jersey Shore in the middle of the winter.
The piece Cogan has up at Projects, Voice Mail (image is at top), is an old-fashioned embroidered small tablecloth to which Cogan has added an embroidered figure of a young woman, no hint of clothes between her socks and her camisole, folded into a pose for your average 21st century hipster, with slides on her feet and a cell phone in hand. In contrast to the fine stitchery of the past, Cogan’s stitches are wider, and the ones she uses to texturize the background are about 3/4″ long, an outrageous length in the world of stitchery. She also breaks the circle border within the tablecloth square.
I found this piece far more interesting than the ones I saw at the O Show–more about today’s culture and less voyeuristic.
detail of paint-by-numbers area in Margery Amdur’s Significant Other #2
The good news is Cogan will be showing work at Projects in April, taking the place of Margery Amdur, also a new Projects person, whose show has been moved back.
Amdur had a landscape painting with numbered bubbles on back layers of resin where the paint is still missing. The feeling of deep space through the layers to the canvas is pretty remarkable, and the control with the resin and the paint looked flawless. Its cool affect surprised me, but I’m looking forward to a solo show in the fall.
Others in the show are: Paul Santoleri, painting on wooden box templates; Caleb Weintraub, painting with sequins and such; Jim Brossy with rough painting collages; Ron Klein making voodoo circles from jungle pods mixed with man-made things; Alex Queral with celebrity portraits carved in phonebooks, and also work by Peter Gourfain, Florence Putterman, and Erin Endicott.
The art fairs postscript
Meanwhile, this weekend is the New York art fairs, so we hope to cheer for the home front –Projects Gallery but also Ashley Gallery and Pentimenti–at Red Dot. Any other Philadelphia galleries at the New York art fairs–please put your name in the comments section. We want to know.
