May 2010 Archive

Speaking of Secrets – Interview with Leonard Nimoy

Post By Corey Armpriester Secrets – we hide them, we share them, and Leonard Nimoy photographs them. His new photographic series titled “Secret Selves” explores the concepts of the lost, hidden or fantasy self; he’s documenting each sitter’s attempt to search for the other part of themselves that were forcefully separated by a cruel sword in the hands of Zeus. Valdorise — Toy Company Employee. 
I’ve always called myself the secret whore; a character based on what I’d do if I could. Leonard Nimoy
Secret Selves
Photograph

Tripping across the pond – No Soul for Sale at the Tate Modern

Post by Marianne Bernstein In his book The Empathic Civilization, economist Jeremy Rifkin, investigates the evolution of empathy. Recent scientific studies suggest that we are wired for collaboration. Our natural impulse is to get along with our native kin; which over time have evolved from our fellow cave men, to our state, country, or religion, to the planet at large. When we are prevented from engaging with others openly the best parts of ourselves are repressed, and this results in narcissism, fear, anger, and violence. However, when we see ourselves in each other, harmony often ensues. 
We have an innate ... More » »

Science Times

Philadelphia artist Jordan Griska’s ambitious solo show, Nowhere Fast—his first since winning the 2008 International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Award—showcases his ability to turn an understanding of industrial fabrication into seriously high-impact sculpture. Unfortunately, whether due to the particularities of the University Science Center’s Breadboard space—more of a corporate lobby than an art gallery—or attempting to combine older work into a new theme—Griska’s ISC Award-winning Ad Infinitum piece is back—Griska’s show does not live up to the potential the best work suggests he has. Griska’s title, Nowhere Fast, sets a tone just this side of mid-20th century existential angst. His choice ... More » »

Barnes movie – great production values, poor arguments

Nothing says a documentary film should be impartial. But a sincere attempt to get the facts right makes some documentaries better than others. The Art of the Steal, the movie affiliated with the Friends of the Barnes, is such a completely one-sided telling of the Barnes Foundation saga that my teeth were grinding from start to finish.  (I saw the movie last week at the popcorn screening at Drexel.  I’m not sure where the movie’s playing at the moment, although you can now  see it at Netflix. (Netflix info updated 2/15/2011)

Late Monet at Gagosian Gallery and Painting Light; The Hidden Techniques of the Impressionists

Unless you’ve visited the Musée Marmottan, Paris, or are old enough and fortunate to have seen the exhibition drawn from its collections many decades ago at the Met, get yourself to Gagosian Gallery by June 26 to see Claude Monet Late work. That is, go if you love painting. For you’ll see that rare thing – an artist who attempts something different in his old age, like Verdi taking on comedy.  And in doing so, Monet made himself a twentieth-century painter and a great one.

Movie review–Exit Through the Gift Shop

email from phil: you gals ever do film reviews?  saw “exit through the gift shop” at the ritz the other night.  i haven’t seen such a bummer movie since requiem for a dream!  if you get a chance go see that one with love,

Roxana Pérez-Méndez: Your Fantasy is My Home

The image of Latin America functioned for nineteenth-century North Americans much as that of the Middle East did for certain Europeans: as a screen on which to project their fantasies. In the case of the Western hemisphere, these were largely of a pre-lapsarian past.  Roxana Pérez-Méndez has consistently explored the place of Puerto Rico within U.S. culture, and with her project, Este Es Mi Pais (This is My Homeland) at the Morris Gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA, up through Sept. 26, 2010) she employs PAFA’s collections to explore the history of interactions within the Americas.

Nigel Helyer Resurrects the Past in Sydney

Every day at one o’clock, a locomotive, heard but not seen, makes its way through the lobby of CarriageWorks, an old Sydney rail yard recently transformed into a performing arts center. The sound sculpture by Nigel Helyer, called GhosTrain, haunts the space it runs through. While the installation presented by Performance Space only sounds for 90 seconds, the complexities implied by the work encourage thoughtful engagement with the ideas of sound and history implied by its reference to acoustic ecology and the idea of a soundmark.

Weekly Update – Queer as voices

Queer Voice at ICA is a clear sign of how comfortable we’ve become with people, places and things that are queer, a word primarily defined by Merriam-Webster as characterizing things that are “differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal,” but which has come to have a second meaning encompassing nearly everything and everyone deviating from gender and sexual norms.

The Rules for Staying Young in Wilmington

Post by Katrina Kuntz “The Rules for Staying Young,” the current exhibition at the New Wilmington Art Association of works inspired by the game of baseball, vacillates between form and expressive content.  Some artists are drawn to baseball as a formal system which quantifies balls, strikes, fouls, hits, etc.; for them, the play of the game and its statistics serve as metaphors for greater degrees of formal order and structure. Other artists identify with the roaring crowd; they are carried away by the individual as well as team struggles that transpire on the field but also by the sense of ... More » »