November 2008 Archive

Peter Saul skirts the truth but so does everyone really, and we all have a great time at PAFA panel

Patricia Hills, David Curtis, Daniel Heyman, Peter Saul, Jane Irish at the Symposium at PAFA, Nov. 1. Peter Saul‘s exhibit at PAFA was the excuse for an all-day symnposium there on political art earlier this month. But Saul wasn’t the only headliner participating. We also fell for Art Spiegelman‘s bon mots, Laylah Ali’s sometimes veiled wait-wait-don’t-tell commentary about her own work, and Enrique Chagoya’s conflation of art and cartooning. The day also included insights from Philadelphia artists Daniel Heyman and Jane Irish, scholar David Carrier, New York artist/activist Sue Coe and moderator Patricia Hills. Two political posters by artists. On ... More » »

Interior spaces–McEneaney and Harvey at Locks

Post by Tim A. Campbell Sarah McEneaney, Studio, NM, 2008, egg tempera on linen, 48×58 inches The pairing of Sarah McEneaney and Ellen Harvey at Locks Gallery since early November is a serendipitous counter-point between very different artists who share some subjects between them. Both exhibitions explore interior space. They are notably different in conception and execution, and the motives behind representation are on different trajectories. This common ground between the shows provides a lucid window into contemporary painting. Personalized and intoxicating, McEneaney’s work is a reflection upon studios, fantasies, and private life both revealed and invented. Many paintings depict ... More » »

A Closer Look 7 at Arcadia

Linda Yun, Incident, 2008, mylar, fan, sound, reflected light and color, dimensions variable, as installed in A Closer Look 7 at Arcadia. Usually sensory experiences are things I think of as juicy. And I can sense there’s something sensory going on in the work of all the artists in A Closer Look 7 at Arcadia. But juicy is not the operative word here. There’s a coolness, a conceptual reflection on the nature of things. The five artists were selected by Sheryl Conkelton, Tyler’s director of exhibitions and special programs. The A Closer Look series of exhibits was created to allow ... More » »

Global gobbling– Happy Turkey Day wherever you are! (Vegan turkey included!)

Photo from my 2006 trip to Paris. We stumbled on this place in the Marais the day after Thanksgiving… ThanksgivingBayou La SeineCuisine de la Louisiane

Three Beautiful Books

Three especially beautiful volumes are sitting on my desk at the moment, all of which would make perfect holiday gifts for an artist or art lover. Two are exhibition catalogs which have interest well beyond their respective exhibitions; the third, a wild card, is an unusual science book from Harvard University Press. Pablo Picasso, Self-Portrait (1907), oil on canvas, 19 3/4 x 18 in., Narodni Gallery, Prague. This painting is the subject of an article by Leo Steinberg, published for the first time in Cubist Picasso. Cubist Picasso (Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux and Flammarion, SA, 2007 ... More » »

Weekly Update — Blaise Tobia’s Open Studio at Silicon

This week’s Weekly has my review of Blaise Tobia’s show “Open Studio” at Silicon Gallery. Below is the copy with some adds, changes and photos. Blaise Tobia, Plain & Fancy (ruby+gray) 2008 Like those “separated at birth” photos, Blaise Tobia‘s photographic pairings turn the world into a series of unnatural twins.  But the artist’s twosomes, as well as his other more single-focused works, are not comic — they’re observations that deliver poetic thoughts about the world.  In his show of large and small digital photographs at Silicon Gallery the artist and Drexel prof’s Plain and Fancy series compares textures from ... More » »

After Rothko and Rene, bring home the Bacon

Post by Max Mulhern The 1959 signature work by Mark Rothko in a small space. Yesterday, in London, I visited the Rothko show of late works at the Tate Modern and a Coptic icon show in a gallery called Sacred Space. At first glance the Rothko show appears to be a disaster. The first room shows us a signature work from 1959. But it is hung in a tiny space so instead of walking into it we slide along it. Next we enter a vast space filled with thirteen canvases six of which were originally destined for The Four Season’s ... More » »

Radio alert

This has been simmering for a while and we’re excited about it: NEXUS/foundation for today’s art will be transforming its gallery space into a low powered radio station (broadcast range – 3.5 mile radius) for two months in December 2008 and January 2009. During gallery hours (Wed – Sun 12 to 6 PM) artists, musicians, performers, djs, activists, poets, scholars, local community groups and other members of the public will be given the opportunity to use the radio broadcast in a manner for which it is intended – public enjoyment and information. We’re not sure how to tune in, but ... More » »

Beautiful and not in New York

We dithered and waffled on what to see in our day trip to New York last week finally settling on shows in Chelsea and Soho that talked to our concerns about beauty in contemporary art. Beauty is back of course.  That’s nothing any observer of the scene has missed by now, with gorgeous public art by Anish Kapoor and the embrace of beauty in even the most tetchy conceptual realms (Kara Walker). But is it “beauty” or beauty? Is it something wry and ironic or a new push to aesthetic pleasure.   In a world of electronic and cyber-bombardment whose ... More » »

Little Berlin pushes collaboration buttons

When I ran into Martha Savery at the opening of A Closer Look at Arcadia she was very excited about the show at her space, Little Berlin. There’s a collaboration in the Arcadia show (by long-time collaborators Tom Kocot and Marcia Hatton) and Savery had fostered some collaborative pieces at LB–between sound artist Michael McDermott and sculptor Michael Murray and with the members of the video Shift Collective. Shift’s piece involved tossing an expensive video camera off a 6-story roof while the camera was on (it was attached to a rope and didn’t hit the ground). Well, that alone was ... More » »