Patrick Koziol, “Protrusions”, 2010-2011, latex on board, 25” x 25” x 6”

Latex extrusions appear to break through the painted support of Patrick Koziol’s “Protrusions.” In addition to these weird, tongue-like forms, the artist has also covered the back of the painted board in pink latex, casting a pink reflection on the wall behind. When viewed from an angle, this reflection gives the illusion that the latex is not only piercing through the support, but also emerging out of the wall. The work’s oozing goo comically suggests the threat of a B-movie horror film and embodies the show’s theme of unsettling perceptions.

Terri Saulin “Drown & Drain”, 2011, porcelain, lusters, 16” x 12” x 10”

Also unsettling, “Drown & Drain” by Terri Saulin reflects the artist’s interest in biological structures and brings to mind genetic modification. In the porcelain sculpture, body parts of an infant are detached from the torso and reconnected to forms that resemble coral. The infant becomes a hybrid creature, but the organic similarities of the forms makes the combination more harmonious than grotesque.

Erica Eyres Still from “Cuddle Group”

Erica Eyres’ video projections comment on cultural attitudes towards sexuality and gender by adopting and then parodying the style of television and film. Eyres uses a faux-documentary style in the satirical “Cuddle Group,” which includes interviews with women who joined a touch-based therapy group in hopes of overcoming their fear of intimacy. The interviews share the slow pacing of the documentary format, but they are not humorous enough, and the scenes drag. The most successful portions of the video come from Dr. Gerry Winecott, the mastermind of “Cuddle Group”, who allows Eyres’ interest in bizarre narratives to come through. Dr. Winecott’s role is that of an evangelical salesman, extolling the value of his treatment and recalling his personal epiphany to form Cuddle Group. The video’s most humorous and uncomfortable moment comes when Winecott demonstrates his therapy by laying on top of a woman, his heavy breathing audible through his microphone.

Erica Eyres, Still from “Destiny Green”

Eyres’ video, “Destiny Green,” tells the fictitious story of a beauty pageant queen who later has her face surgically removed. The beauty pageant seems like too easy a target, and even more than “Cuddle Group,” “Destiny Green” suffers from slow pacing without delivering humor or new insight.

Erica Eyres Still from “Me & Pug-a-Poo”

In “Me & Pug-a-Poo,” the artist takes on the role of children’s show host and along with her sidekick, a fur-costumed dog, uses the word of the day, “disgusting,” to broach the topic of STDs. The word sex never comes up in their discussion because to the characters STDs are not sexually transmitted diseases but So Totally Disgusting. And the graphic images of sexually transmitted diseases live up to that new acronym. By using the children’s show format, Eyres is able to criticize approaches to sexual education that resort to scare tactics and do not provide accurate and useful information, thus leaving students with a naive understanding of sex.

Troy Richards “Family Jams”, 2007, Digital Print, 34”x50”

Also in the faux documentary mode, Troy Richards’ digital print, “Family Jams,” displays two figures struggling in the center of a meth lab. The title and chaotic scene imply a dysfunctional partnership, and the vast amounts of Sudafed and Morton’s Salt suggest a homegrown operation that is comically tragic.

“Dead Simon”, oil on canvas print, 20”x30”

Another, weirder transformation in Adam Parker Smith’s “Dead Simon” includes dabs of black paint that resemble feasting maggots applied to a photograph of a cat. Although the title indicates Simon is dead, the cat in the photo appears alive. The photograph alone does not tell the truth. And with the addition of the dabs of paint is it clearer that the cat has died. The work reveals a larger, cultural fascination with death and memorial photos for dead loved ones.

Elaine Quave “Promethean Ambitions Version II”, 2011, Stancill’s quarry clay, plastic, porcelain, mixed

Elaine Quave’s installation  “Promethean Ambitions Version II” involves a clay topographical landscape in a vessel surrounded by  unfired clay that gives the  appearance that the land masses are eroding. Plastic bags filled with fired and unfired pieces of quarry clay sit next to the vessel, revealing the artist’s process and our distance from the clay’s original source, the quarry. The work’s title also reflects a desire to be like the mythical Greek and have a part in creation.

Other artists in The Unsettled include Susan Camp, Alex Fogt, Brandon Jones, Michael Merry, Cindy Stockton Moore, Josh Nobiling, Andrew Prayzner, Jacob Smiley, and Lindsay Wraga. A Second Thursday reception will be held on November 10 from 6 – 9 pm, and the exhibition is on view until November 27.

Youngblood Magnitude performing at Dead in August's block party. Photo credit: Paul Winters.

Dead in August–this is its inaugural year–is hosted at the Pentagon. The venue is an elusive “secret space for odd shows” (according to their blogspot). When there isn’t a show, the Pentagon is shared between Susan and Howard Hunt of Snowball’s Chance Productions, Dark Mountain Printing, and the band, Bezoar. Meaghan Kent, the curator of D.I.A, expressed to me multiple times, her exceptional gratitude toward Susan and Howard.

Four or five hula hoops in neon orange and green stood leaning against the bottom portion of an open loading dock outside the building. They were a tableau that could have been part of the installation inside. In fact, a man fiddled nearby on the sidewalk an hour or so later with a tenuous, pyramidal sculpture of long, narrow fluorescent tubes. The geometric, light-art piece spoke directly to the hula hoops.

Installation of Dead in August at the Pentagon, Brooklyn. Photo credit: Cary Whittier

Inside the building, Curator Kent organized a set of visual objects, to be rotated in the space a total of three times throughout the month of August. Also part of the curation were: the block party, with triple chocolate chunk cookies and live music; the closing party on Sept. 13; and the film screening Aug. 24, featuring Nicolas Knight’s Ball Today (included in the exhibition) and other pieces by filmmakers involved with The Pentagon.

Kent, a sprightly, professional woman in her early thirties seems to be saying like the rest of us: “Please do not wane” to the precious long hours of late summer. Her D.I.A. festival celebrates the good weather before the air chills and we must all retreat indoors. Kent’s programming suggests we can appreciate art experientially the way we do the outdoors—with our whole bodies and all of our senses—and that we can have an aesthetic and intellectual appreciation for raw air that is usually reserved for artistic pursuits.

By curating an open-air event as a comparable piece of an exhibition, Kent implies that the sensory fullness we experience when outside is too often missing from viewing art. Thus, fresh air, live music, food, beer, and friends are interspersed with a visual array of objects.

From left to right (top to bottom): Jen Dohne, Mat Bushell, Eddie Chu, and Joshua Abelow

As for the visual portion of D.I.A. (I saw the second of the three installments), it was a mixed bag. The paintings and drawings, a few photographs, sculpture, a video and poetry (tacked loosely to the wall, like sketches) were disparate, although that is not in itself an issue. The hanging of the work hindered pieces that individually displayed promise. Documentation on the D.I.A. website, however, indicates that the first installment–a similar collection of work by the same artists—was sharper. The impression of the second installation was of a community art class that has put on a mandatory end-of-semester viewing.

Adam Henry, Untitled (FS 7), 2011, Synthetic polymers on linen, 19 x 16”

One piece that held my interest is Joshua Abelow’s Ass Licker, a one-shot line drawing of a seductive female licking the buttocks of a hypnotized-looking man. The drawing demonstrates masterful ease. Others I found attention-grabbing are a set of paintings that link to an up-to-date conversation about abstraction: Adam Henry’s Untitled (FS 7), a rainbow bleed suppressed by a colorless texture (Gerhard Richter meets Jules Olitski), Scott Calhoun’s Star and Pan (not shown) a timeless-looking Helen Frankenthaler-like abstraction, and Eddie Chu’s Lookalike, (shown above) a blobby figure’s silhouette produced from an intricate taped pattern of intersecting colored shapes.

Adam Parker Smith, American Totem, 2011, Latex masks, polystyrene, and wood pole, 14’ x 10 x 10”. Photo credit: Cary Whittier.

There are three sculptures in the show. Adam Parker Smith’s American Totem is a floor to ceiling Brancusi tower of rubber portrait masks depicting American politicians, adhered together with Great Stuff foam which pokes out of the subjects’ orifices. The faces grin insincerely at passersby (which made me feel self-conscious). Carolyn Salas’ Untitled sculpture is a person-sized bronze piece—more classically Modernist—of horse-shoe crab parts assembled to create an eyeless face—another mask. (Salas and Parker Smith have previously worked collaboratively). Finally, Joe Graham-Felsen’s Untitled (Block) is a sculptural replication of a parking stop—suburban Minimalism—painted white. It is a civilian take on Robert Morris’ L-Beams from 1965.

Carolyn Salas, Untitled, 2011, Cast bronze 6’ x 12 x 17”. Photo credit: Cary Whittier.

From outside, the artwork is just a piece of a larger event, waiting, but not beckoning, for viewers to come to it. My friend and I, as part of a small audience, watched a stocky man (Youngblood Magnitude) give a sincere and entertaining solo performance on the acoustic guitar. Vendors under the vinyl awning waited for others to arrive as the afternoon developed. Friends drank beer, ate pizza, and cheered each other on. The festivities promised not to disappoint, and the sun continued its overhead arc in the sky.

D.I.A. runs until Sept. 13, when the closing party will take place. There are additional viewing hours on Sept. 7 from noon to 5 pm, and by appointment. Further information can be found on the website: deadinaugust.com. The Pentagon is located at 251 N. Henry St. in Brooklyn.

Setting up

Adam Parker Smith, James Johnson and Charlene Peacock at Little Berlin, close to the ATM machine made of cake and green-grey icing.

Adam Parker Smith had a couple of pieces in the Value City show at Little Berlin. One piece was a tricked out microwave on the floor that looked toxic. The ATM piece by Masha Badinter and Jenna Wilchinsky took the cake. It was disgusting and everyone was picking at it.

Masha Bandinter and Jenna Wilchinsky made this ATM cake and encouraged people to partake

Artist Scott Bickmore working on a community art piece at Little Berlin told us he sold the piece to Hyperion Bank, sight unseen. The bank’s signature color is orange. Guess what color the piece is?

Scott Bickmore working at Little Berlin on his all orange community art

The first place we had cupcakes was Grizzly Grizzly in the kitchen created by Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw, the Honeymooners.

PAFA Curator Julien Robson at the Honeymooners' suite at Grizzly Grizzly

The best cupcakes of all were the hand-made variety at Bambi at the opening of Erin Riley’s and Matthew Osborn’s shows. Cupcakes and beer are really delicious.

Nike Desis at Vox Populi in her installation

Speaking of good food, the best cheese we had was at Nike Desis’ show at Vox Populi, where Roberta also talked for ten minutes to Sid Sachs as part of the interactivity in her installation. The piece rounded up people who knew about recent Philadelphia art history and you could talk with them via cellphone. At last psychic and sex hotlines have crossed over!!!

Roberta talking with Sid Sachs on one of the art guru hotlines

Brandon Joyce was scheduled as a hotline art guru later in the evening. There were about ten hotline art gurus altogether

Adam Parker Smith, Salami, collage

Adam Parker Smith, Salami, detail, collage

Smith, who moved from Philly to Brooklyn and shows at Priska Juschka, is making collages here, a major change from the stuffed dolls. I especially loved the sexy body parts that add up to the piece named Salami.

Sator Square, ink and graphite on handcut paper mounted on plexiglass, 12 x 12 inches, 2009

Stabler’s cut paper has gone 3-D fabulous and soon I expect him to be cutting paper in the fifth dimension and the size of the head of a pin!

Pranger and Ruff are exciting new finds.

Donna Ruff, Aureola Series 1-16, burn on paper, gold leaf, 2009

Ruff’s grid of  drawings not much bigger than Post-its  are burned into gold-backed paper. The gold sneaks up with a glow from behind, lending a magical elegance to an object that is at once lacy, vulnerable and hard core. The imagery, which has an Astrid Bowlby-like obsessiveness, merges a mysterious symbolic or scientific code with a topographical mapping of the cosmos, while the repetitive hole-burning seems like a sort of religious devotion, a scarification of the paper. The gallery notes state that Ruff is inspired by Islamic and Afghani art.

Ben Pranger, Spaceship Log, wooden log, dowels, plexiglas, (braille text from buckminster fuller's spaceship earth), 18 x 28 x 18 inches

Pranger, a Pollock-Krasner grant winner, offered work that looks like giant Tinkertoy constructions made of found chunks of wood. What interests me is the use of Braille in it, a language for people who can’t see, in an art gallery where the blind would probably not go. But the clunky, DIY charm of the forms and the incomprehensibility of the encoded language created something mysterious, a sort of puzzle, endearingly awkward and inarticulate. The one piece with the words in a standard alphabet–a Biblical quote–I found less intriguing.

Corey Antis, Cold Room, acrylic, flashe, casein on jute

Also in the show is Vox Populi member Corey Antis, whose paintings are more like drawings in their spareness. He is the only artist in the show not playing with language’s inability to communicate. And religion, another show theme, is a stretch, unless martyrdom counts: Antis paints empty spaces, empty rooms that are challenges to enter and challenges to stay in. I suspect that’s his point. In Cold Room the horizonal lines look like heating elements. Ouch!

Italy to Cyprus by way of L.A.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, The Soft Epic, video still. click to see it bigger.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib go global this summer. (See a clip of their video Soft Epic on their Soft Epic website, a piece so epic it gets a site of its own!) See their works  here:

Pesaro, Italy, June 13th-28th
Moscow, June 22nd and 23rd

Los Angeles, July 11th-mid August

New York, NY, July 28th,

and Nicosia, Cyprus, Sept. 3

Boston

Alex Da Corte, Serge and Bacchus

Look for Philly alum Alex Da Corte’s Casual Luxury ultra-exhibit in New England! Now there’s a culture confrontation!
LaMontagne Gallery
June 18th to July 31st

Greensboro, NC.

Eileen Neff, photo from her show at Weatherspoon Museum

Eileen Neff is showing selected work from the last 10 years in her museum exhibit Eileen Neff: Photographs!  Are they real or are they art? Greensboro, check it out!
Weatherspoon Museum of Art
May 24,  2009  – August 16,  2009

Harrisburg

Sarah Gamble, painting that's in the Art of the State exhibit in Harrisburg

Mind-boggling: 157 works of art by 798 Pennsylvania artists, selected for more than 2,000 entries.

A shout-out to Matt Pruden for this breaking news about the Art of the State.
Here’s a selection of artists we’ve written about from some of the 66 artists from the Philadelphia area.
Arden Bendler Browning
Nanette Acker Clark
Dominic Episcopo
Sarah Gamble
Ed Bing Lee
Lisa Murch
Matthew Pruden
Kate Stewart
Ben Volta
Kip Deeds
Csilla Sadloch

Art of the State, June 27 – September 20
The State Museum of Pennsylvania

New York, NY

Adam Parker Smith, untitled plane crash

Adam Parker Smith  in A Greek Play with a Main Character Named Oblivious (Parker Smith is a Philly alum).

Priska C. Juschka Fine Art

June 23 – July 31, 2009
Opening Reception: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 6 – 9 PM

Jesse A. Greenberg, Invitation Station Arch 1, 2008, Plastic, foam, rubber, silicon, plexi-glass, acrylic, vinyl, mylar, fabric, glitter, urethane, wood, electric lighting 96” x 80” x 28” (243,8 x 203,2 x 71,1 cm)

Jesse A Greenberg will be going to Columbia for grad school this fall, but we still claim him as a Philly guy. He will be in
Wild Feature, a group show with Melissa Brown, Brendan Cass, James B. Franklin, John Hodany, Misaki Kawai and Taylor McKimens.
Zurcher Studio
June 25 – July 26, 2009
Opening Thursday June 25, from 6 to 8 pm

Austin, TX

Amir Lyles

Amir M. Lyles, Africa Create Us:  Art Exhibit and Gallery Talk
DiverseArts’ New East Arts Gallery and Pro Arts Collective
June 13-July 9

Bold As Love

Bold As Love, an installation currently at Broadway Windows (through June 7, 2009 ) has the added dissonance of its location: a set of store windows near New York University that wrap around the corner of Broadway at 10th Street, one block up from Ann Taylor Loft and across from Blockbuster.

The only indication that these windows are not displaying merchandise is the discretely placed title, Bold As Love, at the bottom of one window. The windows are filled with life-sized heads (made of felt) that have all the mythic themes, passion and gore of nineteenth-century opera, where love inevitably leads to death. But only an artist familiar with comic books would show eyes popping out of their sockets, still attached with ligaments that will surely snap them back into place.

detail of Bold As Love

The heads are impaled on stakes or lying on the ground which is strewn with roses. Most of them drip blood which has also splashed across the back of the displays. Some heads give the impression of wearing masks and a couple are so thoroughly-bandaged that they might have come from a WWI film, or perhaps a horror film.

Several heads have disfiguring details consistent with Smith’s previous work: a newly-stitched wound, pimples, a bump on the head; one bump has its own face, as if the injury produced another being. Most of the eyes are rolled back in their sockets in deathly unconsciousness. There is no indication of who is responsible for the windows, but after a while I saw a small bronze plaque that read: Broadway Windows, New York University, information 998-5751.

Broadway Windows detail

According to the artist’s statement the felt figures were inspired by an execution scene from Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and were begun as a project Smith did with a group of high school students in Chicago (which explains the adolescent appeal of some of the heads). Bold as Love is the final project for Curatorial Praxis, a graduate course offered by the Visual Arts Administration Program in the NYU Steinhardt School’s Department of Art and Art Professions. One of the heads was made in collaboration with the project’s three student curators: Han-Yuan Chia, Sarah Ferguson, Molly Kleiman, and Sari Mandel.

My favorite bit of Philly-on-the-road news is from Rah Crawford. Rah, who is possibly the commercial genius of the Philadelphia art world, created the spotlight image for the Amsterdam Affordable Art Fair!

Like most of his paintings, the image is a cross between my old black light Jimi Hendrix poster and Elizabeth Peyton!

I suppose it’s unreasonable to claim him for Philadelphia since he’s pretty much an ex-pat, having decamped for the Netherlands; but Philadelphia, the city that hates change, refuses to drop its claim on those who flee.

He’s doing the sort of things lots of artists do to survive–designing t-shirts and giant beanbags imprinted with Warhol images. The Stedelijk Museum is carrying the giant beanbags! But I don’t get the sense that doing this sort of thing makes him unhappy. He’s just got a business streak, a nose for pop culture, and unbridled creative energy!

Other things going on out of town:

Another Philly ex-pat, Brooklynite Adam Parker Smith, has his first solo exhibition in New York City will open Nov. 8 at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art. explores consumerist addiction to violence and the infatuation with the high school crush. Smith collaborated with seven teenage assistants from the Blue Sky Project during the fabrication of Bold as Love.

Prints Gone Wild poster

And Space 1026, many of them Rhode Island expats now in Philly, will participates in Prints Gone Wild 2, at Supreme Trading Company in Brooklyn, Friday and Sat., Nov. 2nd and 3rd.

The show will feature plenty of affordable art plus music of course. Here’s who else is participating in the print-off, which is being presented by Cannonball Press:

Tugboat Press Pittsburgh, PA
The Amazing Hancock Brothers McGregor, TX
Paping Brooklyn, NY
Sean Star Wars Laurel, MS
Howling Print Studios Brooklyn, NY
Yeehaw Industries Knoxville, TN
Triangle Poster Pittsburgh, PA
Team Lump Raleigh, NC
Drive By Press Madison, WI
Isle of Printing Nashville, TN
DRock Press Lexington, KY

Gabriel Martinez, from the series Self Portraits of Heterosexual Men

And finally, Gabe Martinez, who came here from Miami, will be having his first commercial solo show in Boston, opening Oct. 26 (reception Nov. 2). Honestly, this is long overdue! He is showing his Self Portraits of Heterosexual Men, which he showed earlier this year at University of the Arts (Roberta’s post here). The photos are from-the-knees-down shots of men at the moment they climax while masturbating. Martinez was not in the room, but he set up the tripod, etc. for the shoots. The results are sly, raising lots of issues about privacy, sexuality, gender, and romanticism. He found the men through word of mouth, Craig’s List, fliers, etc. I don’t know if that makes me more frightened for Gabe or for his subjects.

You can find the entire series of Look! It’s Libby and Roberta at blip.tv.

Click the image below for the FLASH VERSION:

Flash version. Click picture.

Click the image below for the QUICKTIME MOVIE VERSION:

Quicktime version. Click picture.

For more images, go Libby’s Flickr set and Roberta’s Flickr set.