Christopher Davison, detail of mural painting at Gallery 817, University of the Arts

Davison’s show at Gallery 817 is over, and his mural is now gone, painted over in preparation for the next gallery show. But because the artist took some videos of the piece in progress you can see the mural virtually come alive on the wall — it’s a dramatic 2-minute time-lapse video of a piece that undergoes surprising changes including one that will take your breath away for its savage — but ultimately right — decision.  We loved seeing the mural and asked Chris whether he’d repeat the labor intensive project.  He said yes, and we hope it happens…hello out there, want a really great mural?

Brawler (Time Lapse Drawing By Christopher Davison) from christopher davison on Vimeo.

Over the years, we’ve seen Davison’s work grow in sophistication as it’s grown in confidence. While Chris has always flirted with death and the evil angels, his fascination with human nature and the human psyche is what fascinates us in these seductive works.

Davison has a gallery in New York and a gallery in Los Angeles. It is shocking that he has no representation in Philadelphia–we can’t imagine why.

A very Krampus Christmas
We heard about Krampuslauf from Amber Dorko Stopper and also on WHYY. Who is Krampus? Why is he having a Christmas parade? Well, Krampus represents the opposite of Jolly Old St. Nick. He’s a Christmas devil that punishes naughty children during the holidays. It’s an alternative to the ‘everything is so sweet and lovely’ Christmas attitude; ‘a little salt to go with the sugar’ says Krampuslauf celebrator Janet Finegar. There will be Krampuslauf parade and festivities in Northern Liberties tomorrow, Sat. December 10, 4pm at Libery Lands Park, 913-961 north 3rd Street.

Amber Dorko Stopper's children Claudia and Bela showing some love to their Krampus doll. Amber is one of the movers behind the Philly Krampus movement.

Stanley Whitney receives first Robert De Niro Sr. Prize

Stanley Whitney

The first annual Robert De Niro Sr. Prize for achievement in painting will be awarded to former Tyler School of Art painting teacher Stanley Whitney. Whitney will receive the $25,000 award, administered by the Tribeca Film Institute, for his considerable contribution to the field of painting.

Masters of the Visual Universe
In contrast to an exhibition that seeks to find the next art star, Masters of the Visual Universe at Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts explores the constellation of artistic mediums, concepts, and practices rotating around the region’s MFA programs. Five local artists were selected for the show: Emily Erb (PAFA), Elizabeth Hamilton (PAFA), Guy Lorraine (UArts), Erica Prince (Tyler), and Ted Walsh (PAFA). The exhibit runs through February 5. Also check out their blog here.

Murals Set in Motion
Organized by Sean Stoops and presented by InLiquid in cooperation with the Mural Arts Program, Murals Set in Motion is an exhibition of videos and on recent mural projects created in Philadelphia and other cities. Artist Christopher Davison’s Brawler video — from his recent University of the Arts exhibition — is in the mix and not to be missed. The opening reception is December 14 at 6:00 PM at International House.

Space #1 – What’s your favorite public space?
Hidden City’s Nathaniel Popkin published an article Dec. 5 asking Philadelphians what their favorite public space is. Public spaces are crucial to urban and social life, and Hidden City wants to know anything you have to say about your favorite haunts. Post a comment on the article or send an e-mail to editor@hiddencityphila.org.

Space #2- Space Savers are here this weekend

The traditional (read: boring) way to save a parking space in Philly.

We told you before about the Space Savers Project – an initiative to make saving parking spots in the city more artistic and fun – well the winners have been announced and tomorrow, Sat. December 10 from 10 AM – 4 PM, 10 space savers will be holding down the fort in public parking spaces around the city. Check the map for the a location near you! Here’s who’s participating:
Piper Brett 
Thomas Buildmore
Michael Konrad
Chris Landau
Jebney Lewis and Maria Möller
Isaac Tin Wei Lin
Christopher P. McManus
Benjamin Monette
Brent Wahl and Oscar Wahl
Linda Yun

Pool art fair shut down
The Miami Herald reports that the Pool Art Fair in conjunction with Miami’s famous Art Basel was shut down for unscrupulous dealings by the hotel owner. Apparently he did not get a special events permit, and was also running the hotel illegally as well. Artists showing at the hotel really got the short end of the deal, as they traveled from all around the globe to participate in the events.  Thanks Joanne Mattera for the tip.

You voted and Grizzly Grizzly heard you!

Samantha Mitchell, "Old Wood Butte", 36" x 38", 2010.

The results are in! Grizzly Grizzly announced Samantha Mitchell as the winner of the popular vote in its juried show,”Other Possible Titles.” Mitchell’s “Old Wood Butte” was the viewers’ choice and she will be awarded a solo show at the gallery in 2012.

Opportunities

Art in the Open is seeking submissions for its May 18 – 20 2012 event along the banks of the Schuylkill River. The works can be in any medium, but must be able to be made outside, on site.  More information about applying here.  The jury this year includes Molly Dougherty (of Philadelphia Art Alliance), Jong Kyu Kim (of Fleisher Art Memorial) and Eileen Tognini (independent curator).

Crane Arts Old School has studios available! Fill out the application on the site (click link in this post) and return it to info@cranearts.com if interested.

Artist News

Philadelphia fibers artist Gail Cunningham was a 2010 resident artist for ten weeks at Cow House Studios, Wexford, Ireland and also participated in an exhibit at Monster Truck Studios in Dublin.

Philip Zuchman and Deborah Gross-Zuchman are in the Art in a Box Benefit Holiday Art Exhibition for Children at Risk at New York’s Masters & Pelavin Gallery.

Philadelphia design guru Jenny Sabin (you can see her space-age greenhouse at the Jefferson Garden of the APS Museum) and regional fiber artist extraordinaire Sonya Clark (who just finished an exhibit at Snyderman Gallery) are among this year’s USA Fellows. Other Philly fellows from previous years’ selections include: Kukuli Velardi, Terry Adkins, Judith Schaechter, and Zoe Strauss.

Eduardo Calmon's Free2Fly app

UArts Student Eduardo Calmon received the 2011 Collab Student Design Competition award for his Free2Fly app which suggests garments based on the weather forecast at a traveler’s destination and then transmits files to a knitting machine near the traveler’s hotel, which produces garments that are available on arrival.

Kevin Finklea is in a group show at Conny Dietzschold Gallery in Sydney, Australia.

Zoe Strauss, "4th of July BBQ", 2011.

Thomas Devaney paired one of his poems with a photo by Zoe Strauss on BOMBLOG.

Rubens, Peter Paul The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus c. 1618 Oil on canvas 88 x 82 7/8 in (224 x 210.5 cm) Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Nowadays, erotic art is more of a niche player and the art market (the closest thing to a royal court that we have) prefers its sexy in air quotes. Marilyn Minter uses hard core porn photographs and transforms them into glittering, wet-and-wild bauble-fests. They are not so erotic when she’s done with them but way “sexy,” hip and commercially viable.

Marilyn Minter, Split, 2003, C-print

When I emailed a bunch of Philadelphia artists recently to ask what was the most erotic art they’d seen and why, mostly I got no responses. One artist, Christopher Davison, demurred. Davison makes pretty darned sexy works himself, (his drawings of male and female nudes interacting in dark, eerie forest settings were a staple at the former Jenny Jaskey gallery). “While it would seem like I would have something meaningful to contribute on this topic I am actually not the best person to provide feedback,” he said, adding “Strange but true!”

They're On Their Way Flashe, watercolor, acrylic ink, gouache on Rives BFK 22" x 30" 2009

Gabriel Martinez, a mischievous artist known for his autobiographical works — and for a recent series of sexually-charged masturbation photos featuring anonymous men’s legs and feet at moment of orgasm — wrote back “I will think (hard) about this one…” Then he slipped away into the ether never answering the question. But Proximity Gallery owner and artist Janel Frey responded immediately and directly naming Philadelphia artist, Pete Checchia who, she says, “captures women in a very sensual and complex way.”

Gabriel Martinex, Self Portraits by Heterosexual Men (Anonymous), 2007. c-print

Artist and FLUXspace co-founder, Chris Golas, sent in an anecdote from his own life. While a student at Tyler he did a performance that was arguably erotic. He stood behind a shower curtain half-naked while a woman slapped him after her hands in different colored paints. Golas said “My intent was not to make erotic work but as I reflect on the experience it clearly had meaning that bridged into a certain eroticism for me. This particular performance could border on fetishism as well.”

Pete Checcia, Photo collage

Chris Golas, photo from a performance

Artists now don’t seek to titillate per se, but still the erotic will out especially in work by those who court the unconscious mind, like Louise Bourgeois, Lisa Yuskavage, Pipilotti Rist, Patty Chang, R. Crumb, Paul McCarthy, Philadelphia artist Tony Ward, Andy Warhol (films) and Marcel Duchamp (Etant Donnes) for starters. There are more of course.

Louise Bourgeois, photo by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1982

These artists all work in a narrative tradition and use figures or figure fragments (Bourgeois) and their works might give off a pleasurable erotic charge along with whatever other message is there. Warhol is in a class all his own with experimental movies that are sensual (Blow Job, Sleep) and those that are sexually explicit and close to porn (Blue Movie).

Andy Warhol, Blowjob

But postmodern erotic art usually has a conflicted sexuality. Pleasure is subsumed under oozing gooey messes (Paul McCarthy, Santa’s Cholocate Shop); or it’s accompanied by embarrassment (R. Crumb). In the case of Duchamp’s Etant Donnes — on view in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection — the erotic is tempered by a dose of pure weirdness as you look through a peephole at the work and what’s portrayed — the lower half of a nude woman on the ground, her legs splayed, one hand holding aloft a lantern and an eerie waterfall in the background — is creepy and inexplicable.

R. Crumb drawing

Artists now might deny the erotic in their art. Louise Bourgeois said “I wouldn’t say my work is erotic, even though this side of it seems obvious to many people.” Tony Ward, on the other hand, in an interview with Corey Armpriester on artblog, embraces sexual imagery as a way to put human sexuality into the art history canon. But even this artist — who shows with Sande Webster Gallery — seems to waffle on the erotic charge of his works saying he’s “looking for a means to express the art of it (human sexuality) not the sex of it.”

Photo by Tony Ward

Feminism took some of the sexy out of art by attacking the male gaze and by empowering women to make works about their own sexuality. Many early feminist works are angry, and while graphic, not sexy. The Visible Vagina at Francis Naumann Gallery which Andrea told you about recently, exposes many feminist works focused on the female sex organ. But as with much feminist work eroticism wasn’t the point of it and it doesn’t seem to be the byproduct.

Marcel Duchamp, Etant Donnes

But even before feminism, abstract expressionism and minimalism — both about as sexy as Benjamin Moore paint chips — put eros on the shelf.

Lust Caution, Ang Lee's movie about the Japanese occupation of China has scenes that feel like they're based on Japanese Shunga drawings

Photography went where painting and sculpture wouldn’t go and nude photography is our latter day erotic art. But more than that, today’s erotic art is the movies. Films may be the closest thing we have to Rubens, Boucher, Caravaggio, Bronzino. Movies use narrative– often extremely over the top dramatic — and add romance and the erotic scene or two. Art house movies are full of that mixture. These movies deliver erotic content without irony. It’s seriously sensual stuff, just like the old masters used to provide.

So if movies are how we get our erotic art it’s not a bad thing. It’s just another example of pop culture taking over what used to be in art’s domain — or art ceding something it didn’t want to deal with to pop culture, which very much wants to deal.  Hollywood sells sex because sex sells.

>>Etant Donnes, on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gallery 183, Modern and Contemporary Art, first floor. 26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Adults: $16 Seniors (ages 65 & over): $14 Students (with valid ID): $12 Children (excluding groups) ages 13–18: $12 ages 12 & under: Free First Sunday of each month: Pay what you wish all day.

>>The Visible Vagina, to Mar 20. Francis Naumann Gallery, 24 W. 57th St., Suite 305. NY NY 10019. 212 582 3201.

We don’t want you to be the last to know. We’ve helped co-curate a show in Chelsea!! blogpix at Platform Project Space at Denise Bibro Fine Art coincides with the art fairs and was co-curated by two other terrific bloggers, Joanne Mattera and Hrag Vartanian. Are we hot or what!

If you’re in New York you have two opportunities to schmooze with us at the show — Thursday, Mar. 5, 6-8 pm at the reception or Saturday, Mar. 7, 5 pm for the panel discussion.

Christopher Davison, Polliwog, 2009, mixed media on paper. 15″ x 19.5″ This is one of Davison’s pieces in the blogpix show.

And because the show is really not all about us here’s who we curated in–Philly’s fabulous Christopher Davison whose work we’ve been following for years. Others in the show include Julie Karabenick, Sharon Butler, Reese Inman and Steven Alexander, selected by Joanne and Ben La Rocco, selected by Hrag. A lot of the artists in the show are also bloggers as is Bibro/Platform gallerist Olympia Lambert who organized it.

The panel discussion will be a blog-fest with additional participation by two more super-duper bloggers, Brent Burket and Bill Gusky. Olympia will be live twittering the panel discussion. And so will our town’s favorite culture vulture, Matty Hart if he’s recovered from the flu by then.

Come escape the insanity of the art fairs with us! We hope to give you a laugh not to mention something pithy to think about….of course.

Philly artists are all over the place lately, and we’re having trouble getting out all the news of who is showing where. We missed the deadlines on getting a lot of the info up, but here’s a group that’s still fresh.

Chris Davison in New York

There’s still another week or two to catch the possessed Chris Davison in My Happy Demons. It runs to Aug. 10 at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York.

Bobos in Chelsea

I’m totally excited about Bobo’s on 27th, the Bobo’s on 9th show at Foxy Productions (which is of course on 27th…in New York). Curated by Bobos (Phil Cote, Nick Payne and Drew Gillespie), the show includes works by themselves plus 12 others, including Lizzie Fitch, Jesse Greenberg, PIFAS, and more.

The tip came to me from John Caperton, curator at The Print Center.

Damian Weinkrantz and so many others in New York

And this in from the peripatetic Damian Weinkranz. He’s in Crocodile Tears, a show of small works by more than 50 artists at Giant Robot Gallery in New York, curated by Cheryl Kaminsky.

Taylor McKimens, Boobtoob. the cactus idea morphed into the cactuses that Cerealart produced. Picture borrowed from his web site

Also in the exhibit, people whose work has local ties–Philadelphia landmark Isaac Lin, Jen Corace (an Art Star regular), Taylor McKimens (at Cerealart) and more.

Media will range from painting to stitching to drawing to sculpture.

And brewing in Milwaukee, Jackie Hoving

Jackie Hoving is opening Friday, July 25, in the exhibit Hidden Exposure in Roberta’s hometown, Milwaukee, at Armoury Gallery. She wrote:

I want to let you know about a show I am in that opens this Friday. It is at a new Gallery in Milwaukee, WI that has a few great shows since it opened in May. Dan Schank, another Philadelphia artist showed there last month in a show called Landscapism. The show that I am in is called Hidden Expose.

If you’re there, stop by.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s heirs are alive and well and working hard in Philadelphia. Artists like Christopher Davison at Jaskey/Tower and Hunter Stabler at Pageant Soloveev—each in their own way and both with contemporary techniques and subject matter—express the same high emotional content, drama and dark beauty as the great 17th-century practitioner of twist, swirl and angst.

Christopher Davison, Woman, child and demon.

Hallmarks of the baroque are exquisite craftsmanship, ornate patterning, obsessive attention to detail and ecstatic (or at least thrilling) subjects. Stabler and Davison make work just like that: obsessive, beautifully crafted and on the subject of death, suffering and the unknown.

Both artists dip into spiritual waters, but if anything the works are anti-religion. Stabler’s images of skulls, pentagrams, goats’ heads and mandalas ride the coattails of wiccan and Eastern philosophies. Davison’s use of witches, demons, ghostly afterimages, saintly haloes and apocalyptic story-telling is right out of the Book of Revelation.

Davison is the riskier of the two artists. His darkly handsome works channel the unconscious mind with figures in groups or singularly set in nightmarish scenes often tinged with weird humor. Frequently (although not in this show) the figure’s genitals are exposed although the person is otherwise clothed, like the classic dream of appearing in public without your pants on.

Christopher Davison. Girl burning fuel.

There’s a large streak of violence or implied violence in the works, which feel like tableaus from Greek tragedies. Woman and Child Summoning Demon, a work that mimics Madonna-and-child paintings, shows a severed head (the demon) barely visible on the black-painted background. The story could be personal or symbolic and universal. Either way the piece is dark, sad and full of unease.

Davison’s people seem like deer in the headlights. Their blank, open eyes stare vacantly although their actions belie an apparent lack of motivation. Girl Burning Fuel, a quirky diptych, shows a girl with a halo holding a decorated vase that’s belching flames and smoke before a Van Gogh-turgid background. The theme may be eco-disaster or burning down Mom’s house. It’s a scary image.

Davison’s technique is a combination of delicate mark-making (his patterning is great) and brute force. His tools are pens, inks, pencils and scissors. He cuts out and collages images from one work onto another with no attempt to make a seamless match. For this artist, the world (and the unseen dream world) exist seamlessly, and things float in and out of consciousness just as they float in and out of his works.

Christopher Davison. River demon

Where Davison’s works smolder, Stabler’s works float in an aura of gorgeousness. The artist is a cut-paper virtuoso and an ink-on-paper wizard with the design sense of a medieval manuscript monk. He loves curlicues, rosettes and repeat patterns.

Hunter Stabler, Hare Christmas Maharishi, ink on paper (detail)

The works are quirky and dark with a dash of play and youthfulness. Hare Christmas Maharishi, a new ink-on-paper piece with a white filagree skull set in a swirling background, is almost nuclear in its explosiveness. It’s the most awe-inspiring and theatrical of this very dramatic body of new work. Like the other works in the show, Maharishi feels like a kind of Beatles’ mashup of East and West—part serious, part Jabberwocky.

Hunter Stabler. Saint Vitus Architeuthis Manalishi with the Seven Tentacled Crown

Pageant Gallery owner Daniel Dalseth told me it took the artist two months to make the Maharishi piece. The ornate labor-intensive work—not white ink on black paper but black ink in the negative spaces and the white of the paper showing through—is a knockout. The artist told me he’s resting his arm at the moment after its vigorous workout for this show.

Hunter Stabler, The Cockatoo is Moving Under You. cut paper

Baroque art was commissioned mostly by the church and intended for public consumption. These idiosyncratic self-propelled works are also intended for a public audience. Neither of these young artists (Davison: Tyler M.F.A. 2006; Stabler: Penn M.F.A. 2006) is wagging a finger at the world and crying “Woe is me,” but with their dark motifs and dramatic in-your-face moments, they are questioning the status quo and definitely proposing that things aren’t as cheery and lovely as they may seem.

“Hunter Stabler: Thanks to Mom and Dad/The Chain of the Worlds”
Through Aug. 3.
Free.
Pageant Gallery, 607 Bainbridge St.
215.925.1535.

“Christopher Davison: Had”

Through July 31.

Free.

Jenny Jaskey/Tower Gallery, Cabin Project Space, 969 N. Second St. 


Christopher Davison’s gouache and mixed-media Reclining Figure is one show-stopper in a show that’s got several. The piece features a man in a red bodysuit reclining on a green field. In the man’s crotch grows a mini-skyscraper city of erect penises, all individualized with stripey patterns, all thrusting assertively but somehow companionably — a  peaceable kingdom of penises. Davison’s figure has a face that grimaces as he appears to be on the verge of speech. The body’s posture is awkward — it’s less a “reclining figure” with all those art historical references to the languorous female served up for delectation than it is a figure that might just have been smacked down and is trying to get up again.

Christopher Davison
Untitled
20 x 14 in
micron, colored pencil, gouache, and graphite
2008

Davison’s method of drawing and painting is both brut and delicate. He layers transparent washes of color, uses graphite and micron pen, and collages an arm from one drawing onto another to give a kind of outsiderish whatever-it-takes affect. In places he will cut gently into the top layer of paint and peel it back to reveal the raw paper underneath. His techniques are so varied the works beg to be looked at up close. And it’s a good thing, too, because it’s up close you see the marvelous facial details and a suggestion that the work has been violated to make it better. Davison’s other crotch-piece is of a woman in a swimming suit. She too is grimacing like the reclining man and her swim suit–collaged on from another drawing — is paper doll perfect, except for its imperfection.

Caroline Santa
Some Preparatory Drawings
Mixed media on paper
Sizes variable
2007/2008

Caroline Santa’s wall of small mixed-media drawings is like an exploded sketchbook on the wall. The small works have the feel of a captured dream or daydream. Where Davison’s works focus on individuals, Santa’s drawings capture two figures together and there are words on the drawing suggesting a conversational tidbit….or perhaps someone musing out loud. Santa’s subject is relationships and the funny pull between people who are together but still individuals.

Caroline Santa, Preparatory Drawings, detail.

Some of the phrases and sentiments written on the little cartoonish works show the artist’s way with words as well:
“You change all the time so I never know.”
“There’s no momentum here.”
“It was all his fault that the son died so he was always sad for th…”
“I caught this now let’s eat it.”
“The right foot fell off so they put it in a cage.”

Nick Lenker
Head 2 Head Heart 2 Heart
22 x 30 in
digital print

Nick Lenker’s digital prints are charged with sexual tension and just plain tension: animal/men fighting in one and a pig-headed gorgon with slaves bringing gold to the piggy bank in the other. Politics, sex, money and power is potent stuff and visually bold. Where Santa’s and Davison’s works are intimate, Lenker’s require you to step back. They’re so heated you need distance to digest them.

I love this new kind of figuration. The blend of real and dream imagery, and the sly, collagist manner in which the works are made is great. It’s encouraging to see 2-D works as fresh as this. They’re worthy of a long look. More photos at flickr.

Erratic: Christopher Davison, Nick Lenker, Caroline Santa
to Feb. 14
Gallery 817
333 S. Broad St. (8th floor)

Fortunately, there’s still time to visit artists studios west of Broad Street this coming weekend–Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy, Germantown, Manayunk, East Falls, Fairmount, Center City West, Rittenhouse Square, Graduate Hospital, and West Philly.

Here’s a still from David Kessler’s video on the artists’ studios at the Crane Art Center, featuring Christopher Davison (above), sculptor and Crane co-founder Nick Kripal, ceramic artist and printer Candy Depew and painter Rebecca Saylor Sack. Click here to see video.

You can check out David Kessler’s wonderful video (made for uwishunu) on the studios at the Crane Art Center (one of the POST locations in Kensington) to get a taste of the sort of experience POST offers–a glimpse inside artists’ studios and a chance to make some personal contact with them, learning what they are all about. (Kessler is the video genius behind Look! It’s Libby and Roberta, and Shadow World.)

Because POST has so much going on and is spread across the city, the best way to approach the project is to get one of the artist directories, which also has information on the best ways to get around. We were excited to read there are shuttle services from one area to another, a new wrinkle that should smooth the difficulties in getting around. The directories are available at these locations:

• The Green Line Café, 4239 Baltimore Avenue
• AIA Bookstore & Design Center, 117 S. 17th Street
• Amoeba Art Shops, 7174 Germantown Avenue (Mt. Airy) & at Sherman Mills, 3502-3510 Scotts Lane (East Falls)
• Utrecht Art Supply Stores, 301 S. Broad Street & 2020 Chestnut Street

Or, if you can stand flipping back and forth on the computer and are a glutton for punishment, you can use the online PDF forms (here).