Knight Arts Challenge Philadelphia names 55 finalists
The Knight Foundation released the names of 55 finalists for its Knight Arts Challenge Philadelphia 2012. Finalists include artists, musicians, collectives, and community groups in the region. Winners are to be announced in the Spring.

Visual arts finalists include: Asian Arts Initiative, Brandywine Workshop, Center City District, Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Chestnut Hill Friends Meetinghouse Project,COSACOSA art at large, Crane Arts, David Clayton, Erica Hawthorne, Fleisher Art Memorial, Franklin’s Paine Skatepark Fund, Geoffrey Johnson, Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, Katarina Dudas, Little Berlin, Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Philadelphia Youth Media Collaborative, RAIR, Inc., Scribe Video Center, Sean Stoops, The Clay Studio, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, The Hacktory, The University of the Arts, The Village of Arts and Humanities, University City District, and Vic Reznik.

Congratulations to all the finalists!

Met hires contemporary art curator away from Tate

Sheena Wagstaff

In a move to strengthen its role in contemporary art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art approved the appointment Sheena Wagstaff – a former curator at Tate London – as director of its new program of 20th and 21st Century art. The Met also plans to utilize the recently acquired Marcel Breuer building at Madison Avenue and 75th Street (otherwise known as the Whitney Museum of American Art) as its modern and contemporary outpost while it undergoes renovations.

Sharon Butler looks ahead to 2012
In a move to foresee the year of 2012, Sharon Butler makes seven predictions about the future in art. Among her predictions are that art funding will be on the rise, however artists will be faced with the ongoing challenge of how to represent their projects as giving back to the community. She also expects MFA enrollment to decline on account of fewer teaching jobs in the arts and a lack of job prospects for those studying art. That said, she expects new jobs to be created in the writing, art handling, and social media fields.

New Philadelphia art marketing campaign

Mayor Nutter with members of the art community today

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC) is set to launch a new marketing campaign – With Art Philadelphia – to bolster the city as a competitive global name in the arts. This effort marks the first coordinated and sustained marketing venture of its kind in the city, and coincides with the opening of the new Barnes Foundation.

People’s Biennial to open at Haverford College
Haverford College is hosting the People’s Biennial which opens on January 27. The show explores artists who work outside of the mainstream art world and includes 36 contemporary names from places not traditionally recognized as art hubs.  Philadelphia’s Maiza Hixson, artist and Curator at the DCCA,  has a video in this show.

Main Line Art Center director to retire
The board of the Main Line Art Center in Haverford has announced that long time Executive Director Judy Herman will retire in August. Herman has been the director for nearly 25 years and helped to greatly expand the art center’s staff and budget during her time as director.

Libby and Roberta Commonwealth Speakers
We told you before that Libby and Roberta were selected to share their knowledge as Commonwealth Speakers through the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. The full list of speakers has been released, as well as the application for talks at your location. Visit your local library or community center and ask them to have Libby and Roberta come talk about art!

Bryn Mawr Film Institute live screening of Da Vinci exhibit
We’ve heard that some operas have been broadcast in local theaters, well now the Bryn Mawr Film Institute brings us a live preview of the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition at the UK’s National Gallery. The preview will screen on January 21 at 11:00 AM.

Vote for Philly artists!
So you’re not in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina to vote in the primaries? Well you can still vote for something worthwhile – local artists! Visit the West Collects site or Saatchi Online to cast your vote for Philadelphia artists in their respective competitions.

Opportunities

A new reality show called Ultimate Craft Throwdown is casting for creative individuals to showcase their skills on TV. If you think you have what it takes, e-mail CraftCasting@gmail.com with your full name and contact info, city, a short paragraph about you, as well as pictures of you and your work. The deadline is January 20.

Art in City Hall is seeking artists for Meta-Fiber, part of FiberPhiladelphia 2012. The call is open to artists working with fiber and textiles in non-traditional ways.

Goggleworks Center for the Arts in Reading, PA has an open call for its show Vanity Fare Art Inspired by Fashion. The deadline is January 28.

Rhizome Commisions 2012 is on the lookout for emerging artists who create significant works of new media art. Grants generally range from $1000 – $5000. The deadline is April 15.

The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha has opened up applications for their 2013 residency (via Wooloo.org). Applications are open in a variety of media: conceptual, drawing, film, installation, and digital. The deadline is February 28.

Flying Kite brings us this fun opportunity: Headlong Dance Company is looking to turn your house into a dance space! The group is seeking interested/interesting individuals to host a performance entitled “This Town is a Mystery” for the Live Arts Festival in September. Find details and application materials here.

The West Collection has announced its 2012 “Make” series. Proposals for 1-2 hour workshops are the name of the game. Propose a good workshop and get paid $500 to teach it! Send your outline to lee@westcollection.org by February 15 to be considered.

Proposals are currently being accepted for the Museum of Art and Peace in Germantown. The quarterly exhibitions feature work involved with social justice and peacemaking ideals. Visit the submissions page for all the information.

Artist News

Theodore A. Harris, "On the Throne of Fire", 2008, mixed media collage.

In the Media: Theodore Harris, Philadelphia collage and assemblage artist, was featured in an interview with Montreal Serai.

From the Extra Extra interview, "Fast Meridian", 2011.

The fine people from Extra Extra sat down with Title Magazine for an interview, and there is also a 30-minute podcast of their discussion as well.

Warren Angle died Friday
We are sad to bring you the news that Warren Angle passed away on Friday, September 9 after a long battle with cancer. Angle, an artist, was the exhibitions director of the Fleisher Art Memorial for many years. He will certainly be missed by many.  There’s a Facebook page set up as a memorial for Warren.

John Vick is juror for New Wilmington Art Association show

Kim Faler, "Slack Tide", 2011, latex paint, paper, wood, clothing and bananas, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Former artblog writer and co-founder of Art Workers Resource Group John Vick was the juror for the New Wilmington Art Association‘s current show RSVP 2011. The exhibit showcases 20 artists in a variety of mediums and runs from First Friday, September 9 to October 20.

Print Center hosts lecture by Wooster Collective founders
There is a lot going on these days at The Print Center. Of particular interest is the upcoming lecture by NYC’s Wooster Collective co-founders Marc and Sara Schiller. The topic of the lecture is the complex and controversial relationship between street art and graphic design/marketing. The free lecture takes place on October 14 at 6 PM.

Temple presents 9/11 Moments of Silence
Throughout September the Temple Gallery will be filled with recorded moments of silence from public and private events in commemoration of September 11, 2001. Gathered from newsreels, libraries, and the internet, these moments express a nation’s quiet remembrance and solidarity.

CofFREE Mondays at Temple
The Temple Gallery is also holding CofFREE Mondays starting September 12. Stop by the gallery from 7:45 – 9:45 AM for free coffee and the lowdown on cultural events at the university and around the city. Special guest lectures will also be on the agenda from time to time.

Opposites Attract at UArts

The Blind Tongue by James Fuhrman and Mark Warhol.

Starting September 6 as part of the Philadelphia Sculptor’s exhibit Opposites Attract: Collaborative Installations at University of the Arts, sculptor James Fuhrman and composer Mark Warhol present “The Blind Tongue”, a sculptural installation with video projections of an opera performance. The exhibition will be on display through October 13.

New online publication Hidden City Daily launches

Hidden City Daily, a new Philadelphia arts and culture publication affiliated with Thadeus Squire’s Hidden City project, has just gotten underway. They have a lot of picture-rich coverage of arts and culture and info on some of the more off-the-beaten-track locales around the city. One of the co-editors, Nathaniel Popkin, says the Hidden City Daily is geared up to be a hub of informed, reflective and innovative thinking about the city. It will be very interesting to see how Hidden City progresses in the near future.

Michael Rees lecture at Haverford College
Artist Michael Rees will hold a lecture on September 26 from 4:30 – 6 PM at Haverford College. Rees operates at the intersection of biology, art, and 3D rendering and will be hosting a workshop earlier in the day. If you have an interest in 3D art, sculpture, or contemporary art, this is definitely worth checking out!

Madelyn Roehrig Conversations with Andy

Madelyn Roehrig, Conversations with Andy.

For the past two years friend of Libby and Roberta’s, Madelyn Roehrig, has been videotaping individuals visiting the tombstone of Andy Warhol. Her project will be part of Pittsburgh’s Biennial at the Warhol Museum opening Sept-17 and running to Jan 8, 2012.  Also in the show are photos by LaToya Ruby Frazier and work by Dara Birnbaum. So far Roehrig has taped over 200 individuals with a range of insights and whimsical observations. Follow her project “Figments: Conversations with Andy” on its Facebook page.

Sprint 3D video
It may be a commercial for a phone company, but it’s also pretty fantastical! Check out Sprint’s recent 3D “flash art” video (or in 2D) in which park goers get accosted by  swarms of massive bubbles.

Met finds its funny bone

The Head Ache, a print after George Cruikshank by Enrique Chagoya.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be display works of humor, satire, and caricature in its newest show Infinite Jest. Works range from the Italian Renaissance to present day and offer a wide spectrum of satirical and comical work. The exhibition starts on September 13 and runs until March, so you have plenty of time to catch a few laughs.  One of the featured works is Enrique Chagoya’s “The Head Ache,” a print made when the artist was in residence at the Rosenbach Museum and Library.

Freeman’s Auctioneers record sale
Freeman’s Auctioneers had a record sale of a Chinese imperial-style double dragon white jade seal for $3.5 million. This creates a record for the highest-selling single lot and most successful sale of the company.

Opportunities

There’s an opportunities page set up on the Bartol Foundation website announcing teaching opportunities available to teaching artists. A few groups are seeking requests for proposals and teachers. Check out the details here.

Artist News

Gabe Martinez, "Lemon", 2011, archival inkjet print, 30 x 30 inches (76 x 76 cm

Pew Fellow and UPenn factulty member Gabe Martinez has a show dealing with gay male sexual identity at Samsøn in Boston from September 9 – October 15.

Huston Ripley, "Untitled", 2008, # 8XL1: Ink on Japanese paper: 25" x 19"

Huston Ripley will be displaying drawings at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York from September 8 – October 8.

In July, the Woodmere Museum acquired one of Doug Witmer‘s 2008 paintings “How Soon is Too Soon?” for their permanent collection.

Three former Philadelphia area artists – Jesse Greenberg, Nick Paparone, and Walter Benjamin Smith – will have work at the Socrates Sculpture Park on Long Island. Paparone’s solo show also opened at Fleisher-Ollman on September 8.

Dave Kim‘s recently completed project My Best Friend Facebook Forever has a website called My Best Friend Facebook Forever. My BFFF was a month-long performance/experiment where Kim did everything he was asked to do via Facebook.

Julie Courtney and Jennie Shanker will soon be completing their collaborative curatorial project CENTERpieces, affiliated with the Center for Discovery in upstate New York. Stay-tuned for an upcoming event for artist Richard Torchia’s work in one of the center’s geodesic domes.

Guy Tillim 'Library, Sports Club, Kolwezi, DR Congo' (2007) pigment print

The photography shares the large size and technical refinement of international norms. Many of the themes have international currency as well: uncovering political and social exploitation of the past, peeling off the façade of media stereotypes (established by Nigeria’s Nollywood rather than California’s Hollywood), investigating the construction of memory and of national histories, observing the remains of failed utopian aspiration, and exposing the hidden lives of society’s poorest and most marginalized members.

Despite the familiarity of the works’ format, much of the content requires a certain amount of back story to appreciate its meaning; some, but not all, of this is provided by the exhibition labels and the attractive catalog which is available (free) at the gallery.  But much of the subtlety certainly depends upon a detailed knowledge of the history and present circumstance of places likely to be unfamiliar to most visitors. Pieter Hugo’s striking portraits of oddly-costumed figures in unexplained settings  resemble a style of  fashion photography popularized by Irving Penn and others; but it turns out the characters are ordinary people, made up and attired by film technicians to conform to popular, Nollywood types and photographed in non-filmic settings (Nollywood refers to the popular film industry of Nigeria,  the world’s second largest after India; its films are distributed throughout  Africa and the African diaspora). The man, attired in a dark suit and tie, with one foot resting upon a slaughtered bull as he holds its heart aloft, turns out to refer to working-class suspicions that great wealth is associated with occult practices. The curator suggests that to the uninformed Western viewer…, the man standing over a bull with his [sic] heart in his hand might represent all that “Africa” as sign stands for in the Western imagination; this strikes me as both facile and unlikely. The image is simply too odd to conform to anyone’s pre-conceptions. My first response was bewilderment; what is going on here? The image of three girls playing at being a heavily-armed gang is rather more straightforward.

Pieter Hugo 'Chommy Choko Eli, Florence Owanta, Kelechi Anwuacha, Enugu, Nigeria' (2008) C print

The pensive, three-channel video installation, Square Stories, by Salem Mekuria, is an  exploration of the varying political and social history of a central space in Addis Ababa. Young people today, training for sports events in a thoroughly global environment of automobiles and Coca-Cola signs, bear obvious comparison to soldiers under Mengistu’s rule who would have had similar physical training, and who were responsible for dreadful civilian slaughter. The record of that violence is the subject of a museum built on the square; its images of the executions and the extent of the killing are recorded on cell-phones, by visitors too young to remember the events. The elderly woman being guided through her family home, which has been converted to another national museum, is again a meditation on changing times. But  subtler connections with the events of Ethiopia’s recent past are likely to be lost in translation.

Salem Mekuria still from 'Square Stories' (2010) 3-channel video projection

Guy Tillim‘s arresting and beautiful photographs from the series Avenue Patrice Lumumba record a number of late-colonial buildings that Tillim had visited across West Africa during the violent period of Lumumba’s post-colonial rule in the Congo.  Each of the four on view portrays a very different picture, and while according to the catalog, Tillim has said that the photographs are not histories of collapsed post-colonial African States,  it is hard to see anything else in his image of the laundry of the poor, who have taken residence in the abandoned, modernist grandeur of the Grand Hotel, Beira, Mozambique.  Tillim’s image of Athenee Royal High School, Lubumbashi, DR Congo, however, portrays a group of high school students going about their day with a calm ordinariness that students at West Philadelphia High School can only imagine;  the boarded up windows behind them are clearly not the dominant influence in their surroundings.

Symposium: Imaging Africa

On Saturday, March 19, Talmor also organized the symposium, Imaging Africa, which brought together an extraordinarily international group of scholars, curators and filmmakers - an amazing  achievement for a small, liberal arts college. They addressed a broad range of questions about photography, film and video by Africans and members of the African diaspora: its place within global discussions of post-modern art, its interaction with Northern photography,  its circulation and control of its production, and its role in explorations of evolving identities.

The symposium opened with Renee Mussai, curator at Autograph, London, an organization devoted to photography that addresses issues of  identity and social justice. She began, as did most speakers, by emphasizing that Africa is not a single entity, despite our tendency to treat it so, and raised a subject that was central to the entire day’s discussion: that of modernity. The concept, which grew out of a particular, European history of the transition to industrialization and an artistic turn away from academic and traditional forms to artistic self-exploration, sits uneasily in post-colonial states without a parallel historic sequence; India certainly faces the same question. What is African modernity ? Musai dated the change of photography’s position and the concern for modernity in Africa with  Malik Sidibe’s winning the Golden Lion award at the 2008 Venice Biennale.

The award-winning British filmmaker, John Akomfrah spoke of a problem that arose in his, so far, unsuccessful attempt to make a film about Fela Kuti, the Nigerian musician, political activist and self-proclaimed Black President.  Kuti lived in a commune, Kalakuta, which appointed one of its members, Femi Osula, to take photographic records of commune activities. The photos were occasionally used by members to portray Kalakuta’s activities to the outside world, more or less as political propaganda. When Akomfrah found the photographs he considered them an archive; but who owns them? Femi Osula? The commune?  The situation was too uncertain for Akomfrah’s possible backers, so the film  exists only in the form of the tantalizing trailer made to attract funding.

Jennifer Bajorek, lecturer at Goldsmith’s College, London, described the complexity of African photography whose status and economic rewards have often been determined by Northerners. Exhibitors at the Bamako Biennial of African Photography are controlled by its French sponsors whose decisions, Bajorek found,  seemed largely based upon competition with German sponsors. In Zimbabwe, all news  photography was taken by licensed members of either BBC or CNN news staff until both agencies were barred from the country. At that point the only source of photographs were the African photo-journalists whose work had previously been excluded from international view.

Awam Amkpa, professor of drama at NYU, suggested that Africa should be thought of in terms of overlapping modernisms which create an oppositional stance toward European modernism. He emphasized the fact that, as diverse as Africans are, many now identify beyond tribal or national divisions, and he spoke of an aesthetic of displacement and fragmentation, with some movement towards a creolization of conventions. Where, he asked, would such creolized works be legible? How would we read them?

Guy Tillim ‘Administration Building, Antsirana, Madagascar’ (2007) pigment print.

Friday, March 25 at 6:30 pm Sheila Hicks will speak about her work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (more information here).  The lecture is in connection with the retrospective Sheila Hicks 50 Years March 24 – August 7, 2011 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, U Penn. Hicks is a sculptor and installation artist whose original training in fiber arts, and residence in Paris,  is probably the reason that her distinctive and ambitious work has not been sufficiently exhibited in U.S. museums. She has done many large installations commissioned for permanent view.

Sheila Hicks ‘La Clef’ (1988) rubber bands, metal key; 9 1/2 x 6'’ private collection

April 16 at 5 and 7:30 pm, International House will show a two-part program: Independent Artists Movement in Cinamatography; Origins in Avant-garde film, including work by Alberto Cavalcanti, Marcel Fabre, Hans Richter and others.

Hans Richter still from ‘Race Symphony’ (1928)

April 21 at 7 pm, International House, will screen Monument of Sugar: How to use artistic means to elude trade barriers, Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan’s intervention in the EU’s trade barrier on sugar imports in the form of sugar sculpture.

April 28-30 Pop Cinema: Art + Film in the UK and US 1950s-1970s, at International House, includes three screenings and a panel discussion.  The April 28, 7 pm  screening focuses on UK pop and includes work by Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Ken Russell and others; April 20, 7 pm will be US filmmakers including Robert Breer, Stan Vanderbeek, Bruce Connor; April 30 will have a panel a 2pm with artist Derek Boshier and several film historians then at 7 pm films by Boshier and Peter Whitehead with Nikki de Saint Phalle.

Robert Breer still from ‘Recreation’ (1956)

Saturday, May 14, 8 pm at International House Nadia Hironaka, Matthew Suib and C Spencer Yeh present a multimedia event that revisits the spectacle  of Expo 67. It will include performance, text and lecture in addition to projected imagery.  The subject centers on the role of the artist and revolutionary relative to historical developments in global politics and media.

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, cropped detail from 'The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West' (2008)

Sex Drive is a thoughtfully curated 22-person group show that coincides with the humanities seminar “Sex, State and Society in the Early Modern World.” The show brings together a diverse array of sex-infused artworks that deal with all manner of relevant sexual themes, including fetish, fantasy, infatuation, sin, gender persuasion, public scandal, romance, and the role of political and religious conventions.

David Wojnarowicz - "Untitled (One Day this Kid...)"

Greeting you upon entering the gallery is a 4’ x 6’ vinyl reproduction of David Wojnarowicz’ “Untitled (One Day This Kid…),” 1990. Wojnarowicz, a prominent NYC artist throughout the 1980s who died of AIDS in 1992, most recently made headlines after the Smithsonian rashly removed one of his video pieces because of vitriol from conservative right wing Christian politicians over the image of ants crawling over a crucifix. “One Day This Kid…” consists of a picture of the artist in his youth, surrounded by text explaining the negative domino-effect of events that would befall him because of being gay. This poignant work touches on the religious, political and societal pressures and injustices that shape people’s perceptions regarding gays in America. According to Stuart Horodner, the curator of the show, the inclusion of Wojnarowicz’s piece “tells us that matters of the flesh remain contentious and timely.”

Untitled sculpture by Anissa Mack

Switching gears, another standout is a simple, untitled sculpture by Anissa Mack. A small stack of about 15 Playboy magazines sits neatly piled in the middle of the floor. On top of this stack rests a small bronze sculpture, painted to look like a paper mache jack-o-lantern. If analyzed in strictly aesthetic terms, the little bulging pumpkin resembles a breast with a burnt marshmallow nipple, while its face has a suggestive, open-mouthed and orgasmic expression. Yet the bronze pumpkin may represent an immovable obstacle that stands between a person and his/her desires. On the other hand, if the pumpkin’s one tooth is regarded as a baby’s tooth, the piece could comment on how the arrival of children can put stress on a couple’s sex life.

Looping on a TV in the corner is a re-edit of a mysteriously gothic-looking, soft-core spanking video by Leigh Ledare. The woman starring in the film is the artist’s mother, who is said to have produced this spanking movie with “some family friends.” The low budget film is somewhat mesmerizing, and appears to be shot on location in a strange mansion bringing to mind the old 1960s TV show Dark Shadows. Ledare’s mother does her best to stay focused as the directors call out awkward sounding instructions and fumble with the camera work. I’m sure this footage, if properly edited, would qualify as an erotic spanking film, but Ledare instead chooses to emphasize the rougher, uncut behind-the-scenes POV, giving incite to the humor and confusion that can go into making a porno movie. The video also seems to allude to a sort of inevitable sexual perversion that grows from the glamorous boredom of the affluent.

Ion Birch - "Young Love"

Alas, no art exhibition of such titillating subject matter would be complete without some good old-fashioned, low-brow pencil drawings. Ion Birch, an artist whom I’ve been following for a while now, has two excellent pieces in the show. Giant erect penises jut towards equally gigantic and gaping vaginas, as everywhere innocent-looking nymphs grab for any penis they can get their hands on. These are trippy-fun, garden orgies a la Alice in Wonderland. The exaggeration of sex organs surely brings to mind the hedonistic imagery of pre-lava Pompeii, but what amused me the most was the faces of the men in these drawings, who resemble middle-aged Dorian Grays lost in a fountain of youth fantasy, where all the girls are happy to oblige.

Sex Drive runs until March 4 at Haverford College in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, which is located on the second floor of the Whitehead Campus Center.

Selections from the Hokes Archive on display at the APS Museum

Lyons is a tall, sober man dressed somewhat anachronistically in a straw boater and bow-tie, and often has a Bible tucked under his arm. He walks up to the visitors, hands them his pamphlets and says Here, have some propaganda, and proceeds to guide them around the display, drawn from the Hokes Archive. It is, he explains, devoted to zoomorphic juncture e.g. hybrid animals whose top portion is one species and bottom portion another (like W.S. Gilbert’s character in Iolanthe who’s a fairy down to the waist and a man below).

Beauvais Lyons

The pamphlet describes the Association for Creative Zoology, dedicated to understanding the beauty and complexity of God’s creation and ends with the 104th Psalm: O Lord, how manifold are thy works! Lyons begins his tour with Biblical and historical precedents (dragons, unicorns and satyrs), which provide textual documentation of zoomorphic junction, before turning to modern examples. These are depicted in lithographs and on a Ming, blue-and-white, porcelain dish. But the most compelling examples are certainly the stuffed specimens.  Pointing out the ground-hog-fish, Lyons explains that the fisherman didn’t eat his catch because he suspected that gamey-fish might not be to his taste. At this point Barbara and I were literally hiding behind our hats, trying not to tip off visitors with our uncontrollable laughter.

Taxidermied female Gorilla-hen, from the Hokes Archive

Stopping in front of stuffed examples of a Pekingese dog-duck and a crow-dog, Lyons asks which his visitors prefer.  Always the dog-duck!, he says, remarking that people are drawn to the more anthropomorphic features of mammals.  Lyons then turns to his final evidence, certain to win over doubters: an excavated skeleton of a zoomorphic junction.

Excavated skeleton of a hybrid animal, Hokes Archive

Brought to Philadelphia in connection with the current APS exhibition devoted to Charles Darwin, Lyons’ work raises the unfortunately-ongoing controversies over evidence refuting evolution, and the gullibility of a public that uses the Bible as a science text.  He took the archive to the 2007 John Scopes Trial Festival, in Dayton, TN where he had the chance to show it to Creationists; he found  they lack a sense of humor. If you want to believe in the Loch Ness Monster and the Piltdown Man, don’t miss the Hokes Archive!

Exhibition and Panel Discussion This Weekend

The Hokes Archive will be on view Sept. 16-18 from 11 am-7 pm and Lyons will also participate in an artists’ panel discussion, A Priest, A Rabbi and Charles Darwin Walk Into A Bar… on Sunday, Sept. 19th at 3 pm at the APS Museum; the other participants are Brett Keyser and Eve Andrée Laramée who also did projects in connection with the Darwin exhibition. Lyons is a professor of printmaking at the University of Tennessee whose courses include one on pranks. A video of Lyons and the Hokes Archive at the Scopes Trial Festival can be found on You-Tube.

Problemy: The Dufala Brothers at Haverford College

The Dufala Brothers Insulation Living-Room Set (2009)

Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala’s exhibition, Problemy, is on view at Haverford’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery through Oct. 8.  Their work entails the same sort of boyish entrepreneurial fantasies that inspired Chris Burden’s B-Car (1977, a fully functional, extra light-weight automobile built from mostly hand-made parts) and Fischli and Weiss’ video, The Way Things Go (1987, a Rube-Goldberg-like chain reaction featuring tires, ladders, oil drums, steam and fire).

The Dufala Brothers Typewriter (2010)

The gallery is filled with exquisitely-crafted but distorted, domestic objects: a hammer whose handle is sized for a giant; a typewriter with a keyboard filched from a Blackberry; a living-room set whose un-covered upholstery is made of pink, fiberglass insulation; a large broom formed to fit the profile of stairs. Then the photographs, large and lush (as is the current mode) which depict the equally unlikely: sports shoes that have grown, like Pinocchio’s nose, so their toes loop around and around into snail-like forms.  The Dufala’s adaptive re-use yields use-less objects of contemplation. Or art.

The Dufala Brothers Stair Broom

And then there are the drawings: exquisite, large forms that on close inspection are composed of delicate renderings of empty, plastic drinks bottles tethered together; a typewriter made of topiary; the Free Wall of take-away drawings (individually-signed multiples)  depicting the scatological, sexual, playful and silly (the young woman tending the gallery said these were a favorite with Haverford students).

The Dufala Brothers Free Wall of take-away drawings at Haverford College, 2010

Two large pieces were sited out-of doors: on the building’s exterior a tubular, aluminum vent connected to an air-conditioner compressor morphs into a huge set of letters, F-R-E-S-H, before returning to tubular form and running up and into the stone wall; and largest of all, a full scale suburban house, complete with bay window and chimney, made of chain-link fencing and outlined in fence-posts. Its form resembles an idealized child’s drawing.

The Dufala Brothers Fresh (2010) at Haverford College

detail of Fresh

Text in the exhibition catalog and press release suggest that the Dufalas’ work is concerned with trash, waste and our commodity-centered culture. But for me the exhibition comes across as a celebration of the imagination and freedom of adolescence, when ideas are generated for the fun of it or just because, and objects are cobbled together to see what might happen. At that age you’re invincible, and nothing really matters.

The Dufala Brothers House (2010) at Haverford College

Finley & Muse, still from "Lost"

Imaginative Feats Literally Presented; three fables for video projection, an exhibition of Jeanne C.  Finley and John Muse’ work is on view at Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery through Dec. 11. Muse teaches at Haverford and Finley at California College of Art and they have collaborated for many years. Like all fables, theirs deal with big ideas: vulnerability, fear, family, safety, truth and fiction, control.  The three works read as chapters of the same story, all set in the present when America is at war.  The exhibition leaves visitors uncomfortable, but these are not bedtime stories and they are not addressed to children.

Finley & Muse, still from "Guarded"

The first piece, Lost (2006), is the simplest technically and structurally: a single channel shown on a  small screen, with headphones for the audio.  An unseen army chaplain reads from his diary and we learn he’s in Iraq.  We see a landscape obscured by fog which lifts slowly, revealing cliffs that cannot be Iraqi. He tells of conflict; not of battle, but of his own attempt to deal with the consequences of war.  It adopts a documentary format but doesn’t quite play by the rules.

Finley & Muse, still from "Guarded"

Guarded (2003) places the viewer in the middle of a moving and unstable circle of images that turn to the steady, repeated thump, thump, thump of a date stamp.  The imagery is mundane: a child out of doors, an empty fair ride, a wedding, a woman walking, someone counting dollar bills.  A text appears in several registers and with effort we are able to read what are obviously emergency preparedness instructions written in the impersonal voice of authority.  The instructions are palliative; we no more believe that they will save us than we believed that crouching under our school desks would protect us from a nuclear attack during the Cold War.

Finley & Muse, projection still of "Flat Land"

Flat Land (2006-09), two video projections shown back to back on one screen, presents the coping mechanisms of military families when the father is at war, told by the families themselves.  Finley and Muse’s compelling work offers no fixed, editorial point of view.  It carries no obvious message other than the reminder that if we choose to ignore the larger issues that surround us, that is a choice; we are responsible for our own stories of denial.

Hollis Frampton ‘s magnum opus

Hollis Frampton computer portrait of the artist c. 1975

Last weekend International House showed all seven parts of Hollis Frampton’s Hapax Legomena; I missed part two because it conflicted with a symposium at PAFA (more in a later post).  But I was determined to see as much as I could; I’d long known of Frampton’s significance to experimental film.  Besides, who wouldn’t want to know more work by the photographer who (with Marion Faller) created the homage to Eadweard Muybridge, Vegetable Locomotion (1975),  which includes the unforgettable Tomatoes descending a ramp [var.”Roma”] and Apple Advancing [ver.  “Northern Spy”]?

Hollis Frampton still from ‘nostalgia’, image of Carl Andre

With Hapax Legomena Frampton created a multi-part record of his life and meditations on the possibilities of film. nostalgia (Hapax Legomena I) records the immolation of his early photographic work as Frampton tells the story of each image. We see the photo then watch as it turns to ash on an electric stove ring.  The film is structured around the time it takes to obliterate each photograph, and by the second or third story it becomes clear that the narratives are off sinc with the images. Poetic Justice (Hapax Legomena II) is narration to the image of pages of  the script, and Critical Mass (Hapax Legomena III) is an experimental cutting and re-cutting of the sort of domestic quarrel that has neither beginning nor end; it is somewhere between slapstick and Edward Albee.

Hollis Frampton still from ‘Critical Mass’

International House shows enough films that intersect with the other visual arts that it should at least be bookmarked by all Philadelphia  artblog readers.

On Saturday, December 19 at 7pm Chantal Ackerman’s 1979 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles will be shown.  For my review of an exhibition of Ackerman’s video installations, see here.

Donald E. Camp, Man Who Hears Music, Andre Raphael Smith, Earth pigment and casein mono-print, 22” X 30”, 2006

I don’t want to say much more about the ideas in there (so many more I can hardly believe it) because if you go, the show will reveal itself to you in ways you won’t expect. And you should go.

Here are some more reasons why:

Photographer Donald Camp’s elemental, giant portraits of African American men dominate the show. If you have never seen these one-offs printed with earth and casein, you owe it to yourself to see them now. These portraits tell a tale of self-invention and gravitas that overwhelms the popular culture’s focus on African American men as gangsters and gangstas. Camp is a former photographer for the Philadelphia Bulletin who manages to indict even the crappy newsprint and its quick and dirty printing methods in these masterpieces of material and social depth.

James Mundie, Portrait of a Big-fingered Boy, Pen and ink, 8” x 6”, 2004

James G. Mundie’s small ink drawings of circus freaks–another group of outsiders reimagined, dignified, and preserved by portraits that borrow art historical compositions–stand up well, even next to Camp’s gorgeous ultra closeups. Mundie and Camp are both on a mission to reestablish into the mainstream the rejected, without tampering with the subjects’ self-images and their control of their own destiny.

Matthew Fisher, The Ocean, Pencil on paper, 10 1/4” x 9 1/8”, 2009

Two other drawing wizards–Matt Fisher and Rob Matthews–are still more reasons to see this exhibit. Fisher’s 18th Century soldiers are vulnerable and awkward, even when they cavort or daydream. The delicate drawings are everyman in costume, playing a role and yet not quite inhabiting the clothes,  adult boys who are confused about how they could possibly be who they are and where they are–models of self-doubt as modern as they are antique. The deadpan drawings are delightful and quite like the soldiers–dreamy storybook figures that leap off the page into your heart.

Rob Matthews, Steve, Graphite on paper, 9” X 9”, 2008

In contrast to Fisher’s figures who exist as universal soldiers of any time, Rob Matthews’ portraits are documents of this time–ordinary family and friends depicted with art historical allusions that preserve the subjects in the continuum of history, that place them in that collective memory that erases most mortals in a couple of generations. Matthews said he thinks of these as memorials, and therefore has written on the back the subjects names and particulars. The context of this show highlights all the thinking and complexity that has gone into this seemingly deadpan take on social circumstances that nearly consume individual identity.

Joshua Mosley, Commute, Still image from mixed media animation, 2003

Out on his own moon, Joshua Mosley’s claymation cyber-video Commuter uses the cell phone as the opening metaphor for journeying beyond concrete physical circumstances to some place in the imagination or the mind. The mind’s world here is futuristic, an adventure down the wormhole of technology where physical and genetic facts seem almost beside the point! The journey is playful, defying nature, gravity, and other limits–and highlighting how technology is a magical mystery tour where we can escape who we really are where we really are.

Laura Graham, Forrest, 40” x 60” inches, Archival pigment print from 4x5 film, 2006

In the context of these complex works, Laura Graham’s large, introspective photos of women seem too large, their hints of psychological depth and mythic underpinnings not fully realized.

Beautiful Human, curated by Shelley Spector, is up to Oct. 9, 2009.Bea

I myself just returned from a field trip through exotic Suburban Square with [artist] Harrell Fletcher! Lots of fun–went to a ColdStone ice cream store when the staff has to sing to you if you tip them; we ended up singing to them for a change (“This Land is Your Land”)–from email from James Weissinger, Associate Director, John B. Hurford ’60 Humanities Center, Haverford College, who by night is sometimes seen hanging around at PIFAS

Jennifer Delos Reyes, Harrell Fletcher, Nao Bustamante and William Pope.L

Fletcher was one of four artists invited to  Haverford College for  “Among Friends,” a project to involve the entire Haverford College community in the experience of art-making.

The others artists are  William Pope.L, Nao Bustamante and artist Jennifer Delos Reyes. Each of the four created some sort of performance happening with help from the Haverford students and even sometimes staff.

At a talk before all the final happenings happened, the four invited artists spoke about their work–and a couple of them turned even their talks into happenings.

Nao Bustamante video of her crying as she watches the same corny love scene over and over.

Nao Bustamante got the audience to participate in a sham hypnosis session, transforming them to be her, so the auditorium was full of lots of Nao Bustamantes. The audience mock obliged. Bustamante is a performance and video artist, and although she is the main focus (along with her dog Fufu), she really is about the larger society, its tastes, obsessions, politics and foolishness.

Nao Bustamante video of her dog Fufu (lower right) posing as a buffalo.

In a clip from her video Untitled #1 (from the series Earth People 2507), Fufu dons buffalo horns and becomes a whole herd, inserted into a photo of a genuine buffalo herd. (I don’t know one dog from another, but Fufu is small and dark grey, with lots of curls–think Peek-a-Poo or miniature poodle scale). Ultimately the dog turns pirouettes and so do ballerinas while the prairie turns into an aurora borealis. I don’t know why I loved this, but I was completely enchanted.

For her project at Haverford, Bustamante and the students opened a “comfort station” on campus–a healing kiosk modeled on a Red Cross Comfort Station, to help students with their worries and desires.

Harrell Fletcher installation of multiple lawn ornaments, including portraits ones of the home's owners. It looks like a family reunion.

Harrell Fletcher‘s work is community-driven and collaborative. Fletcher described a number of his projects, like making multiples of a couple’s lawn ornament figures after one of them was vandalized. He displayed them in a gallery and also placed them like a family reunion on the couple’s lawn. Some of his work reminds me of Pepon Osorio’s, especially in his understanding of the emotional weight of objects that people hold dear and in his commitment to communities.

Harrell Fletcher, a photo of a city worker at his desk, decorated with the portrait of him that Fletcher included in a show of portraits of city workers and the mementos they kept on their desks.

Fletcher, for his project with the Haverford students, had them running around the Main Line playing laser tag, and other activities to integrate them into the community beyond the campus.

William Pope.L masked to invade a foreign city. The whole head mask is slit down the back--the only place that Pope.L reveals himself.

I was especially excited about seeing William Pope.L in person (he’s an imposing figure, tall and good-looking and reserved).    He showed a recent video of himself covered head-to-toe in a white hazardous-clean-up jump suit and wearing an aging white-guy full-head rubber mask, making people people uncomfortable with his outlandish outfit and his anti-social acts on the streets of  a former Eastern Bloc city.

A concerned pedestrian observes the masked William Pope.L dangling mice by the tail.

Pope.L told an anecdote about a collector commissioning him to do a work about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American who was murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Pope.L didn’t know whether to accept. His mother, however, urged him to take take it.  He wasn’t sure he would get the story right, but she told him it was a gift, a chance to speak out.
At Haverford Pope.L’s performance was shooting a video called E.T., which stands for both Emmett Till and Spielberg’s Extra-Terrestrial–both of them outsiders, strangers in a strange land. John Muse, a humanities fellow at the college who invited the four artists, gave me this description of  Pope.L’s ET shoot:

My own take: the piece more or less recapitulates the final journey of Till from his Uncle Moses Wright’s house to the river where Bryant and Milam dump Till’s body–it was quite literally a journey as we moved through many buildings and hallways.  It was a journey through a crime scene, but one where the crime is still going on and on; Emmett Till dies over and over, and his ghost haunts victims and perpetrators alike: Till is a wound, historical and personal, that remains open.

I’m most drawn to and affected by the masks that Pope.L gives all of his actors: each wore the face of a smiling 14 year old Till.  But because the eyes are cut out and the mouth cut out too, the mask is also a postmortem face. …And because the actors wearing the masks perform all the actions, there’s no clear division between perpetrators of the murder and the murdered boy.  The penultimate scene: the audience stands on an elevated track looking down as two ET’s dunk a cd player into a tub of water, the cd player plays a …track of a boy’s voice describing his own murder and stipulating that those who harmed him must have been harmed themselves and kill him as a means to repair themselves.  The ET’s finally weight the player with a cinderblock that holds it down.  We can still hear the voice coming from beneath the water.

Jennifer Delos Reyes, one of a series of performances where the artist forms a choir of a friend's loved ones to sing them their favorite song.

The fourth speaker and artist in mini-residence, Jennifer Delos Reyes, who organizes group hug kinds of projects, also staged a mini-event at the talk. She got the audience to sing the one song that she didn’t get enough students to perform for her project:  She had invited students and staff to record covers of the tracks from  Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 Rumours album. The covers could be anything from a capella performances to dj mixes to rap. The cover album was scheduled for release last week, and Delos Reyes was hoping the enthusiasm of the campus community, in creating the cover album, would somehow overcome the personal drama that plagued the band at the time of the original release.

I can assure you my own college experience was nothing like this. More info on Among Friends is located here.