reviews, features & interviews
Weekly Update – Noisy satisfying Vox VI
By roberta
July 20, 2010 · 5 Comments
Vox Populi’s sixth annual emerging-artist roundup is a musclebound, unruly show. With 33 artists (almost half from the Philadelphia region) and close to 70 works, jurors William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton chose a noisy exhibit, literally and figuratively. It’s great, don’t miss it.
Nicole De Brabandere's sexy clay objects. Background is Clint Baclawski's light boxes
Vox VI is organized, by rooms, into more or less related groups of work: There’s a chamber of figures and masks, a Jeff Koons/pop-culture room, a memento mori room and a noir road-movie room. Only the lobby space approaches the usual juried-show hodgepodge, but even here there’s a unifying out-of-control party feel.
Piper Brett, Phone Number, one of several light pieces in the show
The show’s humanist focus, fractured narratives and “damn the torpedoes” ambiance aren’t new. What is novel is the embrace of craftsmanship—well-painted paintings, beautifully made sculpture, great clay pieces and accomplished video and photography.
There’s a surprising amount of clay in the show, and the artists handle it like clay has always belonged in the big leagues—the content here is not the usual kitsch, but conceptual, unexpected and beautiful.
Katelyn Greth, Dog Boy
Nicole De Brabandere’s small objects in a glass vitrine are nonfunctional, but look like Baroque sex toys. Katelyn Greth’s soulful “Dog Boy” and “Sheep Boy” ride a sad “Animals R Us” edge. Janet Macpherson’s altered cast clay figurines play with our love of collectibles. Lauren Dombrowiak’s Brancusi-esque cityscape of stacked plates and cups is perfect domestic machismo—I wonder why I haven’t seen anything like it before.
Lauren Dombrowiak's towering dinner sets in Brancusi-like endless column cityscape. Constanze Pirch four paintings on the walls.
Video, computers and media are a big presence—no surprise. Lindsay Foster’s “Father Lover Friend” feels like a reality-TV road movie in which a young woman talks with a grizzled, old homeless man. The man is intransigent; the girl cries. It’s poignant and, as a metaphor for the run-down world and the youth who will inherit it, father’s self-destruction is terrifying.
Lindsay Foster's roadtrip movie with a homeless man and a young girl
Joshua Bienko’s colorful and insistent rap/rant videos “Lewitt, Sol” and “TehChing Hsieh” spit out references to contemporary art stars, culture and commerce, capturing the anger many artists feel toward the art-industrial complex. Kelli Miller’s “The True Believer” video, about self-help gurus, needs a larger dose of anger.
Diedra Krieger, from her short video, made in Costa Rica, promoting the Spastic Plantastic project
Diedra Krieger’s faux-commercials in her “Plastic Fantastic” video series are just about perfect, short and seductive in a quirky, passive-aggressive way.
Nora Salzman, Replica Reuben, oil paint on papier mache, eyelashes
Nora Salzman, Replica Reuben staring at a picture of Replica Reuben Masking as Nora
There are some outstanding 3-D pieces in the show. Nora Salzman’s painted papier-mache bust “Replica Reuben” for example, is a chilling lost soul. Sanford Mirling’s “Nothing Could Drag Me Away From…” a set of Marilyn-esque legs, skirt billowing, is another miracle of craft. The woodworked oak legs balance on tiptoe with great drama and engineering, and the content feels Lohan-perfect.
Sanford Mirling's Marilyn-like sculpture in front, Clint Baclawski's lightbox, rear
Piper Brett, Large Bow; Joshua Bienko's video and painted shoes, Diedra Krieger videos and Brett's Phone Number on walls
Piper Brett’s “Large Bow,” a nod to Koons’ many million-dollar bow sculptures, is clunky and scary, yet it, too, is perfect corporate lobby décor, a steal at $10,000. As for home décor, Aidan Rumack’s inset shadow boxes behind a row of fluorescent tubes suggest new home uses for the old tubes. Jordan Griska’s “Gas Pump” (a real gas pump shortened to kids’ playroom size) is a perfect degraded object.
Sally Dennison, Hannah
Finally, while the entire show is full of deadpan works, Sally Dennison’s portrait photos of gender-ambiguous youth, Dustin Metz’s oil paintings “Still Life” and “self(seeing) portrait” and Erin Murray’s oil paintings from the “Ugly and Ordinary” series take the prize for smoldering without smirking, giving nothing away.
Dustin Metz, Still Life and self(seeing)
Through Aug. 1 Vox Populi 319 N. 11th St. 215.238.1236 voxpopuligallery.org
Read this article at Philadelphia Weekly. More photos at flickr.
Tags: clint baclawski, constanze pirch, diedra krieger, dustin metz, joshua bienko, katelyn greth, lauren dombrowiak, lindsay foster, nicole de brabandere, nora salzman, piper brett, sally dennison, sanford mirling, vox populi gallery, vox vi, william powhida and jennifer dalton
Readers Comments (5)
Yup, VOX VI is large, loud, likable. My childlike eye would hand prizes to Derya Allen’s Ghost Traps, Jordan Grishka’s Gas Pump and best-in-show Ketelyn Greth’s Sheep Boy. An adult-eyed prize with special mention of his Chanel purse goes to Sanford Mirling’s Nothing Could Drag Me Away from the Soft Glow of Electric Sex in the Window. Rambunctious!
I mis-spelled two of four names. Jordan Griska did Gas Pump, which Roberta nicely describes. Derya Altan’s Ghost Traps brought back the box-and-stick traps we used to catch rabbits and squirrels during Ontario summers; Altan baits one trap with a glass of whiskey.
I like your prizes, Michael!
Your piece awards three prizes “for smoldering without smirking, giving nothing away.” I decided to look more ingenuously. Sitting on the gallery’s only bench and peering into the Ghost Traps I thought at first someone had forgotten a Chanel purse; gradually I realized that the “cell phone” in the purse was playing video connected to Merling’s piece: insidious voyeurism! Didn’t the 19th century French Salons award prizes?
I love the Mirling Chanel/iPod video. It’s rambunctious as you say and sneaky, as you also say…I don’t know whether the French Salons awarded prizes. But by their exclusivity they created the culture of “refuses.” And that “refuse” idea is viable still as a catalyst for artists excluded from shows (like this). (Witness the Arcadia Works on Paper and Little Berlin Works on Paper Rejects shows last year). Vox VI — with 426 applicants and 31 or 32 acceptees, has a high rejection rate, but the jurying — by two artists known as art establishment critics — transcends the “refuse” movement by virtue of being an anti-establishment salon. I think prizes would be a great idea here.