Haas & Hahn and friends, on Germantown Ave. Photo by Neal Santos.

Faveladelphia, the (you guessed it )Philadelphian contingent of Favela Painting is having a kick-off party for their Back to Rio campaign at 161 West on May 31. The night promises food, drink, dancing and an auction, not to mention paintings, documentary footage, photos and other artworks of past, present and future projects by the duo Haas & Hahn of Germantown-beautification-renown.

Allergies, proms and grant announcements: how you know it’s springtime. PNC Arts Alive, now in its fifth year of funding, announced on May 1, 2013 the winners for the PNC Arts Alive program in Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey. Winners include the likes of FringeArts, Kùlú Mèlé African Dance & Drum Ensemble, and the James A. Michener Art Museum. To see the full list of new grantees and their programs, click on Grantees. The funding cycle for year five is June 2013 to December 2014.

Another harbinger of spring, and one we’ve been avidly awaiting all year, is finally upon us: Hidden City Festival 2013 festival passes are available now. All sites are open Thursday to Sunday from 12 noon – 7PM, May 23-June 30. Passes give you unlimited access to all nine Festival sites and art projects – entrance into all events, such as talks and tours, scheduled during Festival hours, with special tickets available for evening performances and programs. $30 general admission/$25  for Hidden City Philadelphia members. Events fill up fast, so get over to the Festival website to ensure your spot. Learn more about the Festival sites, artist projects, and how to volunteer.

Another arts and culture birthday bash: the Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP) celebrates its 26th year on Saturday, June 1, 2013  at 6:30 PM at the Painted Bride Art Center. Expect performances, awards, delectable food, and drink. Tickets, sponsorships and ads are now available; tickets are $35 general admission, and $30 for PFP members.

Opportunities

The 2013 Photo Review Photography Competition’s 29th edition is taking a bit of a different tack. Instead of only installing an exhibit that would be seen by a limited number of people, The Photo Review is reproducing accepted entries in its 2013 competition issue and on its website, broadcasting winning photographs to thousands of people all across the world and entrants will have a tangible benefit from the competition. Prize-winners, whose swag includes photography equipment and gift certificates, are also chosen for an exhibition at the photography gallery of The University of the Arts and numerous Editor’s Selections in several Photo Review web galleries. An entry fee of $35 for up to three images and $8 for each additional image entitles all entrants to a copy of the full-color catalogue. In addition, all entrants can subscribe to The Photo Review for $36, a 20% discount. All entries must be received by June 30, 2013. You can download contest rules and submit images at www.photoreview.org/compete.htm. For further information call The Photo Review at 215/891-0214, 140 East Richardson Avenue, Suite 301, Langhorne, PA 19047, info@photoreview.org.

University City District is seeking partners to provide cultural programming for The Porch though a Partnership Programming Fund. For more information, visit http://universitycity.org/request-proposals..

Artist News

Work from Dennis Congdon’s upcoming Cue Art Foundation show.

Dennis Congdon’s first solo exhibition in New York City, curated by artist Stanley Whitney, opens on June 1 at Cue Art Foundation. Featuring his hand-cut stencils on large-scale canvases to depict Rome’s dual identities, the exhibition is part of a series begun while Congdon was a fellow at the American Academy of Rome over twenty years ago.

Photography by Walter Plotnick.

Walter Plotnick has a solo exhibition at Voor Kunst Galerie in Belgium this summer, focusing on his series based on the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Philadelphia, PA. The dazzling show is titled “Re-Imagining the World of Tomorrow,” and the exhibition culminates with a forthcoming book of Plotnick’s artwork.

A view of Nora Salzman’s display case and portraits as part of “Studies and Specimens.”

Salzman merges traditional concepts with distinctly contemporary aesthetic elements

One side of the Plexiglas-laden structure in the middle of the gallery includes portraits of a man painted onto a series of panels. These views depict the male figure in a number of poses and hues. The colors range from completely desaturated black and white images to true-color skin tones with the occasional accent of violet or blue. An otherwise mundane splash of green hues glowing behind the man in the farthest right image stands out as the only real concentration of pigment in the show that strays much farther than black, white, or Caucasian-peach.

A closeup of some of Salzman’s portraits, including the splash of green.

The portraits all possess the feel of computer self shots or smart phone captures. Their true origin goes unmentioned, but whether or not Salzman began with digital images is unimportant; the ubiquity of web-based images forces us into general acceptance of their earnestness and context in the present. A couple of white strands on the subject’s hoodie could easily be iPod earbuds, and a double-take is necessary to confirm that they are not.

While a few more traditionally inspired paintings may seem apropos for an exhibit emphasizing museum fixtures, they would also seem dishonest in a space like Tiger. Salzman appropriately finds a midpoint between traditional portraiture and contemporary art instead, toeing the line between haute and hipster.

The anatomical casts on the flip side of the display case.

Walking around to the flip side of the display case, one is confronted by a dissection table of three-dimensional anatomical casts – pieces that would seem more at home in a natural history museum than an art collection. A pair of forearms, two shins with their attached feet, and a mask-like, eyeless face reside behind the transparent cover, resembling a taxidermy workshop or institutional biology lesson. Tiny brackets and a white, head-shaped rest hold the parts in place without detracting from their forms or their visibility. The display case, in other words, exists as an invisible frame for the art contained within.

One of Salzman’s arm casts, revealing the minimal fixtures which hold the art.

For Salzman, display is of equal importance to the art itself

The structure of the display case itself is both stable and effective. The craftsmanship of the components is clean and exact, revealing an attention to detail that moves beyond the art objects themselves and into the strange and overlooked arena of design that is not meant to be noticed. Curiously enough, Salzman makes this nebulous practice her focal point – and with apparent zeal at that. Perhaps only a venue such as this could effectively showcase a show of showcases, and the artist embraces this seriously self-referential theme unironically.

Vessels for art presentation are not unlike the bread of a sandwich, and Salzman seems adamant that a delicious brie wouldn’t pair too well with Wonder Bread.

The sum of all parts is what makes for a powerful exhibit, and to neglect the artistry of display in the rush to glamorizing the art itself prevents us from seeing the complete picture. The National Gallery surely doesn’t thumbtack its collection wantonly to the walls, and it is wise for living, working artists to exercise similar care and precision in their own displays.

Nora Salzman’s “Studies and Specimens” is a true eye-opener with regard to exposition and arrangement, and it makes a bold statement merely by looking as if nothing is out of place.

Studies and Specimens will be on view at Tiger Strikes Asteroid through May 26.

One of the greatest pleasures of the show is exploring the many ways in which the sculptures interact with one another in the space. With its highly dynamic forms, the work seems to rejoice in a sort of happy chaos.

Claire Ashley, distant landscapes: peepdyedcrevicehotpinkridge Installation view

For Ashley, motherhood is an inspiration

Ashley draws inspiration in part from her role as a mother. In their early iterations, the puffy forms of her sculptures came from Ashley’s protective maternal instincts. Since then, Ashley’s approach has evolved in a way that embraces the energy and silliness of young children. In a personal touch that adds emotional heft to the show, Ashley cuts the forms for each piece from a template of sorts loosely based on the blueprints from her home.

Claire Ashley/ Happy Collaborationists- Performance shot

The Happy Collaborationists bring Ashley’s work to life

The dynamic, zany energy of Ashley’s inflatable sculptures is further underscored with their incorporation into a performance by The Happy Collaborationists (“Happy C”), a curatorial collective featuring performance artists Anna Trier and Meredith Weber.  Donning two of Ashley’s inflatable sculptures, the pair move and dance around the Gray Space adjoining the gallery to upbeat music.

Although brief, this performance encourages personification of Ashley’s sculptures, as though they were some kind of funky new creatures gallivanting in a world of their own.

Ashley’s painting/sculpture hybrids challenge the traditional notion of what defines a painting, an idea Happy C underscore in their performance. Just as a beautifully rendered painting can seem to dance on the canvas, Happy C succeeds in promoting the idea that a painting can literally become a dynamic object while still retaining its beauty as an artistic object.

Claire Ashley/ Happy Collaborationists- Performance shot

Jeff Huckleberry explores the challenge of artistic creation through intense yet humorous performance

Jeff Huckleberry’s performance, “8th Rainbow,” follows the performance by Happy C in the Gray Space. Huckleberry, a member of Mobius Artist Group and the artistic director of TOTAL ART, began his performance without introduction; he simply began laying out his various props, which included wooden boards, paint, a belt sander, a box, two cases of beer, and balloons.

Unaware that the piece was beginning, the chatter in the audience did not die down immediately, making the moment when Huckleberry doused himself with two Big-Gulps filled with rubbing alcohol, followed by two cans of coffee grounds, especially striking.

Jeff Huckleberry- “8th Rainbow” performance shot

What followed from there was a series of actions that, while assaulting the senses in a ridiculous and entertaining manner, seemed also to grapple with the profound challenges artists face when attempting to create their work.  This was clearest when Huckleberry filled his pockets with beer bottles and wrestled with an armful of long, wood boards.  As he was rolling back and forth through the space, clutching this bulky mass, I empathized with him;  Huckleberry seemed to be actualizing the process of wrangling an unformulated creative idea into something tangible and workable – perhaps the most difficult task an artist faces.  Huckleberry personified this struggle with humor and whimsy; my husband and I found ourselves grinning constantly during the performance.

Jeff Huckleberry- “8th Rainbow” performance shot

The artists create a successful, accessible collaboration

This is not the first time these artists have collaborated and it shows – each piece complemented the other in interesting ways. My husband and I left the gallery that night laughing and chatting excitedly about the show, eager to  see more.

Neither of us have much experience with the performing arts, but the performances that took place in and around Ashley’s vibrant sculptures felt exciting, engaging, and accessible. Ashley, Huckleberry, and The Happy C ably show that art can grapple with very real issues and come from personal, meaningful places but still be approachable and even highly entertaining.

It’s wonderful to see art with a jubilant sense of humor that doesn’t shy away from the silly in life.

Jeff Huckleberry- “8th Rainbow” performance shot

distant landscapes: peepdyedcrevicehotpinkridge will be on display at The Icebox in the Crane Arts Building until May 31, 2013.

The gallery schedule is as follows:

May 15-17 noon-6

May 22-25 noon-6

May 29-31 noon-6

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday by appointment via info@cranearts.com.

All images credit to Claire Ashley. Video from Claire Ashley’s past collaborative performances, can be viewed here.

Hawthorne Hall’s unique facade

Rabid Hands Art Collective uses abandoned spaces and their unique histories as inspiration

I recently has the opportunity to visit Hawthorne Hall, one of the nine sites featured this year, for a preview showing. Hawthorne Hall, tucked inside an apartment block in Powelton, is home to a sprawling, walk-through installation piece created for the festival by Rabid Hands Art Collective.

As a group, Rabid Hands is primarily interested in overtaking abandoned or underused locations with epic installations pieces. To do this, they invite many artists with a wide range of artistic practices to come and engage with the site, co-creating installations in a deeply collaborative process. Rabid Hands creates work using discarded and found materials inside unique architectural spaces. The goal is to have the art and the space itself frame and comment upon one another in ways not possible in traditional gallery spaces.

A view of the main space in Hawthorne Hall

A major inspiration for Rabid Hands’ transformation of Hawthorne Hall is the rich history of the space. Built in 1895, the Hall has been home to dozens of organizations over the years. Notable groups that have inhabited – and thus altered, modified, and left their charge upon space – include the Irish National Foresters, New Light National Baptist Church, and the Knights of Pythias. Unique moldings suggest the space may have also been home to a cabaret theater at one point. Each of these former tenants added to the space, either physically altering it or imbuing it with new meaning by their presence and the rituals they enacted within it.

Rabid Hands is using this idea as a jumping-off point, hoping to emphasize these layers of history through their installations. To do this, the artists are forming The Society of Pythagoras,  a secret society much like ones formerly housed in the Hall. Each of the artists will take on a specific role and title within the society, and the pieces they create will reflect and play off of the secretive, ritualistic practices these kinds of societies engage in.

Walking through the space, visitors will find themselves gradually initiated into the society as well, each setpiece serving as some unique kind of introduction or induction ceremony.

Various instruments and sound installations will be a part of the completed installation

Rabid Hands’ installation engages and melds with Hawthorne Hall

The sprawling interior of Hawthorne Hall is an excellent example of wabi-sabi, an aesthetic concept originating in Japan that privileges the beauty of imperfection in nature and the inevitability of decay. Wabi-sabi places this more authentic aesthetic, with its many imperfections, over the manufactured or uniform. Hawthorne Hall is both beautiful and charged with history, in large part because it’s resplendent with swaths of rust, walls of chaotically textured chipping paint, expanses of crumbling wooden rafters, and stretches of cracked cement; we can see how time and use have weathered this space, leaving indelible marks and blemishes that are both imperfect and beautiful at once.

One of the most fascinating elements of Rabid Hands’ approach is the ways in which their art does not merely exist within the space but actually merges and melds with the existing architecture, becoming a part of the space in the process. An “Initiation Chamber,” a wooden structure built into the central room of the Hall, seems to spill out organically from the fragmented roof timbers above it. Visitors can descend down clanging metal steps into a massive, below-ground baptismal fount where they will find themselves submerged in light. A twisting, stone corridor will lead to reliquaries tucked behind crumbling wooden doors. A series of carefully constructed balconies hold arcane symbols in their rusted railings. Secret doors open to reveal hidden ceremonial chambers.

It seems that in every corner of Hawthorne Hall, Rabid Hands offers new ways to engage with the space and the many layers of history contained therein. In peeling back, exposing, and engaging with these layers and thereby emphasizing the charges that history can leave upon a place, the artists allow a visitor to interact and encounter this history in novel ways, and transform this neglected space into one suffused with meaning and possibility in the process.

Crumbling, peeling walls serve as beautiful counterparts to much of the art

Rabid Hands’ work at Hawthorne Hall reflects Hidden City’s mission

The aim of the Hidden City Festival is to celebrate the power of place by offering up unique spaces for contemporary artists to transform. By allowing these artists to engage with forgotten fragments of Philadelphia’s past, the Festival hopes to inspire people to get engaged with history while simultaneously imagining new, potentially radical futures for city. By illuminating the beauty, power, and even practical use of obscure and forgotten urban spaces, new ways to interact with all corners of our urban landscape emerge. From what I saw of Hawthorne Hall and from the brief conversations I had with some of the artists involved, it seems that Rabid Hands is approaching this mission in a number of fascinating ways.

Rabid Hands wants us to experience art that engages all the senses, that is tactile, textural, and tells a story. They want to explore the positive ramifications of giving abandoned spaces new life, even if only temporarily. They want to encourage us to encounter spaces deemed “useless” and instead see new possibilities. They want us to find the beauty in dilapidation and thus come to see our constant demand for the new and the pristine as misguided. Their mission is a radical one, and fits in perfectly with Hidden City’s progressive conception of urban space.

Although very much a work-in-progress when I viewed the site earlier this month, Rabid Hands’ takeover promises to transform Hawthorne Hall into a fascinating exploration and re-contextualization of the history of that site and, by extension, our city.

The Hidden City Festival 2013 runs from May 23rd to June 30th. Festival passes, schedules of events, and Hidden City Membership information can be found here.

Kuerner Farm is accessible by a five minute shuttle bus ride from the main museum

Wyeth’s ubiquity tends to group viewers into one of two camps: devotees and fervent detractors. When someone’s work is so omnipresent, it is hard to reexamine it without preconceptions.

The Brandywine River Museum seeks to combat this reaction by bringing in contemporary artists to engage with Wyeth’s art and sources of inspiration in novel ways. Thomas Padon, the museum’s director, hopes to host a series of site-specific installations throughout the grounds, bringing new eyes to the historic properties and landscape under the museum’s care.

Kuerner Sounds is the first of these, a pop-up exhibition funded by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.

Michael Kiley revisiting the grounds

Kuerner Farm becomes a meeting place for old and new art

“No Idea is too Ridiculous: An Experiment in Creative Practice” is the audacious name of the Pew opportunity grant that led Supervisor of Education, Mary Cronin and Associate Curator, Christine Podmaniczky to reach out to Philadelphia-based sound artist, Michael Kiley. The program encourages local organizations to take artistic risks within the constraints of a tight budget and a markedly short time frame.  The Brandywine River Museum is one of six Greater Philadelphia area institutions selected to participate this year, pursuing an inventive project that will take place over a fleeting eight weeks, from its initial planning, to its inception, to its final analysis.

The barn and grounds are still in use by Karl Kuerner’s descendants

Cronin and Podmaniczky chose Kuerner Farm as a site to reexamine and enliven for visitors.  Wyeth originally discovered it as a boy, when he developed a fascination with Karl Kuerner, a German immigrant and World War I machine gunner. After they became close friends, Wyeth was granted full access to the farm to paint and draw at will. He visited for almost seventy years thereafter, drawing continuous inspiration from the farm’s inhabitants and surroundings. Cronin asserts that the painter was intensely aware of the multisensory richness of the space. In a notable example, Wyeths’s painting “Spring Fed” (1967) references the echoes of dripping water and rustling animals heard throughout the barn.

The IPod Shuffle and CD passed out to visitors

Today, the museum conducts twice daily tours of the historic property, leading visitors through an hour-long excursion. In an effort to provide fresh insights and encourage visitors to engage with the space in a novel way, Kiley was brought in to create a sound installation component to the tour. In a previous work centered around Rittenhouse Square, Kiley created a GPS-enabled IPhone app that played different environmental sounds depending on a pedestrian’s location, which sought to prevent people from retreating into themselves in public.

The auditory sense of place invoked by this earlier piece is what led to Kiley’s selection for the Kuerner endeavor; Cronin and Podmaniczky wished to explore the previously unexamined aural elements that make Kuerner Farm unique, something they felt Kiley would be acutely sensitive to.

The view from the back porch

Michael Kiley creates sound art inspired by space and place

After first being contacted in March, Kiley was given a tour of the property, during which he quickly became acquainted with Wyeth’s relationship with the farm. Kiley later returned alone to capture field recordings. The five minute piece that results from the melding and layering of these clips is available to visitors on an IPod Shuffle as they enter the farm house. Visitors are encouraged to wander while listening; a particularly serene spot to listen to the work is on the back porch, with a prime view of the animals, pastures and architecture that informed its creation.

The impetus behind Kiley’s installations lies in a captivation with the manner in which sound shapes one’s experiences in particular locales. Kiley puts forth that while sound art is often obtuse, he strives for wider accessibility with his own work. His goal is to bring sound design out of the theater (where Kiley composes for a number of productions) and into public places. At Kuerner Farm, Kiley’s work reflects his shifting reactions to the space, which he found “spooky” and foreboding at first, but peaceful after further reflection. There is a weight here, the artist asserts, tied into the rich history of the area.

The farm’s resident cat, Sophie

Kiley’s recording is available online, as well as in person during the tour. It incorporates frogs, whose “singing” frames the piece, along with manipulated field clips resembling dripping water, the opening of a screen door, and distant howling. To this, Kiley adds resounding claps, soft guitar strokes, and his own voice, a haunting choral accompaniment. A reflection on Wyeth’s relationship with Kuerner, perhaps a pseudo-father figure after the death of N.C., the lyrics capture what Kiley believes to be a universal phenomenon: “the loss of a vessel for our love means that love needs to go somewhere else … [loss] affects where we put our feelings.” The lyrics are as follows:

When you left, I wasn’t done pouring myself into you

Now I am left to search over tilted ground

I’ll have no shape to mold to

Until the inertia you created in me finds elsewhere to rest

Taken together, the assorted clips, embellished and melodized, create a piece that will resonate with visitors, offering a personal moment of reflection in an otherwise collective, well-choreographed experience.  It will be interesting to see what the Brandywine River Museum does in the future to bring new context to an otherwise well-explored narrative.

“Kuerner Sounds” runs to May 24. Brandywine River Museum, 1 Hoffman’s Mill Road, Chadds Ford, PA 19317. To schedule a tour of Kuerner Farm, click here.

Charles Searles, “Untitled (The Boxer)”, 1963, ink and watercolor on paper, collection of the Woodmere Art Museum

From realism to abstraction, on display at Woodmere

Searles studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and his traditional figurative training is evident in the Woodmere’s Charles Searles: A Focus on the Figure, curated by Tyler School of Art Art History Ph.D. candidate Maite Barragan.  This small and effective exhibition contains drawings and paintings from the 1960s through the 1980s.

During this time, Searles moves from realistic to flattened, abstracted figures.  Searles’ style, “changes so rapidly,” noted  Barragan in an email.  “In his earlier work he really attempts to recreate figures in a naturalistic manner.  He focuses on anatomy and attempts to get every detail correct.”

Charles Searles, “Bo Bro Bill,” 1969, mixed media on masonite and wood, collection of Kathleen Spicer

Location as inspiration at LaSalle University Art Museum

Eventually, Searles became frustrated with the traditional teaching modes at PAFA and in 1967 he took a semester leave to work in his South Street studio and develop his own modern style inspired by images and ideas from the streets of Philadelphia.  The mixed media painting “Bo Bro Bill,” 1969, in the LaSalle University Art Museum exhibition, exemplifies this period.  The mix of Coca-Cola signs and bottle caps are evidence of the urban signage and detritus that Searles collected and then assembled in his work.  He also discovered the African art collections at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. These collections impacted Searles’ developing style which at the time included collage, flattened figures, and an interest in African art and aesthetics.

In 1972 Searles’ was awarded PAFA’s Lewis S. Ware Memorial Traveling Scholarship which allowed him to visit Nigeria and Ghana.

Susanna Gold, Assistant Professor of Art History at Tyler School of Art, mentioned in a phone conversation that Searles was one of the first artists to visit Africa during “an early phase of a number of black American artists who traveled to Africa to experience the culture and to engage the culture in their work.”  During a lecture on Searles’ work, Spicer noted that this trip was “a life altering experience,” where he realized that “people walk while wearing patterns…they were like walking sculptures.”

Charles Searles, “Three Soul Visitors,” 1977, acrylic on canvas, collection of Kathleen Spicer

Rhythm, dynamism, and musicality in Searles’ art

Indeed, the brightly painted surfaces in Searles’ works move, dance, and suggest rhythmic surges.  His sculptures stretch out against a wall or leap into space.  Patterning and movement are abundantly present.  Many of his paintings and sculptures are synesthetic, suggesting dance, rhythmic sound, and songs, all communicated with interacting shapes and intense colors.  In some works, such as those from the “Soul” series of the mid-1970s, mask-like eyes peer out of patterned, colorful shapes; areas of dark, flat color are interspersed throughout. Art historian Michael D. Harris describes the single-color, flat shapes as similar to the “musical jump spaces” of jazz, the pauses that mark and keep the time.  The textured surfaces, then, fill the time with more notes.

A Searles’ painting is a like a carefully constructed song of rhythms, resonances, and beats that move our eyes around the canvas.  While Western art historical parlance may categorize these “empty,” flat spaces as “negative space,” with Searles these shapes are the positives that attract, organize, and hold together the remainder of the composition.  A noted musician and drummer himself, Searles often played his drum to mark the completion of a work.  Music is everywhere in Searles’ art.

Charles Searles: In Motion, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, installation view

The large scale sculptures on view in the atrium of Tyler School of Art appear to be walking or moving, extending across the floor or bounding off the wall.  At times referred to as “leaners” for the ways in which they interact with the gallery walls, these pieces appear to exist somewhere between painting and free-standing sculpture. Several beautiful examples of these works are on display both at Tyler and LaSalle.

Searles began exploring the possibilities for painted wood sculpture in 1978 when he moved from Philadelphia to New York.  In “Freedom’s Gate II,” 1990, we see the artist bending and arching wood in ways that may suggest parts of a human figure.  The black and yellow spikes on the top of this sculpture are a repeating motif in Searles’ work, a reference to the braided hairstyles worn by his daughters.  We can see these same braids on the head of a young girl in “In Front of the Store,” 1971, a painting also on view at Tyler.

Charles Searles, “Freedom’s Gate II,” 1990, acrylic on wood, collection of Kathleen Spicer

One of the strongest elements of these three exhibitions is the focus given to Searles’ evolution as an artist.  The three shows form a complete survey of Searles remarkable career, and visiting all three venues allows us to get to know Searles deeply.  As Maite Barragan notes, the exhibitions let us “come out with a great understanding of what Searles loved and how he worked.”

Tyler School of Art, Temple University — Charles Searles: In Motion, on view through June 16

LaSalle University Art Museum – Charles Searles: The Mask of Abstraction, on view through May 31

Woodmere Art Museum — Charles Searles: A Focus on the Figure, on view through June 15

Jason Varone, “It Isn’t Always Going to Be This Great,” mixed media installation, 10′ x 16′, 2013. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Varone has designed a diverse yet unified show

Though it comprises very different elements, Varone’s installation is singular in its unity. A pair of large snake-like forms undulates floor to ceiling and wraps around corners, carrying the eye with it. Projected words and images flow amidst the in-and-out of these hand-painted coils, disappearing precisely at their boundaries. One projection has a news feed looping around the corner of the gallery, while a second shows flocks of birds (and inexplicably, the occasional land animal) flying in an endless and hypnotic fashion. Painstaking digital masking techniques and high quality projectors have allowed Varone to crop the video to fit precisely into the irregular shapes of his wall paintings.

Just what do the two painted whiplash forms represent? Their surface is suggestive of many things, including scales, bark, or feathers. Another possibility, smoke, arises when you watch the rectangular video projection in the opposite corner of the gallery.

In a blurry montage which Varone pieced together from actual military footage, a drone locks its sights on a series of targets—cars, buildings, and people—then blam! They explode in flames. In this moment, the snake-like coils are transformed into smoke trailing behind a missile as it winds toward its prey, or a plume rising from a demolished target.

Jason Varone, “It Isn’t Always Going to Be This Great,” mixed media installation, 10′ x 16′, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist.

Varone uses irony to create unsettling associations

A key element of Varone’s gun-sight montage is the soundtrack. The artist plays the footage against a sequence of 1960s Henry Mancini recordings whose cheerfulness adds more than a bit of irony to the work. Colored splotches the artist has inserted into the video reinforce that irony by referencing old-time celluloid film. Alternating between inane gossip about celebrities and news headlines about drone attacks, the text feed on the opposite wall has a similar disconnect. One story line with the title “So Romantic” even tells of a man who proposed to his future wife using a drone. Against this backdrop of insanity, flying land animals begin to seem normal.

Varone excels at making linkages in both form and subject matter between the installation’s disparate elements. He designs for the entire room, drawing the eye up and down with the serpentine forms and side-to-side with the scrolling projections.

While the drone video is on the surface very different in appearance and tone from the other elements, small details to tie them together. The painting on the walls resembles the form of the smoke in the video, and the splotches in the drone video resemble the color and feel of the painting on the walls.

Jason Varone, “It Isn’t Always Going to Be This Great,” mixed media installation, 10′ x 16′, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist.

The most effective part of Varone’s approach is its subtlety. The work rewards slow, careful observation of its many connections and divergences. It Isn’t Always Going to Be This Great doesn’t seem so great to begin with—then blam! It hits with a punch line that is both well-crafted and frightening.

It Isn’t Always Going to be This Great is on view at Grizzly Grizzly, 319 N. 11th St., Philadelphia, May 3 – June 1, 2013.  

“C’MON SOMEONE BUY THIS. YOU GOT TA FEEL ME. $20. SO MANY VISUAL COMPUTATIONS.”

In the vein of similar endeavors by Rauschenberg, Hammons and Orozco, greg.org posted an amusing item about Hennessy Youngman (aka Jayson Musson) selling found objects on the street via his twitter feed. The resulting tweets are predictably priceless,

Athena Barat, long known to us as a powerhouse of art and social practice, was recently honored when the Women’s Center for Entrepreneurship Corporation jointly awarded her and her mother Chandri Woman of the Year. Athena, a former Philly resident, created The South Philly Biennial in 2008, and has been supporting her family’s foundation at their home base in Newark.

Douglas Witmer is curating a show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in August, called ICE WATER FLYSWATTER. We’re told it’s “Abstract painting on holiday in the Philadelphia summer,” and the lineup includes Alain Biltereyst (Belgium), Mary Bucci McCoy (MA), Donald Martiny (NC), Cary Smith (CT), Mark Wethli (ME), Paige Williams (OH), with a special poem/drawing by Ian White Williams commissioned for the show. curated by Douglas Witmer, the show runs August 2 — September 1, 2013 with a reception Friday August 2, 6-10pm.

Opportunities

The John D. Mineck Furniture Fellowship is offering a $25,000 award to encourage and support a “young in career” furniture artist. Administered by The Society of Arts and Crafts, they ask  Selection guidelines, criteria & application instructions will be available by May 12, 2013 at  www.societyofcrafts.org.  Completed applications are due July 1, 2013.

The Clay Studio (TCS) seeks a Studio Technician to provide technical and administrative support to our Education Department and building maintenance as needed. They’re particularly interested in candidates with strong customer focus and effective communication, planning and organizing abilities, occupational knowledge and skills, and above all a great attitude. Job responsibilities run the gamut from supervising interns and volunteers, updating and monitoring schedules, tracking inventory, firing reduction and oxidation kilns, and maintaining safety of facilities and studios. The application requirements include a bachelors degree in Arts, Arts Education or related field, 1+years studio technician experience in a studio. The position, which reports to the Vice President, entails a salary of $25K for 40+ hours a week (depending upon qualifications, experience, and performance), as well as studio space. The Studio Technician is expected to be present for all scheduled gas firings for the School and special events, including First Fridays. To apply, e-mail a cover letter and resume to Jennifer@theclaystudio.org with Studio Technician in the subject heading by June 1, 2013.

Artist News

Mariposa, wood and wool, 24½ ’ x 13½’, 2010 – 2012.

Shelley Spector’s latest exhibition at Bridgette Mayer, “But Not as Much as Tomorrow,” garnered accolades in Art in America this month.

Isaac Lin and Leah Bailis are two of the exhibiting artists in Wally at MASS Gallery, a presentation of works in painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, and sculpture. Wally runs from May 18 to June 22, with a full-day opening in coordination with other East Austin galleries as part of Frame. If you’re in the area, there is a free public event at the gallery on Saturday, May 18 from 12 pm to 10 pm, boasting art, live music, lawn games, refreshments and more.

Work from the upcoming “Nature’s Mark” show at the Hunterdon Art Museum.

Dianne Koppisch Hricko and Richard Hricko are two of the artists showing work in Nature’s Mark: Printing on Fiber, opening at the Hunterdon Art Museum on Sunday, May 19 with a reception from 2-4 PM. Curated by Gravers Lane director Bruce Hoffman, it’s up until Sept. 8, 2013.

Judith Schaechter’s Battle of Carnival and Lent arrives at Claire Oliver Gallery in NYC on May 23, with a reception from 6-8 PM. If you’ve visited Eastern State Penitentiary in the last year, you’ll recognize this as the beautifully-macabre work custom made for the site. The show runs until June 29.

]]> http://www.theartblog.org/2013/05/news-hennessy-youngmans-found-art-discourse-isaac-lin-leah-bailis-in-austin-doug-witmer-curates-at-tsa-opportunities-and-more/feed/ 0 http://www.theartblog.org/2013/05/roberta-pauses-for-refreshment-in-karlsruhe-and-paris/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=roberta-pauses-for-refreshment-in-karlsruhe-and-paris http://www.theartblog.org/2013/05/roberta-pauses-for-refreshment-in-karlsruhe-and-paris/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 07:48:32 +0000 roberta http://www.theartblog.org/?p=47720 Dear artblog readers, I will be absent for two weeks for some R&R in Germany and Paris.  Stay cool (if there’s a heatwave) or warm (if there’s a cooling spell).  I will post some pictures periodically and will have a report when I return.  Below are a couple shots from our apartment windows in Karlsruhe, where Steve is visiting professor for the summer and Stella and I are visiting the visitor.

Sunset looking towards France. Caspar David Friedrich minus the lookers.

Steve’s apartment is on Turmbergstrasse.  And when they use berg in that name they are not kidding.  Its a minor mountain you have to climb to get up here.  We are not on the tip top of the mountain and there is a funicular, from 1888, and a castle atop the mountain!

Rail for the funicular that runs up Turmberg. Picture of the car coming in another post.

Karlsruhe is higher longitudinally than Philadelphia (which lines up roughly with Rome, for comparison).  There is some Mediterranean influence which keeps it moist, and the plants love it.  Right now the lilacs are blooming in the backyard — what a treat for the eye.

That is it for now.  I am looking forward to going to the ZKM museum, which opens a show of Matthew Day Jackson tonight.

I just read the Susan Orlean piece in the New Yorker (read part of it here) about treadmill desks and I Want One! Ciao, bambini!

 

]]> http://www.theartblog.org/2013/05/roberta-pauses-for-refreshment-in-karlsruhe-and-paris/feed/ 0 http://www.theartblog.org/2013/05/within-mirrors-successful-collaboration-of-short-films-by-paul-clipson-with-sound-by-jefre-cantu-ledesma/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=within-mirrors-successful-collaboration-of-short-films-by-paul-clipson-with-sound-by-jefre-cantu-ledesma http://www.theartblog.org/2013/05/within-mirrors-successful-collaboration-of-short-films-by-paul-clipson-with-sound-by-jefre-cantu-ledesma/#comments Thu, 16 May 2013 13:31:21 +0000 dashiell farewell http://www.theartblog.org/?p=47414 It is not uncommon for the current generation of experimental and noise musicians to incorporate film into their performances. Oftentimes, the moving images feel arbitrarily chosen, as if selected merely to give the audience something to look at during performances in which the artists remain static. In rare instances, however, the relationship of abstract music to the film images with which it is paired is a symbiotic one, each informing and complementing the other. Such is the case on “Within Mirrors,” a DVD collection of seven short films, originally released between 2005 and 2008, by Paul Clipson featuring music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. The result is a stunning example of how successful a collaboration across mediums can be.

Kaleidoscopic films of urban, natural and industrial environments

Clipson has been screening his films, frequently with live musical accompaniment, in art galleries, museums, and independent venues around the world for over a decade, in addition to designing multi-channel video installation pieces.  His primary medium is heavily manipulated Super 8. Images are overexposed and superimposed upon one another. His films often rapidly cut from one image to the next and the filmmaker relies heavily on fading many superimposed images in and out simultaneously, creating a highly dynamic series of ever-shifting collages.

Sprawling kaleidoscopic explorations of urban, industrial, and natural environments, Clipson’s films are meditations on architecture, unexpected or unintended geometries, textures, and patterns found all around us, and on the ways in which human environments and natural environments collide. His images move from dreamy, dissolving landscapes, to frantic, explosive masses of shifting light and color, and from quiet, chiaroscuro-tinged explorations of darkness and negative space, to exuberant journeys through dense thickets of foliage at an insect-eye level, road trips down bleary, rain slicked highways, and bird’s-eye views of rippling, sun-drenched bodies of water.

These films are most successful when blurring the line between the abstract and the concrete; when we realize that an undulating chain of red and yellow dots is actually cars snaking down a highway, when chain-link fences, the veins on leaves, or the halos around light bulbs are transformed into inscrutable geometric patterns, or when a tree canopy dissolves into a Rorschach ink blot, we are invited to discover new, often startlingly beautiful ways of gazing at the mundane.

Within Mirrors

Influenced by the American Avant-Garde

In many ways, Clipson’s films are rooted in the traditions of American Avant-Garde film. Appearing throughout the works collected here, his warped, psychedelic cityscapes are reminiscent of Stan Brakhage, while his more naturalistic, insect-level journey through wind-whipped grasses in The Lights & Perfections recall moments from Jonas Meekas’s As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty. Other references abound, however.

The frequent vibrant abstractions of cityscapes into a series of colored nodes in a geometric plane seem almost like a Mondrian set into explosive motion.

The industrial yards in Sphinx on the Seine, hypersaturated with color, could be an homage to Rossellini’s chilling Deserto Rosso. The soft color palette and nostalgic shots of fading architecture on Corridors calls to mind Chantal Akerman’s News from Home, while the black-and-white ruminations on the geometry of scaffolding and building frames in the same may have been inspired by similar images in Yasujiro Ozu’s pioneering use of pillow shots in his many films. Meanwhile, Clipson’s textural, expansive shots of water might remind the viewer of a Vija Celmin painting, while his fog-enshrouded meditations on landscape evoke Hiroshi Sugimoto’s more abstract ocean photographs.

Sphinx on the Seine

Texture, repetition and submerged melody in the music

One key element that sets these films apart is the accompanying music by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Cantu-Ledesma, well regarded for over a decade by fans of experimental, noise, and drone music both for co-founding the Root Strata record label and for his work in numerous projects including Tarentel, The Alps, Moholy-Nagy, and The Holy See, was one of the first sound artists to collaborate with Clipson. As a solo artist, especially in the examples gathered for this collection, Cantu-Ledesma is deeply interested with texture, repetition, and the blurring and abstraction of elements we expect in music – melody, for example – often keeping them submerged and near-obliterated but not altogether lost. Just as Clipson’s abstract images resolve into concrete forms, so too does Cantu-Ledesma at times unearth for the listener some lost fragment of song beneath all his sonic wash and decay.

Both artists are also highly interested in texture; Cantu-Ledesma frequently draws from the aural palette of early 90s shoegaze, churning out vast, blasted guitarscapes and angular, aggressive assaults, rich with static and reverb.

At other times, Cantu-Ledesma creates soundscapes that are redolent in aural fog, with ghostly pulsations of static and low-end rumble slowly seething, unfurling, and decaying all at once. Cantu-Ledesma draws from an array of influences, referencing everything from droning Indian Ragas to 60s psychedelia. The Phantom Harp, for example, is a dreamy, glacial piece for treated autoharp, a kind of post-New Age drone that is equal parts hypnotic and mysterious. Two Suns, by contrast, sounds far more primal. Built upon a heavily distorted vocal drone and featuring jangling percussion, it transforms the human voice into a blurry, thrumming soundscape that perfectly accompanies Clipson’s propulsive, grainy images. Corridors, meanwhile, is much denser, with ferocious tonal layers butting up against glimmering, ambient movements. Throughout the collection, whispers of static, pulsing harmonics, and grinding post-industrial clatter meld into and spill out of one another.

The Lights and Perfections

Cantu-Ledesma’s work, much like Clipson’s, is stylistically diverse, and simultaneously capable of evoking a multitude of influences and inspirations while still retaining, at its core, a truly original aesthetic. Like many of Clipson’s images, Cantu-Ledesma’s sounds are impressionistic; both not only allow, but actively encourage, the audience to get lost in sprawling landscapes of color, light, and noise, or shadowy ambient fog.

Although both the film and music stand on their own merits, taken together they create an entirely new whole. Rather than both elements merely existing side-by-side – a common affliction in collaborations across media – the two complement one another beautifully. Both artists are fascinated with the interplay of dark and light, with pastiche, with layers, and with exploring texture, angularity, and repetition. In many ways, it feels as if Cantu-Ledesma is scoring Clipson’s films as much as Clipson is creating a visualization of Cantu-Ledesma’s music. For collaborations of this kind, there is perhaps no higher praise.

The films/sound compositions on Within Mirrors are:

1. Sphinx on the Seine (8:29)
2. Two Suns (23:50)
3. Constellations (7:23)
4. The Lights & Perfections (10:42)
5. Corridors (25:21)
6. The Phantom Harp (20:36)
7. Within Mirrors (21:15)

Within Mirrors was released by the record label Students of Decay. It is available for purchase from Experimedia.

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