Latest issue of Nicola Midnight St. Claire
On September 11, the newest issue of the Nicola Midnight St. Claire came out. In this installment, there are some articles on Katie Murken’s installation Continua as well as Bodega’s show Mobile Device. There is also a video “centerfold” and a curious take on a relic from 9/11 on display in the Penn Museum’s show Excavating Ground Zero: Fragments from 9/11. And in breaking news ...this just in from Matt Kalasky, editor of the Nicola: “Tonight at 7 PM in Temple Gallery the editors of the Nicola Midnight St.Claire will be presenting selected readings from our past and current issues. If you don’t have plans, I would encourage you to come. If nothing else it should be really interesting. Here is a link with slightly more information. Hope to see you there.”

Bruce Conner film screenings at International House

Bruce Conner

On September 23 and 24, International House will be hosting Bruce Conner: The Art of Montage. This is a rare opportunity to see some of this iconic filmmaker’s works in their intended 16 mm format. There will also be a Q&A with Bruce Jenkins and Michelle Silva after the screenings.

Delaware County Community College drawing show
We told you about the opportunity, now see the show! The gallery at Delaware County Community College will be hosting its drawing exhibition 215/610 juried by Kate Kraczon of ICA. It runs from September 21 until October 28.

SXSE Photo Magazine
Philly photographer Ellie Brown is working with a new online and print photo magazine entitled South by Southeast (SXSE). It is a regional magazine for the Southeastern U.S. However, a local artist already helping out with the publication is proof that there is sure to be an overlap with the North and Mid-Atlantic. Check it out and keep them on your radar!

Urban farming documentary screening at Dock Street

On September 20 there will be a screening of the film Urban Roots at Dock Street Brewery. The film explores an urban farming collective in Detroit and emphasizes community and sustainability. Oh, and they also have a very snazzy, limited-edition poster by none other than Shepard Fairey!

Help paint a Phillies mural!

Artist Dave McShane will be at Sunday’s Phillie’s game to sign up Phillies fans to help him paint the new mural. Come out, see the ballgame, and sign up to help make some art — and actually paint on the mural at the game (they use those parachute cloth panels to paint on and then glue them to the wall to make the mural). McShane said in an email that if you aren’t going to the game but would like to participate there will be a lot more paint days scheduled in the future that will be opened to the public. We will let you know.

Penn Design Fine Arts lectures
We told you about the Tyler lecture series last time. Now, equal time for the University of Pennsylvania, which will be holding public lectures at ICA and Meyerson Hall on the UPenn campus in West Philadelphia. Some interesting people will be speaking including Kota Ezawa, Matthew Day Jackson, and Robert Pruitt. Check the full schedule here.

Opportunities

Vox Populi‘s new AUX performance space will be accepting submissions of written work that can be performed, read, screened, experienced and last about 10 minutes. Submit ideas to becky@voxpopuligallery.org by October 15.

Pterodactyl is having a Moleskine project of ideas that you usually keep hidden from plain view in your journal. But don’t wait long! Submissions are actually due today (September 16)!!

Artist News

Michael Konrad is a new 40th Street Artist-in-Residence. He will get a one year residency and studio space at 40th and Chestnut as well as participate in teaching, leading workshops, and exhibiting work. (Roberta and Libby interviewed Konrad for an artblog radio episode a while back–when he had his Fleisher Challenge show).

"Memorial" by Joe Boruchow

Joe Boruchow is everywhere these days! He just snagged a billboard space that he will design for Krain Outdoor Advertising at 15th and Cherry.

Diane Burko will be participating in The Value of Water exhibit at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York through March 2012.

Isaac Lin has a new mural at the Chinese Christian Church & Center Mitzie Mackenzie Playground 927 Spring Street.

Norm Paris has his first solo New York show The Wall Stands Still at The Proposition.

Glamorosi, spouse of City Paper and Inquirer writer A.D. Amorosi, won the Tea as Art design competition as part of Verdant Tea.

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)

Thursday, Sept. 23 films by the Lumière Brothers and Georges Méliès. The beginnings of French cinema that established many of its conventions. Méliès particularly loved special effects.

George Méliès still from 'A Trip to the Moon'

Wednesday, Sept. 29 Michael Snow’s Corpus Callosum (2002); the artist will be  present. Snow is one of the most influential of experimental filmmakers who has also worked in painting, sculpture, photography, sound and  music.  Earlier in the evening the Slought Foundation is opening an exhibition of recent work by Snow and John Oswald.  Oswald is a fellow Torontonian who is best known within music and dance worlds; the duo will perform together at I House on Thursday, Sept. 30.

Michael Snow still from 'Corpus Callosum'

Saturday, Oct. 9 Mona Hatoum’s Measures of Distance (1988) and Shirin Neshat’s Women Without Men (2009) This last of three nights of films by women directors from North Africa and the Middle East features work by Hatoum, better known as a sculptor and installation artist, and the first feature-length film by Neshat, whose previous short films were usually shown as multi-screen, gallery installations. The Hatoum film is based on letters between the artist, living in Britian, and her mother in Beirut.  Not only her first feature but also the first to follow a clear narrative, Neshat’s film is based on the banned novel by Shahmush Parsipur, set in Iran in 1953; I saw a short version of the film at the Cisneros Collection in Miami last year, and am very much looking forward to the full-length version.

Mona Hatoum still from 'Measures of Distance'

Shirin Neshat still from 'Women Without Men'

Friday, Oct. 22  Teinosuke Kinugasa’s silent A Page of Madness (1926), with a live score for string quartet and koto, bass clarinet and shakuhachi played by Ensemble N_JP. I House describes this as one of the most acclaimed, but least seen, films in history. The music , commissioned by I House, was written by Gene Coleman and Akikazu Nakamura.

Teinosuke Kinugasa still from 'A Page of Madness'

Thursday, Nov. 18 Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927). One of several notable urban film portraits from the 20s which include Sheeler and Strand’s Manhatta and Dziga Vertov’s  Man With a Movie Camera.

Walter Ruttmann still from 'Berlin, Symphony of a Great City'

Tuesday, Feb.  2, 6 pm YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, a Seoul based web-art group, will be speaking at Temple where their work is part of Philagrafika.

126 AUDITORIUM, Temple University Architecture building,  1947 North 12th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122
Free and open to the public

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

Who wouldn’t want to hear from artists who did a web piece called CUNNILINGUS IN N0RTH K0REA?  You can see it, and more of their work at their site.

Douglas Crimp. Photo Mathias Danbolt

Thursday, Feb.  4, 6:30 Courtesy of the ICA , Douglas Crimp, visual studies theorist and Aids activist will talk on Andy Warhol’s Paul Swan which will be screened following the talk.

International House,  3701 Chestnut Street

Free

"John Wayne" by Marisol, 1963, mixed media Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, Art © Marisol Escobar

Friday, Feb.  5-Sat., Feb.  6  Women and Pop Art Symposium is organized in conjunction with the “Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958-1968″ exhibition at U Arts .

Terra Hall, Connelly Auditorium (8th floor), 211 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102

Free and open to the public

Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. R.S.V.P.  to Kate Johnson, 215-717-6145 or kjohnson@uarts.edu

Then Next week I’m off to the College Art Association Annual Meeting in Chicago. Feb.  10-13.  For details, or to register, see CAA’s  site.

Some Philadelphia area participants are: Elisabeth Agro, Kathleen A. Foster, and Timothy Rub, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philip Glahn and Alicia Imperiale, Tyler School of Art,  Arthur J. Di Furia and Maureen Pelta, Moore College of Art and Design, Rachele Riley, University of the Arts, Christiane Hertel, Bryn Mawr College, Rachel Oberter, Haverford College, Jennifer Borland, Lisa Bourla, David Brownlee, Alison Chang, Andre Dombrowski, Ellery Foutch, Jane Irish, George Marcus, Larry Silver, Miya Tokumitsu, University of Pennsylvania, Anne Verplanck, independent scholar and Janine Mileaf, Swarthmore College
I expect to report on the meeting. 

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.

I asked Tyler Kline to join me at the January 21 International House screening of two films on art/skateboarding cultures since he comes out of a Portland skateboarding and art scene of a younger generation than Aaron Rose’s Beautiful Losers (2008) and I thought he could provide footnotes (which he did). Rose’s film made for an interesting comparison with Ted Passon’s Space 1026 (2007) and told quite a different story of how the art and community developed. Rose portrayed Margaret Kilgallen, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Chris Johanson and Harmony Korine as self-described misfits no one would talk to in high school who were looking for love (or acceptance) so created intentionally-accessible art, Nike contracts and all, to attract their own community of appreciative viewers.

Thomas Campbell in a still from Aaron Rose’s Beautiful Losers.

Passon, on the other hand, portrayed Space 1026 as a group of art school grads who wanted to make art and hang out together and managed to find a way to do so. Passon’s short film was screened first and I suspect the local interest was the reason for the large and enthusiastic audience; the pairing made an entertaining program.


A November, 2007 event at Space 1026.

Contemplative Minimalism

Douglas Witmer’s installation, Joseph’s Coat at Philadelphia Cathedral.

Douglas Witmer’s work can be seen at Philadelphia Cathedral through Feb. 28. Joseph’s Coat is inspired by the story from Genesis; it consists of four large unstretched canvases which Witmer created for the space. They hang like tapestries below the stained glass windows on the North wall of the Cathedral. Along the opposite wall he’s installed five conventionally-stretched paintings and another on an adjacent wall. All push the meaning of geometry through their siting, emphasizing the contemplative quality of their reductive means. Surprisingly I found the paintings created independently to work better in the space than those created for it; their backgrounds of uneven gray washes pick up the neutral stucco of the Cathedral walls. Seeing them in the quiet, airy space with the sound of water dripping from a nearby baptismal font, it was easy to appreciate the play of the sharply-defined stripes against the background washes which bleed unevenly onto the canvases and occasionally seep onto the edges where they wrap around the stretchers.


Douglas Witmer’s work at Philadelphia Cathedral.

First Friday Footnotes

Oyvind Fahlstrom detail of Map of the World (1972). The Brazilian/Swedish artist created maps based on political rather than geographical topography and created his own interactive versions of monopoly-style board games.

My first stop Friday night was Basekamp which is exhibiting An Atlas (through March 15) which they describe as a traveling exhibition of artists working with “radical cartography”—a practice that uses maps and mapping to promote social change (previously reviewed by Jacob Hellman here). Lots of reading and the expected left-wing critique of militarism, big business, etc., but interesting as far as it goes; I only hope visitors realize that these ideas have been around a long time. Oyvind Fahlstrom made anarchic political maps in the early 1970s and Mark Lombardi produced highly-researched charts of interlinked financial and political networks in the 1990s. There’s a huge amount of this material available on the web. For one example, see here.

The exhibition was an interesting bookend with Field Reports: Documents and Strategies from Land Arts of the American West, currently at Temple Gallery, which documents a workshop for Tyler students in the American Southwest as well as a Philadelphia-based mapping project, both run by Chris Taylor, director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech University.

Mark Lombardi detail of George W. Bush, Harken Energy, and Jackson Stephens, ca. 1979-90 (5th Version) (1999).

Benjamin Pierce still from Transfigurations, at Painted Bride.

Benjamin Pierce’s Transfiguration is on view at Painted Bride through March 15, courtesy of InLiquid.com. Pierce is showing several videos along with still images; all present visual interpretations of songs which Pierce sings a capella as he draws in light and reveals hints of his figure manipulating (dancing with) the light source. Pierce said he doesn’t consider the stills to be independent works; but I think he should reconsider. They are the more poetic, despite being still and silent.

Vasily Kandinsky. Motif from Improvisation 25 (plate, folio 16) from Klänge (Sounds) by the artist. (1913). Woodcut from an illustrated book of fifty-six woodcuts, composition (irreg.): 8 9/16 x 8 11/16″. Photo courtesy of Museum of Modern Art.

The equivalence of music and visual imagery goes back to the beginning of abstraction, embodied in Kandinsky’s illustrated book, Klange (Sounds) of 1913 and running through Thomas Wilfred’s clavilux of the 1920s and abstract animated films by Oskar Fischinger and others. It was the subject of a 2005 exhibition, Visual Music, organized by the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. Pierce’s light drawing also recalls the famous Gijon Mili portrait of Picasso drawing with light.

A Lumia image created by one of Thomas Wilfred’s color organs, which he called the clavilux.

Painted Bride’s next exhibition, Synasthesia (April 3-May 16), organized by Anabelle Rodriguez will explore the subject further.

Upcoming FLUX Fundraiser

I ran into Chris Golas at the Vox opening who gave me the hot-off-the-presses poster for the Feb. 19th Flux Fundraiser at Kung Fu Necktie. I imagine the details will be on the Flux website (though they aren’t up as I write).

And now for something completely different

I, can’t resist passing on a link forwarded by my friend, Barbara Tannenbaum, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Akron Art Museum. It’s for a toy based on airport security checkpoints, and I can’t decide whether it’s the height (depth?) of decadence or just a reprise of the sort of mad paranoia that gave us grade school drills in the 1950s where we got under our desks and covered our heads in case we should face nuclear bombs. Anyway, check out the customer responses, some of which are clearly tongue in cheek.

A piece from 2005 by Margaret Kilgallen, one of the artists to be featured in a film at I-House.

International House has always been one of Philadelphia’s best venues for film (a hidden one, to judge from the small regular attendance) and they’ve been adding art, courtesy of InLiquid.com which has been presenting video work in I-House’s lobby space. They’ve also been showing ever more films about art and artists. I missed one I really wanted to see in November on L.A.’s Ferus Gallery but we’ll get chance this week to see a film on a current generation of California artists. Beautiful Losers (2008) by Aron Rose screens on Wednesday, Jan. 21 at 8. Featuring Margaret Kilgallen, Barry McGee, et al, according to the folks at I-House it speaks to what happens when the “outside” becomes “in.”

Installation view of JUNGLELAND, a exhibition by Matt Leines, William Buzzell, Alex Lukas and Joe Buzzell at Space 1026 last April. The Philly collective is the subject of a short film to be shown at I-House.

For something closer to home they’ll also be showing Ted Passon’s short film on Space 1026 as part of the same program. And if you arrive at 6pm you can catch the opening of Charles Hobbs’ exhibition Head in the Clouds as well as Virgil Wong’s video installation, Billions of Robots Heal the Human Heart (both courtesy of InLiquid.com).

The real Basquiat in 1985.

On Thuesday, Feb. 26 at 7pm they screen Basquiat (1996) which I’ve seen and recommend. It was Julian Schnabel’s filmmaking debut and stars David Bowie in a good portrayal of Andy Warhol. This one’s presented in connection with the Free Library’s One Film, One Philadelphia and is free for students with Ids.

Jeffrey Wright plays the artist in Schnabel’s film Basquiat.

Another Artist as Curator: Vik Muniz at MoMA

Gerhard Richter as done by Vik Muniz with paint samples could have been included in MoMA’s recent exhibition, Color Chart; Reinventing Color 1950 to today.

What connects a piece of bubblewrap, a felt suit by Joseph Beuys, a slide carousel and a small oil sketch of a beach scene by Odilon Redon? Rebus, currently at MoMA (through Feb. 23). Not Rauschenberg’s painting of that name (which may currently hang in the galleries, I didn’t check) but the latest Artist’s Choice exhibition selected by Vik Muniz (I recently referred to this exhibition series here). It’s like entering the mind of an artist as he free-associates. Muniz was allowed to select from the entire museum collection, hence the manufactured objects from the design department (the bubblewrap and slide projector, a paper clip and a plastic bucket) as well as paintings (Redon and Ruscha), sculpture (Koons and Giacometti), drawings (Bochner, Polke), and lots of photography, from the commercial to Bill Brandt.

Vik Muniz suggests a Rubic cube might fill the space in Giacometti’s Hand Holding a Void.

Anyone familiar with Muniz’s own work knows that he loves art which he recreates in various improbable media, then photographs: a Caravaggio made from a plate of spagetti, Namuth’s portrait of Pollock in chocolate syrup (a reaction to his mother’s injunction not to play with his food?), a prop piece by Richard Serra in dust (Muniz gives a wonderful narrative of the process that lead him to his work in Reflex; A Vik Muniz Primer, Aperture, 2007). The wonder is that the curators ever got him out of their store rooms. Muniz arranges the 82 works in a linear progression, each piece selected in relation to the one before, so the Polke drawing of what looks like a brick is followed by a brick-shaped piece of laminated plywood which is followed by an Outerbridge photograph of a similar form.

I found some other possibilities on Google Images: candidates for Governor of Ohio, already associated with the Giacometti, above, by Princess Sparkle Pony, on whose blog it resides.

But the relationships aren’t merely formal. Some are associated by use: a Rubik cube, manipulated with the hands would fit perfectly into the empty space of the sculpture that follows it: Giacometti’s Hands Holding the Void (Invisible Object). Others were already associated: William Wegman’s Dropping Milk is a parody of Edgerton’s famous Milk Drop Coronet, which precedes it.

Many of us make these associations all the time. I’m prone to see art in the everyday: when shown the image on-screen during a sigmoidoscopy all I could think of was Mona Hatoum (I was told later that her piece involved an endoscopy; oh well), a bunch of asparagus makes me think of Manet and Hans Haacke, and a pile of construction materials covered by a tarp bound with rope invokes Christo, of course. But the chance to follow someone else’s string of associations was a delight, and I’m grateful that Muniz was willing to share them with us.

MoMA has taken all the poster spots along the escalators at the nearby 53rd St. subway stop to advertise the exhibition; they use details of Muniz’s various selections for Rebus. They could have given that space to the artist, himself. Now that would be another idea for MoMA’s programming!

John Zurier

There’s fast painting and there’s slow painting; and some of what looks fast is actually the product of long labor. Two exhibitions in Old City show slow painting which reveals its labor, and both require slow looking.

Just as the eyes must light-adjust to see anything in the dark, they must light-adjust to John Zurier’s series of Night Paintings at Larry Becker Contemporary Art (through April 19). A dozen 30″ x 20 “ paintings, all in distemper on un-primed linen, at first yield nothing but inky blueness. Some have green borders, usually along the left side, but it takes longer to see that all the paintings reveal the history of their making: horizontal strokes cross the weft of vertical ones, with the occasional break into less regular brushwork. And bits of the dark linen show, as well as other colors which peek through here and there.

John Zurier Night 26 (2007), distemper on linen, 30″ x 20″

Zurier mixes his own paints, using a water-based glue medium (known as distemper, or Tuschlein) that was most-commonly employed in the 15th century and earlier, often for uses where wood panels would have been too heavy (such as processional banners). The glue can derive from boiling animal bones or parchment, or from fish bones. Distemper paintings have no ground, and are not varnished – yielding a chalky surface. Zurier chose it because he likes the qualities of colors it yields.

While Zurrier was thinking of the night sky, the paintings remind me of looking into the ocean at night, where waves create patterns within the blackness and occasional flashes of light reveal a fish The metaphor of nature’s infinity is the same, and the paintings capture some of the serenity that comes from contemplation of our very small place within it.

The entire exhibition has been selected by Okwui Enwezor to be shown at the 7th Gwangju (Korea) Biennale in September.

Installation of Kiki Gaffney’s work at Pentimenti Gallery

Kiki Gaffney’s largest work in her current exhibition at Pentimenti Gallery, Studio Wall (acrylic, oil and graphite on mylar, 47″ x 89″) assumes the form of a collage, only rather than incorporating found materials she painted detailed imagery that suggests she has incorporated pieces of printed fabric in the compositions. She teases us with her skill as a draughtsman, rendering different materials that appear to be pasted on a wall covered with random dribbles and bits of graffiti.

Hers is a thoroughly modern sensibility, with fragments of figuration within essentially abstract works. In a number of her paintings she appears to have learned about constructing a surface from Jasper Johns’ later work; she may also learned something about luscious paint handling from Johns.

a detail of Chere Krakovsky The Neighbors Next Door, a week-long performance at International House

I like talking to taxi drivers and occasionally to my neighbors on planes. Those situations create a finite intimacy; I will never see those people again, so I needn’t worry about making an impression or where the conversation might lead. New York artist, Chere Krakovsky has created a similar intimacy with The Neighbors Next Door, a week-long performance at International House (10 am-11 pm, Monday, March 17 through Sunday, March 23). She’s moved the contents of her Lower East Side kitchen to a public space, just beyond the lobby at International House, and she’s happy to entertain you. The piece isn’t scripted; whatever happens happens. Krakovsky only promised to be in residence the entire week.

Some of Chere Krakovsky’s visitors during The Neighbors Next Door at International House

Krakovsky is acting out her fantasy of an open-door policy: drop-ins are always welcome to sit at her kitchen table, take tea or cookies or chocolate or, if you are lucky, a meal. I spent two hours; we talked about Philadelphia and New York, how she had come to performance art, the Fringe and Live Arts Festival, who she was having to dinner that night. By the end we were such good friends that I’d shown her a picture of my cat.

After the guests have left Chere Krakovsky’s performance piece, The Neighbors Next Door

Roberta plans to drop in tomorrow and will report on it, so I’ll leave now, but the invitation is in your hands.