July 2009 Archive

Weekly Update — Vox V visions

Here’s my review of the show at the Weekly. Below is my copy with some pictures. “Vox V,” the national juried emerging art show, demonstrates that childhood memories, loss and sadness – themes at play in the art world for at least fifteen years — are still major obsessions.

Hidden treasure–Shawn Dubin interview link

Philadelphia illustrator, artist and tattoo artist extraordinaire Shawn Dubin recently was interviewed on the blog Manufactured Dissent.

Dumpster diving part deux

Not only is Rob Matthews our main source for gossip (see last post), but he is also the chattiest emailer we know. Here’s some more back and forth email from Rob about the dumpster swimming holes as Brooklyn chic, per a report in the New York Times:

We finally get some gossip

Don’t you know, the only time we ever get gossip is when Rob Matthews sends us some. Here’s a link to a story in the New York Times explaining how Slought Foundation‘s Aaron Levy stayed cool in Brooklyn behind closed fences. It made me wonder how to improve on the concept Philly style. This is for when you have nothing else to do.

SRO crowd gets a history lesson at Vox

As a preview of his research into the history of artist-run spaces in Philadelphia, curator Richard Torchia, head of the Arcadia University art gallery, showed slides and dredged up some not so recent history for a crowd of more than 100 eager collectivistas and collectivistos at Vox Populi.

Ribbon of orange sticks on 18th St.

I saw this last week and decided that it was a great color accessory to the grey building.  Beyond window display the color immediately made me think of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates in Central Park, another river of orange in a public space.  I don’t know whose work it is…anybody got some info?

Shepard Fairey’s iconoclasm at ICA Boston

The author of this post, Stefan Zebrowski-Rubin, is a 2008 graduate of Harvard College in History of Art and Architecture and Italian Studies who works at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and continues to fuel his interest in contemporary art by attending exhibits wherever his travels take him. Before I knew it, I was implicated. Walking up to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, I noticed a man’s face, simple and graphic, stuck on a lamppost, looming from atop the ICA and plastered on newspaper dispensers in the lobby. LA-based artist Shepard Fairey had infiltrated my visual world without ... More » »

Blood and BOBOs

The ex-Philly BOBOs turned up in an email from Zach Feuer Gallery (NY) about an exhibit that involves a blood drive. In the gallery.

Sheryl Conkelton leaves Tyler!

Tyler School of Art’s gallery director, Sheryl Conkelton, is leaving! Oh, horrors.

Weekly Update — Mark Wallinger’s slow motion ode to life, loss and transience

This week’s Weekly has my review of Mark Wallinger’s video at Pafa.  Below is my copy with some pictures.  More photos at flickr. Mark Wallinger‘s video Treshold to the Kingdom is a quiet oasis in the hot, noisy, hurly-burly of summer in the city. The piece from 2000 by the British artist and 2007 Turner Prize winner is simplicity itself.  A stationary camera placed in front of the closed double doors at the International Arrivals Hall at London City Airport captures passengers arriving after a trip.  There’s a lone employee sitting behind a desk, a sphinx-like guardian of the gates. ... More » »