Bernie Peterson - Soap Dish - 1983-1994 - Soap - Image courtesy of the artist and ICI

The two scoured the country in search of interesting, provocative art by people – not necessarily artists – who are overlooked and marginalized. (Coincidentally, the Portland-based Fletcher, known for his collaborations with nonartists and for art that is not an actual object but more like a social happening, was himself in the 2004 Whitney Biennial.)
Haverford was one of the first venues to apply for the Biennial. ICI selected the college because it was eager to participate in the yearlong process of putting the show together. Haverford also provides student and suburban audiences, which reinforces the show’s outsider identity.

David Rosenak - Untitled - 1998, 2008 - Oil on plywood - Image courtesy of the artist and ICI

The 36 artists in the show include eight from this region and 28 from the other regions, including Portland; Rapid City, S.D.; Winston-Salem, N.C.; and Scottsdale, Ariz. People’s Biennial has traveled to each city over the last two years; Haverford is its last stop.

The Haverford opening on Jan. 29 was nontraditional. Portland artist Rudy Speerschneider gave out homemade cheesesteak-flavored ice cream. Local artist Maiza Hixson videotaped viewers, asking them what they thought about the show’s red, white and blue branding on its website, in the show catalog and in the wall text, which looks like the styling of Howard Zinn’s polemical 1980 book, A People’s History of the United States.

For local contributions to the show, Matthew Callinan, Haverford College’s campus exhibitions coordinator, and his student helper David Richardson were charged with finding local artists outside the circle of professional artists who make up most group exhibitions in the region. The two flooded the town’s coffee shops with postcards, met with staff at community centers to get names and ideas, and talked up the project with friends and anybody they met. They also made an online call for artists.

Jorge Figueroa - Untitled - 2007 - Black and white silver-gelatin print - Image courtesy of the artist and ICI

Fletcher reviewed work brought to two open calls, one at the Friends’ Center in Center City and one at Haverford; he also chose from work submitted online. About 70 people showed up for the two open calls. According to Callinan, they represented a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences: “Those who had never been in art school or never been in an art class, recovering drug addicts, but also Maiza Hixson, who has a graduate degree.”

Hixson is an artist and, post-open call, a curator at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in Wilmington. “I was No. 6,” she said about going to the open call, which was a take-a-number process. “I was told, ‘Harrell will be over to see you soon.’ I was really nervous. It was like being in an experiment.”

Maiza Hixson-Men Are Much Harder 2 Extended 2006-2010 Single channel color video with sound. Image courtesy of the artist and ICI

Hixson’s work is one of three documentary videos in the show, which seems like a lot of documentary videos in a show that’s otherwise filled with simpler works. And while there are no traditional artists in the show, the work represents the traditionally expansive range of art-making. The show features clay sculpture, piñatas, soap carvings, drawings, paintings, including one on a slice of tree trunk, and exquisite black-and-white photographs of rodeos and street scenes from Guatemala and Mexico.

Bob Newland - Keepin' kids off drugs in South Dakota - 1983 - Black and white negative paper, giclee printer, archival paper - Image courtesy of the artist and ICI

In terms of quality, some of the art resembles that in a commercial gallery. Other work is sweetly innocent, made either by a child (a father submitted his daughter’s art, in one case) or by a mentally challenged individual. The most radical entry is a group of works that represent sentences meted out in Portland Community Court by a judge who allows offenders to “art” their way to atonement.

Robert Smith-Shabazz - The Obama Family - 2009 - Water and acrylic on wood (round from tree) - Image courtesy of the artist and ICI

The show veers from outsider art to more sophisticated without skipping a beat. Here, everybody is in one big happy boat of a show. That’s the value of People’s Biennial. The work is charming, but what’s more noteworthy is the democratizing idea behind the show, which gave nonstandard artists a dignified national platform to exhibit works.
With an eye toward the future, “People’s Biennial” ends with a People’s Conference. The free two-day symposium on Feb. 24-25 will review what’s been accomplished and assess how the idea might be adopted by others. Speakers and moderators will include Fletcher, Hoffmann and ICI director Renaud Proch.

“People’s Biennial,” through March 2. Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College, 370 W. Lancaster Ave., Haverford,

This story ran in the Daily News on Feb 3, 2012 as part of Art Attack, a partnership with Drexel University supported by a grant from the Knight/NEA Community Arts Journalism Challenge and administered by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.

Wim Wenders and Angela Merkel at the Berlin premiere of Pina in 2011

It’s in the the great vaulting leaps of one dancer into another’s arms that I caught myself wowed, not for the skill so much as for the sense of complete trust and overwhelming joy that the gesture embodies — like the blind trust a child has for a parent. There are a few moments of glee, with almost vaudevillian slapstick, even in the somber Cafe Muller.  After a blind woman struggles through a room filled with chairs, when she finally finds a man and throws her arms around his neck with gusto, a manager-type in a suit quickly arrives and disentangles the two then places the woman, like a baby, in the arms of the man.  But she promptly falls to the ground and scrambles back up to embrace the man again. In manic pacing, the action repeats (see video clip) with the manager dis-entangling the two; the woman falling from the man’s arms and scrambling back into the embrace again, each time speeding up so that you hear the dancers panting from all the extreme action. It’s Chaplin-esque, both funny and poignant.

Pina, scene from Volmond, with dancers exuberantly throwing buckets of water at each other

The dances sprawl on stages covered with peat or water, and they’re out in Wuppertal, on street corners and in an elevated train. One segment has a dancer scrambling up to the top of what looks like a quarry to dance an exuberant number in the dusty dirt. Music runs from elegiac and classical (Rites of Spring) to contemporary jazz/rock and bubbly (“Lilies in the Valley” by Jun Miyake).

After a manic running leap the dancer is caught in the arms of another.

Bausch’s dances and this movie should do much to introduce people, in a friendly way, to an art form considered icy and foreign to many. With moves seemingly scripted from life itself — those great leaps; the seemingly martial arts-inspired arm and leg moves; breakdancing, even — Bausch’s dance-theater has a populist hook that crosses generations to connect with a potentially wide audience. The very engaging Volmond (with the water on stage) includes a crowd-pleasing scene in which at one point the dancers use buckets to splash each other like kids on a hot summer’s day (clip here).

The dances are extremely sensual and emotional but they’re also highly kooky, and the movie captures that combination and makes it very winning. Paced perfectly, with dances interspersed with lovely quiet moments of the dance troupe members in closeups, smiling wistfully as a voiceover plays words they previously spoke about Pina.  Whether this needed to be a 3D movie is not clear to me.  There were a couple of obvious 3D moments (a scrim curtain seems to brush past you; some water seems to splash your way), but basically, the dance-to-3D-effects ratio is such that I forgot I was watching a 3D movie.  (And I want to say that the clips I’ve seen on YouTube and Vimeo convey the film quite well without any 3D at all.)

I was not convinced I would even like Pina but I came out loving it. What a treat! Don’t miss it.

Catch the short making-of video and a fun red carpet video of the Berlin opening, in which you get to see, among others, German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the front row and wearing her 3D glasses.  In Philadelphia see it at the Riverview Stadium 17 and the King of Prussia Stadium 16.

Marsha Owett, Antimony, 2012, Archival C-Print, 24" x 30" Edition of 10

Social critique and playfulness go together in Jong Kyu Kim’s monumental duels with pop culture icons Facebook and Keanu (in The Matrix). It’s Kim against the corporation, or Kim against Hollywood. In both cases, the artist deals with ideas of powerlessness at a time when we think we’re more in charge than ever. Elizabeth Leister, too, explores the desire to capture the movement and beauty of another’s performance via her art. Both artists keep trying even though their tasks are unwinnable. Marin Abell’s playful video has a similar quirky and forlorn appeal in a work that could be a parody of a survival tv show for machines.

Some new media artists crave beauty and order. Jing Zhou‘s and Jeanette Bonds’ sophisticated animations are both technical “wows” – and beautiful.

Also beautiful, although not traditionally so, are Marsha Owett‘s color photo, whose digital mystery makes it somewhat terrifying; and Hernando Rico Sanchez’ color photo, which is so perfect you believe it to be a lie.

Ryuta Nakajima, photo from 88 aspects of the 20th Century Paintings according to a Cuttlefish (2010)

Embracing the idea of the beautiful sublime (which is often terrifying, verging on ugly) are Ryuta Nakajima‘s video with its odd juxtaposition of the ancient cuttlefish over a mélange of contemporary scenes; and Ava Blitz’ Photoshop manipulations of everyday suburban landscape, which are as enigmatic as the cuttlefish.

New media art is a young art form, but it’s fresh and engaging and, being experimental, it lacka the pomposity often attached to traditional art forms. As new media art attracts more practitioners, and as galleries show it more and collectors find ways to showcase it in their collections, the field of new media art will, I predict, live up to this show’s title.

Perhaps the most engaging, because of its accessible narrative edge and cartoonish style, is Guy Ben-Ari‘s mostly grizaille paintings. With a clunky awkwardness that is endearing and a surreal sensibility enhanced by the use of mirrors, windows, long corridors and the suggestion of endless interior space, the works feature characters, in pairs, (some may be twins, or friends, or because this is dream-like, a single person represented twice) who look at each other bemusedly, lovingly, anxiously, judgeingly or lustfully.

Guy Ben-Ari, a series of small paintings

Other things are twinned too, like a table with lamp and small standing picture frame that appears, double, in one of the works. There’s no action to speak of except looking, which gives a slight sense of unease. If there is a punchline — and there isn’t — these would be pretty perfect on the cover of the New Yorker. As it is, they’re a good look and bespeak a quest to understand the nature of relationships and self.

Catharine Maloney, a photo-sculptural work that evokes a class or team picture

Wilmington artist Catharine Maloney‘s series of photo-collages and photo-constructions also seem to be looking — at gender. Not only does she focus on young men who mostly seem to be wearing Star Trek-like mock turtlenecks and posing in what amount to class or team pictures, but a number of the men are quite gender ambiguous. The seeming amateurish presentation of the works makes it seem like an obsessive scrap-booker or self-taught artist put this together. I found the work intriguing, both for the obsessive, closed-circuit point of view and for the eschewing of a sophisticated presentation.

Leah Beeferman's cosmic tabletop array

Leah Beeferman‘s two tables with colored plexiglas shapes of different sized geometric forms is situated in a gallery with black walls. The dramatic presentation and accessibility of the shapes made me immediately want to move things around on the table tops. But I was told no dice — it’s not an interactive piece. Too bad. The piece evokes two science fair tables awaiting the scientist to come and explain it all to you. There is apparently an audio component to the piece which I didn’t hear. When I went to Beeferman’s website to get some elucidation I found some delightful animations with sound, including the sound for this piece (a nice mix of what could be sounds of breathing magnified or sounds of car passing by on nearby highway and some bright percussive, almost tap-dance tapping). Clued in by the additional work on the website, it seems the artist is investigating the harmony of the spheres, and in that light, the table tops become mutable descriptions of what might be, what could be tomorrow and what might have been. Poignant, somehow.

Brie Ruais, video of St. Theresa sculpture on a raft, like Huck Finn going down river

Brie Ruais‘ “Unfolding/Performing Sculpture” includes a couple of large, fired, clay starbursts on the walls; a freestanding sculpture that is appears to have the face and hands of Bernini’s St.Theresa only here she is struggling to be free of the mound of clay she’s in. Elsewhere in the room, a river of what looks like unfired clay crosses the floor ala Lynda Benglis’ rivers of latex; and a video shows a slightly different St. Theresa piece on a raft in the middle of a river with some attendants.

Brie Ruais, floor piece showing a different St. Theresa, mired in a mound of clay

The suggestion is of some kind of Huck Finnish journey to come. The idea of transporting the clay piece downstream is highly appealing, while I don’t find the works in the room as appealing. Ruais’ work feels less like its questing for something (you don’t feel the struggle) than that it has arrived at an hypothesis and is experimenting with material and art history to perhaps knock some art history icons down a peg or two.

All in all, the art world reflected in these four rooms looks pretty much as you’d expect these days – hydra-headed and conceptual, albeit with lots of traditional materials being thrown around in a traditional manner.

The day I talked with Sarah Stolfa of PPAC, their website had briefly crashed from all the traffic they were getting from Living Social, a coupon site, where they had some half-off coupons on offer for their upcoming workshops. ($30 instead of $60). The fact that they’re using a coupon site for class coupons tells you how web- and business-savvy this organization is.

Sarah Stolfa, photo courtesy of Workman publishers, publishers of Stolfa's book, The Regulars

PPAC opened in late summer 2009. It opened because while there were co-op dark rooms for hands-on professional photographers in Philadelphia, “No one in the city was running a nonprofit, high end digital equipment center for the creation of work,” Stolfa said. And, for one photographer to purchase the digital scanners/printers needed made no sense — it was not affordable and took up too much space. But to share the equipment in a community art center made a lot of sense. As with many organizations, PPAC grew as its mission grew. From a space with equipment it is now a place with an educational program, a gallery to show work, and a lot of free or low-cost programming open to the public. Here’s the interview I did with Sarah, by phone, on Dec. 22.

Sarah Stolfa, photo courtesy of Workman publishers, publishers of Stolfa's book, The Regulars

Roberta: Are you a membership organization?
Sarah: We are free and open to the public but also a membership organization.

You are an active photo community with lectures and other programming, and an art gallery. What printing services do you provide?
PPAC makes museum quality prints 60″ wide for practicing artists.

Tell me about printing for other artists. You printed the Zoe Strauss show at the PMA.  It’s a great coup to print a museum show.
We created two sets of prints – one for the museum and one to travel (the show will travel)….and we did match prints for the book. We did everything. Zoe got to choose who printed [the show]. She’d never worked with us before and was very excited about it. She wanted the work [the printing] to stay in Philadelphia. She’s giving back to the community. It’s really a great way to highlight Philadelphia, the community, support the community.  Peter Barbarie was on our advisory committee. But he had nothing to do with it. It was great to work with him in another capacity.

How did the printing go?
It was a lot of proofing and talking to see how the images should feel…it’s a process. It’s a great project.

How many works in the show and do you frame it too?
There are 170 photos, different sizes-”20×30″ to “8×12″ in the show. Framing is done in house at the PMA.

How about the book?
I just got an email today [Dec. 22]. Zoe has the book in her hands.

When did the project begin?
We started on the project in April or May…it’s roughly 8 months of work.

Have you printed this massive quantity for an artist before?
It’s the first time we worked with an artist for this big a show.

Who else have you printed for?
We were printing and scanning with Daniel Traub since May 2009 [even before PPAC opened and the equipment was in her house in Fishtown]. We worked with Janelle Lynch, a New York artist. We do scanning for her.

Are artists hard to work for?
Working with artists is our favorite thing.

Where do you teach?
At Penn and PPAC. Everyone [at PPAC] has teaching experience and is an artist. We understand that practice. It’s in our tool sets. We do this because we’re part of the community.

How many photographers here in Philly
That’s hard. Many artists wear many hats. The census form doesn’t capture it…

How about community…How does everybody get along…Light Room, Basho?
With the Light Room there’s no competition and no overlap. They support us and come to our events. We go to theirs. They are the opposite of us [not digital]. They have a really great darkroom. Basho…We have a healthy competition. Our lectures are drastically different. It’s like fast food chains close together. But helping each other.

How about your programming?
Laura Heyman is giving a talk on her Haiti photos. We’re sponsoring a screening with the Free Library of the film “War Photographer” about photographer James Nachtwey. Zoe is doing a free lecture Feb 18. There’s a show and panel in February…”Of the Ordinary” features artists who use photographs in their work that were never meant to be shown in a gallery context. Our Book Fair is April 28. The Slide Luck Pot Show…there’s a call [see website for more]. Last year more than 125 people came. This year we’re going to have it outside in the garden.

How are you doing with the recession?
It’s a tough economy now. Running PPAC is a tough challenge. I anticipate us continuing to grow. We want to expand things. We will be announcing an artist in residency program in Jan. 2 people per year will come and use the facility for one month.

Is this a residency with housing for out of towners?
Ultimately we’d like to do housing.

What else?
We expanded Philly Photo Day. And next year we will start being a collecting facility…we will get a print from the artists in residence.

How is it being a photographer in Philadelphia?
It’s a hard time to get a job as a photographer. Philadelphia is affordable to live in…it’s a friendly and open community. If you come to events you’ll be in the community…There are great resources for artists. Even if there’s not a lot of jobs there’s space for you to do your own thing.

Do it Yourself?
People can do it; It’s easier [to be a photographer] in NY where the film and fashion industries are. There are photo opportunities there. But I know people who set up here and can work for 10 years.

There’s teaching jobs?
At PPAC! If you have a great idea for a workshop or class, send me an email. There’s a lot of opportunity if you make it…like the fact that PPAC opened.

Naeem Mohaiemen Live True Life or Die Trying, 2009
photographs with paired text (21 pairs)

The PEI-supported exhibit at Marginal Utility, curated by Yael Amir, features five artists whose works either document or re-enact moments of dissent or political engagement. The nicely-installed show has some high points — with the most interesting being works with some emotional presence like Sharon Hayes’ audio work which conflates lost love with dashed political expectations and Naeem Mohaiemen‘s photo and text wall, “Live True Life or Die Trying” in which the artist describes his feelings about the political strife in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and his sadness at the impotence of a University student protest in light of a forceful protest (the same day) led by Islamic groups.

Mark Tribe‘s “Port Huron Project” re-enactments of seminal speeches of political activism from the Vietnam War era (speeches by Stokley Carmichael, Angela Davis Cesar Chavez and others) call into question the timeliness and timelessness of activist speech. Are all speeches of dissent the same speech? Seeing the reenactments, staged with actors or performance artists giving the speeches and with a staged contemporary audience of seemingly disinterested and uninvolved people is enough to make you question how fleeting the impact of even heated rhetoric.

Sharon Hayes’ “I March in the Parade of History,” an audio piece with a spray painted word poster component, humbly nestles into a little corner where you have to cozy up to the speaker to hear the words–it’s worth it. Listen to the words at her website …it’s a monolog of love, heartbreak and protest that she spoke live on the street corners of Manhattan — with the aid of a bullhorn.  The artist’s quavering voice weaves together seamlessly the tale of lost lost love and unaccomplished political mission.  It’s a poignant and potent message making the political personal, which it always is.

Less poignant is Andrea Bowers‘ tree-sitting video from 2009, which shows the artist learning how to safely sit in a tree for a prolonged period of time. The video is installed near the gallery ceiling on a wood pallet with words on the bottom that say “SHUT DOWN TAR SANDS” (whatever that slogan means, it’s surely words of protest).  Perhaps the pallet is the one Bowers sat on when she was tree sitting in 2011 when she was arrested along with other activists who were protesting the destruction of a grove of oak trees.

Yael Bartana‘s two-channel video projection “Wild Seed” shows a group of young Israelis play a Twister-like limb-entanglement game on a mountaintop in Israel. The kids struggle happily, gleefully to extract themselves from the fleshy knot. The filmmaker’s utopian allegory for the messy entanglement of Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories is undercut by the mountaintop loveliness and the innocence of the young people, both of which are impossibly lovely stand-ins for the sometimes deadly truth of the occupied territories.

This is a show that can make you sad.  It’s not that the idea of protest movements is sad, but the thought that the battle is an uphill fight, noble perhaps, but not particularly winnable.

More from the Vox building coming up…

Pamela Ellis Hawkes: Floral Arrangement #7, 2011, was a highlight at The Photo Review Benefit Auction in 2011.

Philadelphia in 2012 has three community photo art centers — Project Basho, Philadelphia Photo Art Center and The Light Room. It has a commercial photo gallery – Gallery 339. In addition, you can see photography exhibits monthly in academic galleries like Sol Mednick Gallery and Gallery 1401 at University of the Arts. Blue chip gallery Locks has periodic photo exhibits, as do other galleries like LG Tripp, which just ended its 4th annual abstract photography show Jan 7.  The Print Center has its 86th Annual International Competition – Photography opening in June. And, Perloff says, Philadelphia museums “have come around” to showcasing photography.

Nick Kline, "Soup Bowl," from "Mold" series, 2011, Archival Pigment Print on Hahnemuhle Paper, 60"x50" and variable editions in smaller sizes. Din of Murmurs: Mold, Sol Mednick Gallery, University of the Arts, Jan. 13-Mar. 2.

What’s different now, says Perloff, is that young artists are moving here and staying here after graduation instead of moving to New York or the West Coast – where the fashion and music industries historically provided many more job opportunities for photographers.

From Don’t Move Again –Laura Heyman, photos of Haiti, PPAC, to Feb. 4

Those industries have changed with digital photo tools making photography at once cheaper to work with and more specialized, so that photo skills are not enough anymore, you need to be a Photoshop whiz as well. “It’s a hard time to get a job as a photographer,” says Sarah Stolfa, founder of Philadelphia Photo Arts Center in Kensington. Stolfa launched PPAC in 2009 after she got an MFA from Yale School of Art and became frustrated that Philadelphia lacked a digital lab for artists who want to scan and print their own works. Tired of running up to New York, she created PPAC so she and other photographers could scan, print, and be with a like-minded community. In addition to running PPAC, Stolfa, like many photographers in Philadelphia, is a photo teacher. She teaches at PPAC and at the University of Pennsylvania.

PPAC is a non-profit arts center, with classes, lectures, movie screenings, a book fair, a gallery for exhibitions, and the closest things the city has to an annual photo festival, “Philly Photo Day,” a celebration of all things Philadelphia, in which the entire population of the region is invited to take a photo in the city on one day (in 2011 it was Oct. 28), and share the photo in a 2-week exhibition in which the Center prints everybody’s photos and displays them.

Phillip Toledano, Justin, from the current exhibit at Gallery 339 - up to Jan. 28

Martin McNamara, who founded the commercial photo gallery, Gallery 339 with partner Tom Callen in 2005 and represents Stolfa’s work, talked about the need for an expanded, international festival for practitioners, collectors, scholars and gallerists to come together for networking, sales, and to discuss the state of photography. “Since we opened we’ve seen a lot of interesting nodes of activity – 2 photo centers (Basho and PPAC); increased activity with universities that offer photography degrees; Temple opened their new building — an amazing facility; and of course the art museum opened their dedicated photo space [The Levy Gallery] in the Perelman Building…One thing that’s not in place yet is a festival,” he said.

“We have Philly Photo Day — I love the democratic event…But other cities have multi-day multi-week photo festivals, and it brings attention to the idea of photography,” he said. Gallery 339 participates in festivals in New York and Miami.

Pia Johnson, "Finding Yourself at Home". Digital C-print. 12"x18" From ONWARD at Project Basho, Feb. 11-Mar. 25

Efforts to organize a festival have come up short. “We had a committee to discuss a photo festival,” said Perloff. But the financial backing never came together. Both Stolfa and Tsuyoshi Ito of Project Basho (another community art center in Kensington) sat in on Perloff’s festival meetings. And when the event didn’t materialize, Tsuyoshi decided to create a one-day festival-like event in conjunction with his center’s annual emerging artist’s exhibit, Onward (opening Feb. 11). The festival, also Feb. 11, is open to all, with speakers, portfolio reviews and other activities, says Basho’s Grisha Enikolopov. The cost of a ticket is $65, and Enikolopov says they are hoping for around 200 participants. “This is the inaugural summit but we want it to be annual. Next year we will bring in video as well.”

Stephen Perloff: Plastic Covered Hat, Philadelphia, 1972, from "Unseen Color, Part I" at the Light Room, Mar 10-April 14, 2012

Everyone I talked with said there’s collegiality among all the players in the photo scene — as well as healthy competition among the various photo art centers. Al Wachlin, Jr. is a founder of the oldest, yet most under-the-radar photo art center, The Light Room. Located in Fairmount, the 10-year old member organization has a darkroom, a small digital lab, and a gallery space. But their mission is to serve their members. “We don’t offer classes to the public. We get calls. If people get a camera and want a class we send them to PPAC or Basho. We cooperate. We’re definitely trying to support each other.”

Stolfa explained it this way: “With the Light Room there’s no competition and no overlap. They support us and come to our events. We go to theirs. With Basho, we have a healthy competition. It’s like fast food chains close together, but helping each other,” she said. (Project Basho is around the corner from PPAC in Kensington).

Basho’s Enikolopov, who moved to Philadelphia after graduating from Wesleyan and started volunteering at Basho (he’s now the Coordinator of Marketing and Events) said, “We’re all in a really big city, and we’re all really small. The more the merrier. The more people who are interested in photography the better for everyone.”

A slightly different version of this story appeared at the Daily News as part of Art Attack, the NEA/Knight-Foundation-sponsored project, a partnership between Drexel University and the Daily News.

Dualities at Grizzly Grizzly

Matt Giel and Alanna Lawley, Duett, at Grizzly Grizzly. Installation shot

Matt Giel and Alanna Lawley’s installation at Grizzly Grizzly is a miracle of spatial discombobulation. Lawley’s billboard-size pictures of light-filled interiors hang from ceiling to floor in narrow strips of imagery. The photo blow-ups create the sense of a real room (or a virtual room, or perhaps several rooms and a hallway). And Giel’s continuous print of a seemingly endless seaside horizon is taped around the room like a chair rail where it plays peek-a-boo in and out of Lawley’s room strips. While you see one end of Giel’s continuous print on the wall, the other end is wound up into a tight cylinder that sits on a modernist pedestal. Visions of zoetropes and slide carousels danced in my head.

Matt Giel, "Atlantic City" --one rolled-up end of the continuous roll of sea and sky scape. Photo courtesy of the artist

There’s a surrealist feel to the this 2-person exhibit. Both artists have turned photographs into sculpture in a dialog about dualities — inside/outside; big/small. It’s a friendly exchange of motifs and ideas. While Lawley’s great big pictures are just that, her installation — and the cropping of images — is what makes these paper canyons formidable. Giel’s endless ocean and sky — reduced to something almost utilitarian like tape or wallpaper — is poignant. Of course we commodify the elements every day, in travel advertisements, but here it smacks you in the face for its craziness.

Good pairing, great interplay between the two artists’ works. Be sure you see this one. It’s forward-leaning photography.

Abstract and Playful at Napoleon and Tiger Strikes Asteroid

Tamara Zahaykevich Pumpkin Queen, foamboard, paper, acrylic paint, glue

Down the hall from Grizzly in galleries next to each other reside some eye-popping works in bright, happy colors. Tiger’s themed show “Twee Abstraction” has a couple of pieces that, whether twee or not I am unable to say, but are pretty great works of color and shape. Tamara Zahaykevich’s “Pumpkin Queen,” a pastel easter-egg-cum-cupcake on the wall (made of foamboard, paper, acrylic, paint, glue) evokes birthday parties, pinatas, and bon bons of all sorts.

Alex Paik, Prelude and Fugue,
colored pencil, paper

Alex Paik’s zig-zag color-pencil-striped paper construction “Prelude and Fugue” likewise brings up ideas of party games — rubiks’ cubes gone bananas, game boards to nowhere and something like what Frank Stella might have made if he ever had a sense of humor or the ability to not take himself soooo seriously.

Andrew Masullo’s “5326″ makes (in my mind anyway) a reference to the Canadian flag, only the hallowed maple leaf has been turned into a cheery, cherry-red splat.

Edward Brady at Napoleon

The two person show at Napoleon cleaves down the middle–showdown style. Jake Yeager’s cone-shaped paper pieces, large, iconic and pristine in their crafting stand off against Edward Brady’s inky black night of the soul street-art objects and spray paint of “Dirtbag Dirtbag Dirtbag” on the wall. Whatever is going on here, it’s as great a pairing of opposites as the duo in Grizzly is a pairing of similars.

More of my ramble in the Vox building coming up soon.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

I heard the interview with Werner Herzog, director of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, on Fresh Air and it sounded like a fantastic documentary. The filmmaker and his crew get special access to the Chauvet Cave in Southern France, with wall drawings made some 32,000 years ago, that were just discovered in 1994. Herzog’s movie, shot in 3D, has lots of fantastic footage of the cave paintings and the beautiful cave itself (in the dark reaches below a stunning and rocky valley). But, at 90 minutes, the movie drags a little — how much cave can you watch before crying uncle.

Werner Herzog in Cauvet Cave filming Cave of Forgotten Dreams

The interviews with scientists get a little repetitive, and Herzog — a real poet of cinema — waxes on and on about the wonders, and about the true difficulties of filming in the cave. I didn’t see it in 3D so maybe it was more amazing that way–maybe it had the “you are there” affect that might have made you quake at the wonders. But on my large iMac computer screen the cave shots are quite eloquent enough without the 3D — it’s just there were a little too many of them.

Horse painting from the Chauvet Cave

The one great plus throughout is the voice of Werner Herzog. You get to spend a lot of time with his melodic voice, drawn-out vowels and precise diction. There’s no other voice like it.  (Listen) At one point he calls for silence, “So we can listen to the cave and perhaps hear our own heart beats.” It’s one of his grand over the top moments of enthusiasm.

Hardly a spoiler, because this is not a suspense thriller or a whodunnit, but I will say that the postscript to the movie is unexpected. It shows supposedly radioactive albino crocodiles, possibly mutants created by the waste from a nearby nuclear power plant. (Herzog, who says he tells “ecstatic” truth instead of, as he puts it in his conversation with Stephen Colbert, truth like you find in the phone book, concedes this coda is “ecstatic” storytelling). Wherever the truth lies, it’s an eerie and completely downbeat moment that allows you to think of our scary future in the context of this wide-eyes and exultant take on our prehistoric past. The film is definitely worth seeing, to set your eyes on those ancient wall works.

Waste Land

Sepia Jardim Gramacho landscape with vultures. Photograph by Vik Muniz, courtesy of Vik Muniz Studio

Documented in this movie is Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz‘ 3-year project in the trash landfills of Rio de Janeiro. The film follows a group of trash/recycling pickers the artist meets and befriends in the landfills (these are people who make a living from picking through trash and recouping recyclables for resale).  Muniz takes their pictures, in sequences that seem jaunty and uplifting…the artist quips that it doesn’t even smell too bad (something I was dubious about). But this is not disaster tourism — the artist has far more than taking pictures in mind. In fact, his idea is to empower these people by getting them to join in his bigger project. Muniz, who was himself born poor, he says, is giving back to people he identifies with.

So, he employs the trash pickers whose pictures he has taken (it’s not clear whether he’s paying them but you believe he is). And they help him organize the trash he will use in the making of his signature tromp l’oeil portrait photographs, the ones built up from pieces of trash, which are photographed from on high.

Vik Muniz, Portrait of Magna, one of the pickers featured in Waste Land

In the course of the movie, Muniz visits the pickers in their homes in the favelas, huts really, and you see the absolute nothingness these people live with. And as the characters get fleshed out you begin bonding with them, so that when Muniz’ project is coming to the end and the trash photos have been made, you are heartsick when one after another of the pickers states they don’t want to go back to work at the landfill. What has Muniz done? Will he abandon these folks to their fates after they have seen a better life, a more interesting/less dangerous form of work?

While it’s not a rags to riches movie, there is an element of that with some of the pickers.  The movie is filled with sweet moments — the artist is sweet; the pickers are sweet; there is great dignity amidst the squalor. This is a 3-hankie winner. It will move you. No wonder it won the audience award at Sundance in 2010 and several other awards as well. Don’t let anyone tell you art can’t be a change agent. Just tell them to watch this movie.

Matt Kalasky 38-second clip