Tag Archive "icebox"

CONSTRUCT, from CFEVA, at the Ice Box

Big is what the Ice Box exhibition space requires. CONSTRUCT, CFEVA‘s show there, delivers the goods.

First Friday – Pentimenti’s group show, Little Berlin’s funny performances and Uarts grads at the Icebox

Our itinerary covered many miles — from Old City to the deepest reaches of Kensington, so we needed the car.  We suppose you could bike it but we can’t.  What we saw generally tickled us.  The conversations were great and enlightening and below is a bunch of pictures with some running commentary. Pentimenti For the last couple summers, Pentimenti has mounted a group show based on an open call.  Reaching outside her comfort zone and current stable of artists, gallerist Christine Pfister has again this year rounded up a lively show.

Weekly Update – A great big Woot! from Tyler’s graduating MFA’s

Maybe it’s spring or the waning recession, but Woot!, the group show at the Ice Box consisting of graduating MFAs from the Tyler School of Art, is a nice change from the art world’s current obsession with noir-ish nightmares. Or maybe it’s this particular class of students that makes this show so fun and friendly. With rambunctious works that explore everything from pop culture to current events and personal material, the 22 artists in this student-organized and faculty-judged exhibit are explorers at play. In some cases, the works are tinged with a little anger and irony, but the good news is that this show ...

Weekly Update – Bring on the fleas, in Troupe de Fetishe

A macroscopic look at the microscopic world, Troupe de Fetishe, a video installation involving a tiny flea circus projected onto the 100-foot-long, 25-foot-high east wall of the Icebox at Crane Arts, is just the latest in a string of entomological art that’s been exhibited in Philly.** Right now you can also see Jennifer Angus’ miniature Victorian sitting rooms that utilize insect carcasses in patterns adorning wallpaper (currently up at the Philadelphia Art Alliance)

Art and technology in Kensington

Much of the work around the Kensington area this month questions the divide between technology and artist. First up is the Brad Troemel Pre-career Retrospective at Extra Extra Gallery. The gallery directors curated the show entirely from Troemel’s website selecting images of work, installations, and videos and installing the show without consulting the artist in the process. On the Extra Extra website they explain: “This gesture of presenting work without the consent of the creator is emblematic of immaterial art’s free movement into any receptive home.”

Big pictures at the Ice Box

The long east wall in the Ice Box at the Crane Arts Center has so much wall space–25 x 100 feet–that founders Nick Kripal and Richard Hricko decided to make something even bigger of it– In a push to challenge video artists to take advantage of the enormous space, they have installed four computer-controlled video projectors capable of filling that wall, including creating a seamless image (a la Matt Suib and Nadia Hironaka’s The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West video installation there).  It’s hello Cinemascope times two.

Miguel Luciano’s Piragua Cart at the Icebox!

Yesterday, a bright and sunny Sunday, was the opening of Global Warming, the Philadelphia Sculptor’s show at the Icebox. Miguel Luciano is in the show and one of his pieces, “Pimp my Piragua,” a shaved ice cart, was perfect for the day, the event, and the slowly melting world. Luciano’s vehicle — which he made himself– is outfitted with stereo, DVD player and the traditional ice and syrups. He sells the ices for $1-$2 dollars he told me. Here he’s making an ice (grape flavored) and talking with Pepon Osorio, (mostly in the wings). Read more about Luciano’s project at ...

From Taboo to Icon–to one global art world

Pepon Osorio, Mangual, 2007, video a short video loop of a dark-skinned man vigorously, but unsuccessfully rubbing off white-face makeup–referencing identity and culture and art history all at once. There’s some terrific work included in the exhibit From Taboo to Icon: Africanist Turnabout, an exhibit currently at the Ice Box, a group show of about 70 works that grew out of a series of symposia at Temple University last year. The symposia, African Impressions/Contemporary Art, explored African influences in modern and contemporary art. They pondered the meanings behind the experiences of artists of color, especially when they used Africanist imagery. ...

The Politics of Africanist Aesthetics

installation view of From Taboo to Icon: Africanist Turnabout at the Icebox Project Space, Crane Arts Building, photo Libby Rosof I headed to the Crane Building Saturday primarily to see an exhibition with an intriguing title: From Taboo to Icon; Africanist Turnabout – the premise being that work either derived from or in response to African aesthetics is central to artists of the African diaspora and has been relatively excluded by mainstream (e.g. white) institutions. Organized under the auspices of Temple University by Sophie Sanders, a PhD student in art history, and artist Shervon Neckles, it filled two very large ...

Brian Kennedy’s Irish sea at the Ice Box

Brian Kennedy, Passage, detail, installation at the Ice Box, boats, salt Thanks be to the National Lottery for helping Belfast artist Brian Kennedy to bring his installation, Passage, to the Ice Box. Kennedy and the lovely catalog for Passage was also supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (which gets part of its funding from the lottery) and Kennedy’s gallery, the Golden Thread Gallery, I’m not quite sure how Kennedy came to the Ice Box, but he approached them, and they said sure, and no one here believed it would ever happen, said Chris Davison, who works at the ...