Other Art Fair cuts out middleman
The Other Art Fair launches in London on November 25 and bills itself as a direct way for artists to sell to collectors. The fair is unlike others because it allows for the 100 chosen artists to offer their work directly to the public. Artists showcase their work to collectors, curators and gallerists on their own terms, and that is definitely a unique and refreshing approach.

Gallatin Galleries explore #Occupytheory
Mic check! The Gallatin Galleries in New York will be presenting a participatory discussion entitled #Occupytheory alongside their exhibit “This is what democracy looks like”. What role does theory play in the leaderless Occupy movement? With Occupy Wall Street flexing its own media might and disregarding mainstream outlets for representation, how will this affect the future of publicity, information, and communication? Come join in the dialogue and have your voice heard.

Gregg Bordowitz at Temple Gallery
Artist Gregg Bordowitz thinks that art can change the world. What do you think? Visit the Temple Gallery on November 28 at 6 PM and find out. Bordowitz will be displaying ten selected works to go along with his lecture and discussion. These artworks are on loan from the Free Library of Philadelphia and were originally produced and supported by the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. The event is free, but register here in advance.

PMA amps up supply of locally-crafted art

Image 1: Pendant by Tree and Kimball. Photo credit: Lisa Bruemmer. Image 2: Crocheted squid by Angela Davidson. Photo credit: Angela Davidson.

On Friday, 11/11/11, the Philadelphia Museum of Art held an opening for “Philadelphia Produces Original Design” (P.POD) in the Museum Store. P.POD is a pop-up bazaar created by artist, designer, author/illustrator, and Philadelphian Alex Stadler showcasing only items designed and/or produced in Philadelphia. Check it out and support local artists through December 31!

B&K open their doors after Sande Webster closes
Owned and operated by Brian Dennis and Keith Breitfeller, the former manager and framer of Wallnuts Frame Design where Sande Webster Galley used to be, B&K will continue to offer services at its new location on 527 South 16th Street.

Discussion about the sustainable re-use of materials at PAA
The Philadelphia Art Alliance will be having a discussion with Carrie Collins of Fabric Horse and Roland Burns of R.E.Load Bags about the creative re-use of materials tonight, November 17, at 7 PM. Come learn about challenges and rewards of crafting hand-made goods in a contemporary urban setting.

Art Writing with AUX at Vox
First in a series of performance and screening events at the new AUX performance space as part of Vox Populi is “Art Writing” organized by artist and critic Becky Hunter. The event on November 25 at 7 PM explores experimental writer and scholar Maria Fusco’s ideas about writing as art and writing about art.

Opportunities

The Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh announces a call for entries for its international photography competition “Fellowship 12“. First prize International Award is $3,000 and a solo exhibition at Silver Eye Center for Photography.

Francis Cape's utopian benches.

Arcadia University Art Gallery is hosting an exhibit of hand-made “utopian benches” by artist Francis Cape. Director Richard Torchia announced that the gallery welcomes communities to have a meeting on the utopian benches.  E-mail gallery@arcadia.edu with your request to hold your meeting on Francis Cape’s utopian benches.

Artists are invited to send a proposal for a site-specific outdoor sculpture installation to be created during a residency in Cheng Long, a small rural village in Taiwan dealing with environmental issues and organic food. E-mail allenrebeccajanei@gmail.com by February 8 with your proposal.

University City District installed and now maintains streetlamps along Baltimore Avenue, between 45^th and 50^th streets including the banners they display. This spring, they will be replacing the current banners with new banners designed by local artists. There are cash prizes available. Send proposals to mark@universitycity.org by March 2.

UCD banner

We told you before about the West Collection’s effort to beef up its collection with new acquisitions. Well the call for applications opened on November 15 and run through April 12. Visit the application page to submit your work!

Artist News

Laura Watt has a solo exhibit opening today, November 17, at McKenzie Fine Art in NYC.

Laura Watt, "Source (after P.G.)", 2011, Oil on canvas 36 x 60 inches.

Jennie Shanker recently had a write-up in the New York Times about her Marcellus Shale Experiment.

Hennessy Youngman (aka Jayson Musson) has a track on the new Spank Rock album which you can listen to here.

Gallery director Richard Torchia and co-author Gregg Moore provide the context for the 2010 exhibit — the first solo exhibit in the US outside New York.  They explain Ai’s ambivalent relationship with ceramics, which he uses in his practice but considers a mixed blessing because of the history of Chinese ceramics hanging heavy over his head.

The artist, who lived in the US from 1980-1991 and hates that era of Schnabel/Salle/neo-geo art for its macho posturing, is more of a Minimalist kind of guy, it turns out. And he is a true descendant of Duchamp and Warhol, art’s first  conceptual appropriators.

Ai believes that computers, television and information networks have changed humanity forever. We are no longer existing as individuals, he says in 1995, a prescient statement long preceding Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. All the essays in the book, by Torchia and Moore, Philip Tinari, Glenn Adamson, Dario Gamboni and Stacey Pierson bring interesting insights into the making of the artist’s works and their context in contemporary China.

What I love best is interview between the artist and Chinese artist Zhuang Hui in which the artist waxes eloquent on social phenomena as well as artistic. Here’s just a few of the artist’s observations from the interview. Ai, who is deeply in tune with the good and bad of the human condition, has a lot to say about the role of art and the artist in culture.

Self-expression is a way to make humanity advance.
Art’s power is psychological power.
In cultural and psychological subversion is where the power of art lies.
The artist should play the role of virus, like a computer virus.
Most artists are opportunists.

By the way, the exhibit, organized by Arcadia, is traveling. It’s now in Portland, OR at the Museum of Contemporary Craft/Pacific Northwest College of Art, til Oct. 30.  After that the show goes to London to the Victoria and Albert Museum where it will be to March 18, 2012.

Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn, Ceramic Works, 5000 BCE – 2010 CE
Hardcover, 125 pages
Published December 10th 2010 by Ram Distribution
ISBN
9881736773 (ISBN13: 9789881736772)

Ai Weiwei, Colored Vases, 2006, vases from the Neolithic age (5000-3000 BCE) and industrial paint, from between 10 inches by diameter 9 and 14 1/2 inches by diameter 9.5, Courtesy AW Asia collection

One is by international art star Ai Wei Wei–his first US solo show outside of New York–at Arcadia University‘s art gallery. It is cool, conceptual, and contemporary.

Ai Weiwei, Watermelons, 2006, porcelain and glaze, 17.5 x 15 inches, courtesy the artist

The other is a group show less-known artists at the Mutter Museum, and it is hot, material, and almost Victorian in its concerns and approach.

They reflect the changing status of clay in the art world as a medium that can go in almost any direction. I don’t mean to suggest that the work in the two shows is of equal interest. I do mean to suggest that the work around town reflects that diversity.

Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn at Arcadia University

“I think he’s pulling my leg” was what one Arcadia faculty member said to me the night of a talk on Ai Weiwei by art historian Dr. Charles Merewether. His March 3 talk was delivered in conjunction with the artist’s exhibit Dropping the Urn, Ceramic Works, 5000 BCE – 2010 CE.

Well, I guess he is, but with great seriousness of intent. The best humor is always about something–or it might not be so funny.

Ai Weiwei, Dust to Dust, 2009, ground Neolithic potter (5000-3000 BCE), glass jar, 10.25 inches high, courtesy the artist; inside the jar is pulverized earthenware, which looks a lot like dirt.

What intrigued me was how the issues explored by Ai Weiwei reflect the same issues that Joao Ribas was pondering in the Works on Paper show–how to determine artistic value in a culture that allows for duplication, multiples, and transfer of information to an unprecedented degree.

While Ribas was exploring this issue in relations to the internet and digital powers of reproduction, Ai is exploring it in the context of an ancient culture with a seemingly unlimited population who can reproduce things by hand ad infinitum. Ai also spent about a decade in America, and although he has returned to China, it helps explain how he has incorporated so much of what is going on here. Ai is sitting comfortably between the cracks of two great civilizations, playing their values and methods against each other.

Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 1955, triptych of gelatin silver prints, each 49 5/8 inches high, courtesy private collection in New York.

Ai shows himself in three photos (Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn) dropping what he claims is a 5000 BCE vase, but is it really? The idea that the vases might not be as old as purported is not my own. Merewether himself said, “Is it original or is it a copy? He [Ai] has never said onoe way or the other.”

Perhaps the vase in the image is one of the numerous skillful reproductions–and maybe even originals–that I’m told sell a dime a dozen along any Chinese roadway. And if we can’t tell the original from the copy, is the original more valuable just because it is old? And is the skillful copy more valuable than an American factory-made, look-ma-no-hands copy?

If Ai is transgressing vis a vis Chinese values, I suspect the transgression has more to do with the political nature of Chinese millions working for low wages at repetitive tasks and perhaps about the loss of an ancient civilization. He sure is transgressing vis a vis our own values here, which have more to do with whose hand is the real hand and the intrinsic value of something aged. All I know is if I go into a museum and purchase a copy of an ancient clay pot, I pay some cash that suggests the quality of the copy has a value in and of itself.

Ai Weiwei, Coca Cola Vase, 1997, vase from Neolithic Age (5000-3000 BCE) and paint, 13 inch diameter, courtesy Tsai Collection, NY

By painting the Coca-Cola logo on a purportedly ancient pot (Coca-Cola Vase), Ai is discussing capitalism and the recent invasion of American values, companies and methods into China’s ancient culture, with incredible economy of means. Yet China’s ancient culture is no more. It has been transformed first by homegrown Communism. So the label may be on a Chinese capitalist product, perhaps? Either way, our cultures, for all their differences, are amalgamating before our eyes!

Ai Weiwei, untitled, 2006, porcelain, 1 ton, diameter approx. 80 inches, courtesy the artist

As for the one-ton pile of porcelain sunflower seeds, each made by hand and unique, and doubtlessly manufactured by minions, I couldn’t help think of the seeds as people, and the copies as mere husks and simulacra, their useful value actually less than the cheap real thing but their market value as art astronomical.

But the issue of time is clearly very much on Ai’s mind, of a culture that is knocking down its past to make way for its own brave new world.

Ai Weiwei, Souvenir from Beijing, 2002, brick from dismantled hutong house, box of iron wood from dismantled temple of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), 3.75 x 13.75 x 8 7/8 inches

I thought this show of a mere 12 pieces is great, capturing the contradictions of a world undergoing constant social and economic revolution–expressed in timeless materials and methods. Not all the pieces were equally satisfying, but all in all, if I’m getting my leg pulled, I hope Ai continues.

The Ai Weiwei exhibit, which was curated by Gallery Director Richard Torchia and Gregg Moore (artist and Arcadia associate professor of art and design), runs to April 18, with several upcoming related events–two talks and film, on the agenda. The show and events are free and open to the public.

The  Mutter Museum show, Corporeal Manifestations, is one that I thought was likely to be overlooked in the onslaught of clay shows in more traditional gallery spaces.

The Mutter, a museum of medical history, is a Philadelphia treasure with a national reputation for its collection of medical oddities, anatomical specimens, models and old medical instruments. Corporeal Manifestations manages to capture the weirdness of the standing collection. The fanciful physiological oddities of the sculptures are more about psychological manifestations than medical ones.

The works are all representational and with a variety of influences from grotesque to Maillol to Dali.

Roxanne Jackson, "Cadaver Study with Grill"

Of the work by the 11 artists included in the show, what I personally found most interesting were Tom Bartel’s Red Headed Step Child, armless and red-faced in his jammies, looking like he’s still a little unformed and unready for life, and Roxanne Jackson’s Cadaver Study with Grill, which suggest the trappings of success and fashion are fleeting.

Others in the show are Kate MacDowell, Melissa Mencini, Jason Briggs, Christina West, Anne Drew Potter, Colleen Toledano,  Jessica Kreutter, Tip Toland,  and Sergei Isupov. Toledano is a Philadelphia artist and the others come from as far away as Seattle, and points in-between. The show was curated by Sasha Reibstein, an Associate Professor of Art and Director of Ceramics at Palomar College.

If you have iPhone technology, this exhibit has an app with lots of helpful background information.

The exhibit will be open until August 2, and general admission of $14 makes seeing this show seems steep, unless you are also going to look at the wonderful standing exhibits in the museum.

General Admission, $14
Ages 6-17, 65+, students and military with valid ID, $10
Children under 6, free.

Ribas’ choices for the Arcadia Works on Paper exhibit raise issues of sharing, reproducibility and loss of copyright control. They raise disturbing questions about the value of all art at a time when works on paper have never been more highly valued.

James Johnson, 14K Sentences on Conceptual Art, 2009, framed silkscreen print on letter-sized sheet of 14 K gold on acid-free board, 14.75 x 12.5 inches

Ribas first shots across the bow, the first pieces in front of you as you walk into the gallery, are Michael Davis Carter’s gator, a tissue paper piece that appropriates the LaCoste alligator logo, and James Johnson’s 14K Sentences on Conceptual Art, a 14K gold sheet of paper on which is silkscreened an appropriation of Sol Lewitt’s Sentences on Contemporary Art. The reflective quality of the material and the art historical appropriation serve as a conceptual treatise on material value and creative value–Lewitt’s creative capital, Johnson’s creative capital, the means of production that crosses lines between the handmade and machine (computer) made and printed.

Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link, Health Care Bill, 2009 printed paper 11 x 8.5 x 3 inches

In that same front room, Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link offer on a pedestal another conceptual work–Health Care Bill, three inches of Congressional bureaucratese downloaded from the internet and stacked on a pedestal, the work representing value beyond the ability of most of us to calculate. I found it especially amusing that the gallery needed a young woman to stand guard over this particular piece, to make sure no one commandeered a piece of paper from the bill, a piece of paper of questionable value without the context! And

Bruce Campbell, Directional drawing, 2008, graphite on cut paper on board, 43.25 x 65 inches. This is the largest piece in the show.

Bruce Campbell’s Directional Drawing, with words scrawled over a paper incised with a Frank Stella geometric shape–another art-historical appropriation–brings into question 1968 aesthetics and value at the same time that Campbell appropriates and incorporates into his own value system a piece of Stella’s creative capital!

Robert T. Pannell, Revision, 2006, photo etching, 11.25 x 24 inches

Robert T. Pannell and Pernot Hudson pull the rug out from the assumptions of our common culture–oy, those Indians got such a bad deal, speaking of value. Hudson’s print/drawing of a sheriff’s badge, Samburg’s Finest, drips with irony.

Mia Rosenthal, Breakfast cereals of this great nation, 2009, detail, ink and graphite on paper, 32 x 22.5 inches

The counterpoise to all these rather cynical meditations on value is a wall of five drawings that range from contemporary deadpan to doodly to an old-fashioned elegance of line–all of them raising questions of aesthetics. In this group, Mia Rosenthal’s cereal box grid drawing, an obsessive Roz Chast-like reuse and filtering of mass produced advertising, most pointedly continues the conversation about authorship and value (this and Leah Bailis’ Corner were the only works in the show I had seen before, but I was happy to revisit both of them).

Andrea Beizer, Three In bed, 2009, graphite on Arches, 22.5 x 31 inches

The others in that group on the wall with Cereal… suggest that cultural fashion and value are fickle, from Andrea Beizer’s Three in Bed, which passes for a contemporary cartoon, to John Costanza’s What did you do to the Booze Hickey? #2, which passes for a mid-20th-century one. In the mix of shifting tastes–Erika Mayer’s Knapsack Nation and Dino Vasquez Gargas Positivas.

Erika Mayer, Knapsack Nation, 2008-9, etching, 11 x 14.75 inches

Turns out there’s nothing in this show that doesn’t raise these questions about value and aesthetics. But the conversation about value is the more interesting and edgy of the two.

Mark Stockton, Composition 3, 2009, grphite of BFK Rives, 29 x 22.75 inches

As the show moves into the back room, a number of works copy popular culture images, using hand-reproduction methods that reinterpret the original values. I especially loved Fay Stanford’s Indigenous Princess, a highly unlikely image that turns the sentimentality of kitsch into a wild thing. Closer to my point about copying are Kristina Martin’s movie still and Mark Stockton’s Composition 3, the latter a drawn clipboard of media-celeb images. Matt Neff’s prints may valorize or criticize the Wu Tang Clan. He doesn’t give enough away for me to guess, but he’s playing in the same pond of appropriated pop culture.

That art work appropriating manufactured imagery is so widespread surely shows how far behind the courts are in handling the phenomenon of Shepard Fairey’s reuse of an AP photographer’s Obama portrait. The contentiousness about Fairey’s authorship, ironically, raises the value of the hand work, cheaply reproduced and sold over the internet, and the value of the photo, even more cheaply reproduced and sold over the wire services.

Gabriel Martinez, Untitled (Peking Ducks),"Pink" 2009, archival pigment print, 31 x 59 inches

Gabriel Martinez Untitled (Peking Ducks), “Pink” photo raises so many issues of identity, ownership, advertising, beauty, cultural hegemony, gender, duplication, yadda yadda yadda that it leaves me breathless. Martinez took the photo with a Holga camera in a gay pick-up park in Peking. He asked the subject to pose for him with pink Peeps ducks serving as a mask, but the subject, afraid of being recognized, tore out a magazine ad and covered his face with the advertising image of a woman’s face, and covered her unseeing eyes with the Peeps. The clash of cultures  is played out here in numerous ways, especially with the Western photographer and his Western Peeps and the Western influenced Eastern advertising image. Not to mention, on the love front, that peeps will be peeps. Amazing!!!

Quentin Morris, Untitled (Dec. 2008), 2008, December 2008, black gesso and polymer acrylic, 28 inches in diameter, courtesy Larry Becker Contemporary Art

Quentin Morris, who is a perennial presence in the Works on Paper show, expressed disappointment during the opening because his black circle was hung high on the wall like on ominous moon threatening the art cosmos. In a way he’s right. His work’s meaning got highjacked by the curator for his own purposes! But even when hanging at the normal height, the piece serves as an elegant question mark. Is it reproducible? Depends on who you ask. It is a philosophical conundrum for its refusal to behave like an ordinary drawing or declare its value in quantifiable terms.

Hannah Heffner, Baby Bubble, 2009, cut paper and bubble wrap, 14 x 11 inches

Speaking of drawings, Hannah Heffner’s Baby Bubble is also slippery. The baby bump is bubble wrap and any sense of transcendent birth is completely undermined by the deliberate crappiness of the material inserted in the cut (old-fashioned) image, a page from a magazine. When I was in the gallery, I was sure the page was a hand-made reproduction. Now, as I look at the picture, I am not so sure. The action of the man’s hand becomes a giant question with the intervention of the bubblewrap. This was arguably the riskiest piece in the exhibit!

On the surface, the show had a tremendous respect for small work and for drawing and draftsmanship and craftsmanship and art history.  Although gray, black and white and conservative on the surface, underneath, the show is slippery.If it really is ushering the end of originality and the end of handmade in a world of infinite reproduction, all of this writing is about a bunch of wildly overvalued work–except for that sheet of gold. I don’t buy it–yet.

Here’s the complete list of who’s in the show:

Leah Bailis, Andrea Beizer, Gabriel Boyce & Preston Link, Bruce Campbell, John Costanza, Michael Davis Carter, Hannah Heffner, Pernot Hudson, James Johnson, Sebastien Leclercq, Erika Mayer, Gabriel Martinez, Kristina Martino, Quentin Morris, Matt Neff, Robert T. Pannell, Mia Rosenthal, Fay Stanford, Mark Stockton, Judith Taylor, and Dino Vasquez.

The Arcadia Works on Paper 2009 show runs to Dec. 21.

A woman stood guard over Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link's Health Care Bill, 2009, at the opening. printed paper 11 x 8.5 x 3 inches

Exhibit juror Joao Ribas, who is curator of MIT’s List Visual Arts Center (and former curator of the Drawing Center), selected 22 works by 22 artists  from 1,256 entries submitted by 567.  (The press release said 22 works, but I count 23).

In Ribas’ introductory talk just before the opening event, he immediately distanced himself from the talk’s ponderous title–4 Points Towards a Present History: Knowledge, Representation, Freedom and the Subject. “The real title is, Things I Have a Problem With.” That got a laugh.

Michael Davis Carter, gator 2009, detail, tissue paper, custom frame, 13.25 x 37.25 inches

Ribas spoke like a man with too many ideas–he started and restarted sentences, redirected them and then trailed off to begin again.Yet he still delivered a coherent talk, exploring aesthetics, the suspect reality of images, and the evolution of art objects as things that reflect symbolic value and freedom (of the artist) to make choices that don’t necessarily further society or its commercial ambitions.

Pernot Hudson, Samburg's Finest, 2008, silkscreen/graphite on paper, 19 x 25 3/4 inches

The aesthetics part of his talk was charming–including his projection of David Attenborough’s BBC bower bird video.  And the bit about suspect reality in art and images became especially interesting when he brought up Islamist beheadings on video as indisputably real and as the “most iconic images in contemporary culture.”  (The shakiness of Truth in art was another important theme underlying his selections for the show).

Kistina Martino, Subtitled Film Still: "And the Day After that..." 2009, black colored pencil on paper, 16 3/4 x 17 x 20 inches

But it was Ribas’ synopsis of the history of the value of art that interested me most. Here’s my synopsis of his synopsis (this is sort of like crunching down an image on the computer so it’s still recognizable but barely–and of course this too is highly suspect).

The story goes that society, hellbent on creating utile things that it values and needs, has no intrinsic commitment to art. So art is outside the needs of society. And art objects reflect freedom of the artist to operate outside the needs of society. Art represents “radical individual will–the antithesis of what was associated with capital [i.e. money].” So in the 15th century, a division grows between utile valuables provided by the craftsmen of the guilds and non-utile products of artists.

Fay Stanford, Indigenous Princess, 2007, ink on yupo, 21.25 x 15.25 inches

The freedom required in making art, the freedom to make choices and refuse others’ wishes, “creates a class of object that can’t fit into society in the normal way.” It cannot be priced in the same way ordinary goods are priced, and it is not based on consumer needs.

This history leads artists to later “commodify themselves as bohemians,” Ribas said.

As a symbolic marker of wealth rather than a manufactured product for consumers, art takes on a utopian identity, Ribas suggested, precisely because it is made outside the assembly line.

Matt Neff's two Wu Tang Clan-inspired works, GZA 2009 letterpress, 28.5 x 20.5 inches (left); Protect Ya Neck, 2009, etching, 28.5 x 20.5 inches (right)

Technology, however, has messed with this evolution of art as a symbol of value and freedom and mystical power. “Everyone can express himself through technology. …Technology changes how freedom is expressed. The consumer is also the producer.” At this point, Ribas brought in an aside (or maybe not at aside, it being very much to the point) that the World Bank defines wealth as natural capital and creative capital.

With technology, the concomitant sharing/reproducibility and loss of copyright control give every ordinary Joe freedom to choose. How do you preserve the model of authorship when all around us that model no longer applies? Ribas asked. “The artist no longer has a place of privilege With sharing, now everyone has choice.”

Post on the show next!

Matthew Osborn’s “My Bones – Your Skin” at Pageant and “Candida Hofer – Philadelphia” at Arcadia University are two shows that take you to the limits of 2-D art being shown locally.  Osborn’s drawings and Hofer’s color photographs represent some of the best of what’s being done here — from hip musings in ink on paper by a young local talent to majestic architectural photographs by an internationally-acclaimed artist at the top of her game.

Matthew Osborn, drawing from his show at Pageant. The artist plays with the duality of personality and with the difficulties in personal relationships.

Osborn’s show is chock full of drawings and paintings and a video animation.  The 50-something works in the show — all made in the last two months according to gallerist Daniel Dalseth – are but a small fraction of what the artist brought to the gallery to install.   (See short clip of the video here.)

Matthew Osborn, drawing. The words are an important part of the drawings which sometimes have an R. Crumb-ian notebook style of internal musings

The images combine cartoon characters and words in turgid, funny, chatty, confessional pieces that channel both monsters and our better angels.  Osborn’s fascinated with the duality of identity and people’s ability to slip from one face to another.  At a time of increasing cyber-identity games and confusion, the many-faceted human personality is a great subject to be working.

Matthew Osborn. Scary image, sweet (or could be interpreted that way) sentiment of the words.

Part of the charm of the works is their word-smithing.  Osborn is a gifted artist/writer on par with Scottish artist David Shrigley.  In places the words achieve almost Hallmark Card sentiments about relationships and inner strength “Last night, today, tomorrow, forever” says one poster-like work with a pattern of upside-down spades in red, black and white.  “Either we can choose to be humble or we can be compelled,” says another.  In both works you might expect a pleasant graphic to accompany the words but what you get instead is a big hairy monster shouting the phrase at you like in some nasty dream.  And hello art buyers, Osborn’s works are incredibly affordable—prices range from $10-$1000 with most works priced under $100. 

Candida Hofer, Beth Shalom Synagogue Philadelphia I. 2007 C-print. 72 7/8 x 97 ¼ inches (185 x 247 cm). Photo courtesy Sonnabend Gallery. The photo captures the building's nautical charms. The sails, the mast...and the almost '50s auto ornament colored sculpture are captured beautifully.

Hofer, a German artist, came to town in 2007 via a local connection, collector Mari Shaw, who helped the artist gain access to the interiors of some of Philadelphia’s landmark buildings.  Hofer, who is known for her photos of historic interiors makes large scale works with crisp detail that showcase rooms where humans interact, laws get written, books get read and audiences watch.  

Candida Hofer, City Hall Law Library, 2007. C-print. 72 7/8 x 98 3/8 inches (185 x 250 cm). Photo courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery.

Hofer has made works that enfold the viewer in their spaces and make them feel the space with their bodies.  After the 911 attacks Hofer had not done a photo shoot in the US until now, she said at a seminar at Slought the year she was here.  The buildings she chose in Philadelphia continue her fascination with light, color, space and the activities of humans. 

Candida Hofer, Masonic Temple Philadelphia I, 2007. C-print. 72 7/8 x 97 ¼ inches (185 x 247 cm). Photo courtesy of Sonnabend. As with all her photos, she puts you right inside that space where you feel you are surrounded by the ceiling, walls, decoration and details. It's photo magic.

Last January, Hofer’s Chelsea gallery, Sonnabend, exhibited eight of the Philadelphia photographs (see all).  Four are on display at Arcadia and even if you know the buildings(PAFA’s Furness building; Fisher Library at University of Pennsylvania; Beth Shalom Synagogue; Masonic Temple) you will be wowed by the images which allow you to linger in the rooms and observe details you would probably overlook when visiting them in person.

>>Matthew Osborn-My Bones-Your Skin, to May 2.  Pageant Gallery, 607 Bainbridge St.,  215 925 1536

>>Candida Hofer-Philadelphia, to April 19.  Lecture and reception, Sat. April 11, 4 PM, Stiteler Auditorium and reception to follow in the gallery.  Arcadia University Art Gallery, Spruance Fine Arts Center, 450 South Easton Rd, Glenside.  215 572 2131. 

Linda Yun’s Incident. Here’s the little video I made and put at flickr as an experiment in video hosting alternatives to YouTube.

Beautiful conceptual art is a rarity.  But in Arcadia’s group show “A Closer Look 7″ Linda Yun‘s “Incident,” made of simple materials – a fan, a light, some mylar strips — is like the pot of gold — and the rainbow, too.
 
“A Closer Look 7,” guest-curated by Temple Gallery Exhibitions Director Sheryl Conkelton, catches up with six artists whose work was previously shown in one of Arcadia’s Biennial Works on Paper shows. Yun (2005), Phillip Adams (2005), James Johnson (2005), Kocot and Hatton (5 times) and Lucy Pullen (2001) are all conceptual artists whose deadpan and aesthetically spare works make for a quiet show.  If you’re looking for juice here –pizzaz, zaniness, fun – bring it with you.  You’ll need it to puzzle out meaning, conjure memories and take your mind off-site to fully experience these works.  Looking alone won’t do.

Usually sensory experiences are things I think of as juicy. And I can sense there’s something sensory going on in the work of all the artists in A Closer Look 7 at Arcadia. But juicy is not the operative word here. There’s a coolness, a conceptual reflection on the nature of things.

The five artists were selected by Sheryl Conkelton, Tyler’s director of exhibitions and special programs. The A Closer Look series of exhibits was created to allow a more in-depth look at the work of some of the artists who had been in previous “Works on Paper” exhibits at Arcadia.

Hands down, my favorite piece in the exhibit is Linda Yun‘s deadpan piece, Incident–a kinetic sculpture of gold mylar streamers powered by an ordinary fan and lit by a utilitarian light fixture. The piece has a circus like exuberance in the fluttering streamers that fly off a ring–reminding me of the ring of fire lions are trained to jump through. But Yun’s description of her piece is telltale: “mylar, fan, sound, reflected light and color.” Also telltale is her title. There is no incident in Incident, and the focus gives gravitas to what might otherwise be incidental–the subtle glints of light reflected onto the wall, the rustling sound of the streamers and the fan. The gap between two levels of sensory experience–the glitz and the glimmer–is the magic of the nature of things.

I was reminded a little of the way Jackie Winsor and Sigmar Polke uses the materiality of an object to capture an experience. I was captivated.

Phillip Adams, Solipsist: Wil, 2008, charcoal on paper mounted to panel, 50 x 32 inches

Phillip Adams, whose charcoal drawings are technical wows of draftsmanship and control, also is after the gap between the presentation and the experience. His triad of large, deadpan portraits, against white backgrounds is about the disorientation between no-space (the fashion- photography-inspired white backgrounds) and faux-space (the reflections of scenes in the mirrored sunglasses of the subjects). The window into someone’s eyes have been replaced by distorted substitute that sends me reeling. I may be reading too much into it, but I take these pieces as criticisms of a certain Elizabeth Peyton-ish coolness and self-absorption. I experience a sort of vertigo of the soul as I peer at the displaced persons and the reflections of displaced places. Like Yun, Adams is making me conscious of my take-for-granted understanding of reality, and in this case the reality is space and place, rather than color and sound.

James Johnson, House, as installed in A Closer Look 7, at Arcadia University, 2008, foam insulation, existing wall, 144 x 144 x 48 inches. The pink interior light is a byproduct of “Promise,” a neon piece inside the house. To the left, behind Johnson’s house, you can see the golden aura from Yun’s Incident. To the right are some of Kocot & Hatton’s Night/Time

A similar gap is also part of James Johnson‘s House and Promise (courtesy New Money), both pieces offering something beyond reach. The house’s pink interior is just a wall interior filled with sheetrock scraps; and Promise (courtesy New Money) is a pink neon sign stating, “I can give you everything you want.” You have to crane your neck and look through a couple of the small, low windows in House to access what Promise says. Like all neon signs, the shiny promises can never live up to the physical flashiness. The sweet blue trim of the windows and door and steps turns out to be cheesy blue insulation foam.

James Johnson, Promise (courtesy New Money), detail, 2008, neon sign, 16 x 91.25 x 3 inches. Full message reads I can give you anything you want.

I’m a little surprised that when I looked at this work, I didn’t get the connection of glitz and aura to Yun’s piece, yet it is connected. It’s almost as if the wall that the house represents blocked what should have been an obvious relationship.

Unlike the longing for some Ozzie-and-Harriet past that has infused Johnson’s work until now, this piece communicates the hidden mess and frustrations of life inside the child-height windows, and also communicates everyone’s desire for more material goods.

Installation shot, with Kocot & Hatton, from the Night/Time series, lined up on the wall. In front is one Hole of the three in Lucy Pullen’s piece Hole, and on the pedestal, Pullen’s Being and Event.

Windows into the mind are what Kocot & Hatton‘s Night/Time is about–a sort of New Age body art, but this time the shots are harmless and photographic, unlike Chris Burden’s bullets.

Kocot and Hatton, 25 November 2007 (4:25) from the series Night/Time, 2007-8, a series of 16 digital prints, each 8 x 10.5 inches framed. In the exhibit courtesy the artists and Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia

It’s a series of blurry photographs of LED clock read-outs. The idea is to get at the semi-awake state-of-consciousness of the photographers as they rouse themselves barely enough from sleep to snap the photos. In this piece, process seems to overwhelm the idea, and the experience never becomes the viewers’ but remains the artists’.

Lucy Pullen, Sonorous Carrot, 2008, cast aluminum, 8 x .5 inches diameter

What overwhelms the idea in Holes, work by Canadian artist Lucy Pullen, is the material–sinuous rings of bent ash. I was more interested in her sculpture Sonorous Carrot, a deadly looking carrot of cast aluminum, hung by a string to point at the wall. The title made me think I’d find a sound here. But I could not figure out a way to ring it, pluck it, or whatever. Too bad. I did like the idea of a singing, killer vegetable.

I don’t know why the whole of this show felt less than its parts, even though there was some interesting work here that certainly deserved the closer look. I think I might have better enjoyed some of these pieces in a different context or setting.

I remember Charles Eames’ description of how designs were generated in Eero Saarinen’s workshop: in response to the brief, they came up with ten solutions; then ten variations on each solution; then ten variations on each of the variations,… and so on. The process was structured to yield the perfect solution. Daniel Eatock prefers the accidental, scavenged and contingent to the perfect solution. The young, London-based designer creates exercises that generate designs, some of which involve input from strangers: make a frame with the same surface area as the image it surrounds; position felt-tip pens vertically against a stack of paper to see how many sheets the ink reaches before the pens are empty; use the web to solicit photographs that include the camera’s strap in the image (all of which can be seen in the Arcadia University Art Gallery exhibition). Never mind that some of his methods have been used before; an artist/designer is allowed to borrow, steal and adaptively reuse the ideas of others. What matters is where he takes them.

Daniel Eatock One Stone (2004)

Eatock enjoys contrarian solutions. He has a particular fondness for visual rhymes (a man in a red jacket walking past a red car stopped in front of a red sign…), for visual/verbal puns (a photograph of two pears titled A Pear), and for humorously literal interpretations of common expressions, such as finding a stone that weighs exactly one stone (a British unit of weight equaling 14 pounds). Eatock would like my friend, Marge; she shelves her books according to the colors of their spines: red books, yellow books, white books,… ; and David, my best friend in high school: whenever he drove up to a yield sign he would point it out and look at me suggestively.

Daniel Eatock Mineral Water Color Wall Paintings (2008) water colors on gallery wall painted using water from the bottles depicted, brushes, jars, towels, tray. This work is adapted from a previous series of four works on paper, Drinking Water Colours. The water in the each of the small glass jars used to mix the paints also comes from the bottle being depicted. Paintings executed by Lauren Garvey (Arcadia University).

The circle is Eatock’s favorite form. He draws circles free-hand (he drew one to be bound into each copy of Imprint), and sets up projects with looping relationships, such as Mineral Watercolor Paintings, where the content of the bottles is used to create their depiction, or Scissors (and Nippers) that Need Scissors (or Nippers) to Be Opened ( described as examples of a burgeoning collection that enact a form of circular, if not familiar frustration induced by the conflicting imperatives of consumer packaging and product safety). Both are included in Extra Medium.

Daniel Eatock Do Not Touch Shelves (2008) counterbalanced shelves attached to the wall with a single bracket .

Eatock says his aim is to reduce subjectivity in design, but this is another case where I’d rather look at what he does than says. Nothing is as subjective as humor, a trait which runs throughout his work. And then the inevitable choices: size? He based his monograph on the dimensions of A4 paper (the European standard, as 8 ½ x 11 inches is standard in the U.S.); typeface? I’d have expected Helvetica, the lingua-Franca of modernist design, but in fact Eatock chose a subtly different font, still sans serif and not entirely easy to read. Imprint reads a bit like a the usual artist’s monograph in scrapbook form crossed with a handbook for how to see the world differently. You know it’s beyond the ordinary by the Contents page which is something closer to an index: an alphabetical list of words from Accidents to Wit including Gaps, Punch Lines, and Upside Down. Indeed the book covers the entire list (Balance, Car Batteries, Digressions, Elephants, Fingernails…) even if Eatock doesn’t bother with conventional page references. A significant number of the illustrations weren’t even done by the designer but were responses to projects solicited on the web.

Daniel Eatock Tee Shirt made to benefit the International Dyslexia Association (2007)

The participatory aspect of Eatock’s work runs through Extra Medium, his first U.S. exhibition. One student executed Mineral Water Color Wall Paintings, a group of students contributed Holley Portraits, the photographs in Camera Strap/Frame were taken by strangers who submitted them to Eatock’s website (www.eatock.com), and visitors are invited to write their names in a guestbook using a space pen affixed to the counter, a project called Fixed Pen/Signature Book; to contribute to his web piece One-Mile Scroll; and to bring objects with expiration dates of October 26, 2008, when the exhibition ends (Best Before October 26, 2008). Communal exploration and play pervade his practice, as does his generosity. Both book and exhibition are invitations to join the designer in finding humor and patterns in the everyday by looking at the world from a slightly different angle.

PAIRED DOWN
Exhibits on music, food and lace come in twos.

Two is the operative number this fall, with several well-paired shows offering a double-dip of art.

Two music-filled exhibits will be hot stuff for the ears; two photography shows on food (and eaters) contemplate hunger and excess; and two shows on lace raise thoughts about the fabric of life. Also gamely skipping into this Noah’s Art season are two singular sensations: the installation of a 30-foot-long faux parking garage at the new Jenny Jaskey Gallery (formerly Tower Gallery), and the debut of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perelman Building.

It’s an art season bursting with two things: energy and excitement.

Hear and Now

Drawing by Sean Duffy for The Grove, Arcadia University Art Gallery.

“Ensemble” at the Institute of Contemporary Art and “The Grove” at Arcadia University Art Gallery are visual art exhibits that bombard the ears. Both use multi-station audio works and overlapping fields of music and noise to create a blanket of sound that might recall a Coney Island video arcade or a chorus of cicadas. While Christian Marclay’s curatorial project at ICA delivers a group blast with more than 28 big-name artists each making something unique, “The Grove” is a solo project by California-based Sean Duffy.

The Grove, installed at University of Arizona last year.

However, Duffy’s piece interacts with viewers and let’s them author the work by playing a record on one of 18 turntables set up on picnic tables under a canopy of 400 speakers dangling by their cords from the ceiling. What happens when all turntables are spinning? It’s a must-hear opening. See you there.

A Matter of Taste

Arlene Love, photo from her exhibit at Sande Webster Gallery

Arlene Love’s “Walking Distance” at Sande Webster Gallery presents black-and-white “candid camera” shots of people munching, gobbling and generally enjoying their food while walking down the street or sitting on a stoop. People caught mid-slurp with noodles half-in and half-out of their mouths don’t look their finest, and whether intended or not, the cumulative view of so many overweight Philadelphians eating high-calorie foodstuffs is depressing. The nicest moments come when people are seen sharing their food—tasting each other’s ice cream or picnicking on the front steps.

Amy Stevens Confectioners #52 at CFEFA

Meanwhile, Amy Stevens’ color photographs of absurdly over-decorated cakes that are color-coordinated to fade into patterned wallpaper backgrounds are about food excess and the fleeting happiness of celebrations. “Confections” at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists grew out of the artist’s own celebration of her 30th birthday two years ago. And Stevens is still photographing cakes. The good news is the cakes are getting more baroque and delightfully ridiculous, and the photographs are getting better and better—less about cake and more about fakery in general.

Straight Laced

Astrid Bowlby, ink on paper, from her exhibit at Gallery Joe.

Astrid Bowlby’s dark drawings in “A Certain Density” at Gallery Joe call to mind the work of solitary lacemakers of long ago. In his third solo exhibit with Joe, Bowlby will take over the entire gallery with ink-on-paper works from three series: one based on a midnight garden motif, another on the weather, and a third on lace. The artist’s labor-intensive works transcend decor by flirting with the existential—creating images so black and knotty they’re like the darkest thoughts on a moonless night.

Robert Zakanitch,
Butterfly Frog (Lace Series), 2001
acrylic on canvas
54 x 69 inches

“The Lace Paintings”—Robert Rahway Zakanitch’s large-scale paintings of highly decorative lacework—are homages to another time, when tea and biscuits were served in parlors furnished with fancy armchairs. In the show’s catalog, art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto explains these works are the artist’s response to Sept. 11. Zakanitch’s lace is a symbolic repair of the torn fabric of community during a time of crisis.

Space Age

Mark Shetabi, The Elevation, at Jenny Jaskey Gallery. Spookier and spookier this artist’s work becomes.

Mark Shetabi’s “Elevation” might be the spookiest art this season. The 30-foot-long parking garage installation at Jenny Jaskey Gallery deals with spaces that are tabula rasa—where each viewer brings their own frame of reference. A parking garage is a perfect nothing; ideally it’s where you park a car, but in some places it’s where you’d plant a car bomb.

Exhibition Gallery, Perelman Building, PMA.

But there’s nothing creepy about the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new Perelman Building, the retrofitted art deco building on Fairmount Avenue (kitty-corner to the PMA across Kelly Drive). Housing several museum departments as well as the library and a cafe, the Perelman will open Sept. 15 with exhibits of sculpture, photography, costumes and more.

Fall Guide 2007: Art

Amy Stevens: “Confections” Fri., Sept. 14, 5:30-7:30pm. Through Sept. 20. Center for Emerging Visual Artists, 237 S. 18th St. 215.546.7775.

ARLENE LOVE: “WALKING DISTANCE”
Through Oct. 3. Sande Webster Gallery, 2006 Walnut St. 215.636.9003.

Astrid Bowlby: “A Certain Density”
Sat., Sept. 15, 4–6pm. Through Oct. 27. Gallery Joe, 302 Arch St. 215.592.7752.

“Ensemble”
$6. Through Dec. 16. Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St. 215.898.7108.

Mark Shetabi: “Elevation”
Thurs., Sept. 20, 6-9pm. Through Oct. 26. Jenny Jaskey Gallery, 969 N. Second St. 215.253.9874.

Robert Rahway Zakanitch: “The Lace Paintings”
Through Sept. 29. Locks Gallery, 600 Washington Sq. South. 215.629.1000.

Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building
Sept. 15. Free. 26th St. and the Pkwy. 215.763.8100. www.philamuseum.org”target=”_blank

Sean Duffy: “The Grove”
Thurs., Nov. 8, 6:30pm. Free. Stiteler Auditorium, Murphy Hall. Through Dec. 20. Arcadia University, 450 S. Easton Rd., Glenside. 215.572.2131.