Things We’ve Made Since September at Sweatshop

Joseph Hu, Briefly Noted, 2009. acrylic on wood. At Sweatshop in Things We've Made Since September. Joseph has magazines in his show at Pentimenti until Feb. 27

It’s a simple idea for a show–ask a bunch of people in your network to make something new or show something they’ve made very recently.  Voila–a 17-person show with lots of new work, much of it understated with a couple of gems in the mix.

Sweatshop is a new space at the Amber Street Studios in Frankford, run by six artists whose studios adjoin a small common area they’ve dedicated as a gallery.   Gabrielle Lavin, the Galleries at Moore gallery manager, curated this inaugural show.  Notable are Joseph Hu’s two faux New Yorker magazine mock-ups–made of paint on wood.  Hu has a show right now at Pentimenti where you can see more faux real objects — Hu’s got a special touch with the world of false.

Preston Link, Pedestal, 2009. acrylic on wood. Looks like money -- funny money.

Preston Link’s chunky “Pedestal” also made of painted wood, looks like money as envisioned by a child–bigger than life, kind of pretty, and somewhat useless all in all.

Joshua Rickards, Brother and sister, 2009, Flashe on magazine page

Josh Rickards has a wonderful collage painting that seems a new direction…

Linda Yun, After RM, detail from row of 13 polaroids

and Linda Yun’s row of manipulated Polaroid film are tiny Mark Rothko lookalikes — which perfectly complements her recent James Turrell look-alike at Vox Populi.

Sweatshop shows will last for two months.  This one’s gone, ended Jan. 31.  The gallery, 3237 Amber St. 4th floor south, is open Saturdays 1 – 4 pm and by appointment  email afalsefront@gmail.com for more information.  Roberta’s flickr set.  Libby’s flickr set.

Isaac Lin: A Place Near Here and Don Colley: Cascade at Fleisher-Ollman

Isaac Lin collaboration piece. Lin did the drawn embellishment on someone else's photo of what looks like big Sur.

Isaac Lin installed a huge black-painted hut that’s glued together with oogy gray putty that takes over the main space at F-O.  Inside the hut Lin’s colorful cartoon and calligraphy images sprawl on the walls.  Outside the hut a series of large cartoon cutouts ring the room.  We asked John Ollman whether he had sold the black hut and he smiled saying he is trying to tell people it would look great in their living rooms but….Elsewhere in the gallery, Lin is showing more commercially-viable works — photo/drawings. Photo/drawings are works that involve photos by people who agreed to collaborate with the artist and drawings by Lin on the photos.

Isaac Lin's calligraphy is a swarm of gnats!

Lin draws swarms of his signature short calligraphic strokes in many bright colors onto the photos.  It’s like anointing the works with a kind of voodoo magic that’s close to grafitti only more playful.  Some of the photo/drawings are pretty funny –like when Lin’s rain of calligraphy bears down on a figure lying on a field of grass and what’s suggested is the weight of the world about to sit on the man’s chest.  Or when the storm of calligraphy comes barreling in on the Big Sur coast looking like something crazier than a Nino or Nina storm about to hit.  Meanwhile, Don Colley’s print of a scary clown adorns the gallery’s main window overlooking Walnut St.  And on a wall opposite sit a small group of Colley’s ceramic tiles picturing evil clowns.  The tiles were painted at a paint your own pottery joint and all we can say is we wish we had been there when Colley’s evil clowns emerged from the firing alongside the birdies, flowers and hearts on everybody else’s tiles.   Roberta’s flickr for F-O.  Libby’s flickr for F-O.

Don Colley, ceramic tile painted at a paint-your-own pottery place

Sean Stoops: Interstellar Medium at Rebekah Templeton

Sean Stoops, installation at Rebekah Templeton

We hadn’t remembered seeing art by curator Sean Stoops before but maybe that’s just our overloaded and aging memories.  Stoops made a wizardly installation with a projected interstellar video on a beachball.  It is a fabulous high tech/low tech mashup.

Sean Stoops, Interstellar Medium j2010 digital vidio installation, 4:56 mins, with, behind, the aureola around the eclipse.

The projection even creates an elipse-like stream of light on the wall behind it–all of which is very much fun to watch.  It’s a kind of lava lamp experience to see this work and we were longing for a bench to sit on — or mattresses or pillows on the floor.  The piece was generated using some algorithms and all we can say is awesome–get on up there.  The show is up til Feb. 20.  Roberta’s flickr. Libby’s flickr.

At Grizzly Grizzly

Brother and sister artists Joshua Abelow and Tisch Abelow were showing a bunch of remarkably similar, geometric abstractions when we stopped by.  Joshua, whose retro abstractions capture ’50s kitsch-en colors Harvest Gold and Avocado, also did a number of cartoony drawings. Here’s one by brother that broke the sister-brother mold:

Joshua Abelow, Untitled (Self-Portrait with di Chirico), 2007, oil on canvas

We met two of the Grizzly-ites who were opening up the gallery when we got there–Dennis Matthews, who’s a blogger, and Michael Ellyson. Here they are amid next to a large abstraction on the left, by sister Tisch. The gallery guys told us Tisch got the large, thick sheet of paper from Richard Serra, who, on decideding he wasn’t going to use the paper, sold it off cheap.

Dennis Matthews and Michael Ellyson, two of the Grizzly Grizzly team. Also Bruce Wilhelm is part of this endeavor.

Upcoming First Friday at Grizzly Grizzly, which is in the Vox building, 319 N. 11th, 2nd floor, is work by Yevgeniya S. Baras and Robert Scobey.

Ted Larsen at Schmidt Dean

Ted Larsen at Schmidt Dean

Ted Larsen, this piece had fake wood trim from a car and some encaustic blobs. The piece was interactive--you could spin it round with your finger.

Ted Larsen’s sculptural paintings are made from junkyard car body pieces.  The colors you see represent the Mustangs, Chevies, Pontiacs and Cadillacs found on the scrap heaps out west in Santa Fe where Larsen lives.  John Chamberlain took car bodies and mashed them up like crumpled paper — art accidents — in the galleries they inhabited.  Larsen is more of a car parts zen master–part Mark Grotjean and part Mark Rothko.     Roberta’s flickr for Ted Larsen. This show ended Jan. 24, alas.

Drexel’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery shows IPCNY show!

Bitch Delux by Any Malfunction, Buttonwood&Holmes, Inthang; silkscreen on cotton in supermarket meat tray, unique

There were a number of standouts at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery’s current exhibit, New Prints 2009/Autumn, a show of small prints juried by the International Print Center New York.

The highlight is a one-off print, Bitch Delux by Any Malfunction, Buttonwood&Holmes, Inthang. If it’s unique it’s the very opposite of mass production! You can make purchases online for $37, packed in its own styrofoam meat tray (if you can get the website to work).

Marc Blumthal, Mass, 2009, serigraph on inkjet print, ed. 10, 21 x 27 inches, printed and published by the artist

Two Philadelphia artists–Marc Blumthal are included in the exhibit of 60 works. Blumthal’s Mass obliterates a war photograph with a big blob–surreal and funny; Talia Green is showing her retro prints of people with masses of insects for hair. This exhibit is one of the many independent shows affiliated with Philagrafika. Thumbnails and checklist of the work in the show are here.

Amid the upcropping of new galleries like Grizzly Grizzly and The Sweatshop, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. AHN/VHS and its subsidiary gallery, The Cabinet, has closed. It was a good one, so Libby and Roberta have the blues.

Barkley L. Hendricks, Misc. Tyrone (Tyrone Smith), 1976. Oil and magna on linen canvas, 72 x 50 ¼ inches. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.Barkley L. Hendricks, Tequila, 1978. Oil and acrylic on linen canvas, 60 ¾ x 50 ¼ inches. Collection of the Butler Institute for American Art, Youngstown, OH.

I was struck by, how in a funny reversal of expectation, Hendricks’ paintings, with their blank backgrounds and fashion focus, come out of a recent photographic tradition, while so many of the photographs in Personal Views come more directly out of the painting tradition, in which sitters pose with symbols of their worth.

Hendricks’ portraits also reference religious icons, an association that elevates his subjects to sainthood. Some of the paintings glow with an ethereal light; and some of them have iconic gilt backgrounds. Surrounded by nothing but ether, with no details of the urban environment from where they come, these subjects are well-positioned to communicate their self-worth with sartorial splendor. They come without pedigree and create their own individuality. It’s costume as self-invention. And Hendricks loves and admires them for being exactly who they are.

Barkley L. Hendricks, Icon for My Man Superman (Superman never saved any black people – Bobby Seale), 1969, Oil, acrylic, and aluminum leaf on linen canvas, 59 ½ x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, NY.

This is not art as fashion design; this is art with a political subtext. The scale is confrontational, grand and powerful at the same time that the figures are non-threatening. The iconoclasm in Icon for My Man Superman, a portrait of Bobby Seale, takes both Superman and Seale off pedestals, humanizing the cartoon, humorizing the man. Barkley Hendricks loves his subjects and loves people. It comes through loud and clear. He is legitimizing, embodying, making visible. It’s a gentle approach to a social revolution.

Sarah Stolfa, Benton, MS, 2007, Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 30 inches, Edition of 10

Sarah Stolfa’s, Zoe Strauss’ and Justyna Badach’s portraits at Gallery 339 may provide environment in the tradition of Rembrandtian burghers, but their subjects are not exactly burghers. not the usual powerful or moneyed class who can afford to commission Annie Leibovitz.

Justyna Badach, Rourke, 2009, Archival Pigment Print, 23" x 30"; Edition of 3; 31" x 40"; Edition of 3

Badach’s photos of bachelors are sad, the men isolated in forlorn environments of their own choosing and creation. These photos have no lushness to them, but the question of who we are looking at and why is plenty of a draw, with or without the statements Badach displays with the photos.

Sarah Stolfa, Memphis, TN, 2007, Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 30 inches, Edition of 10

In Stolfa’s current series on view, which references Robert Frank and Alec Soth, there’s a question of intention. She lets the subjects project who they are. But she cannot cross the social divide in the same way that she did in her portraits across the bar at McGlinchey’s.  Stolfa means to disconcert her viewer. And I suspect she herself is disconcerted by the kitchen worker with the gun at her waist. In this sense, Stolfa’s portraits are less about the individuals, and more about a cultural divide between northern and southern values.

Zoe Strauss, Bunny, 2001, Archival Pigment Print, 20 x 30 inches

Not so in Strauss’s work, where the people’s faces become a roadmap away from Britney and Joan Rivers, a different vision from the media circus of what it means to be human. Strauss is the Walt Whitman of Philadelphia photographers, singing her love for an entire side of the culture otherwise ignored. But unlike the romanticizer Hendricks, Strauss keeps the hard-scrabble environment and the hard-nosed realism, be it no makeup or too much makeup.

Andrea Modica, Sicily 7, 1990, Platinum/Palladium Contact Print, 8 x 10 inches, Edition of 20

Also in the show at 339 are Andrea Modica’s sociological photographs of Italians who have been largely untouched by glamor shots and the notion of performing for the camera; Rita Bernstein’s painterly photographs that are less about portraiture than mood and light and material; Jessica Todd Harper’s portraits of middle-class comfort, which seem closest to the burgher portraits of the Dutch golden age of painting; and Nadine Rovner’s setups, which are less about the individual people and more about cinematic mise-en-scenes.

a portrait by Josh Rickards

PS: I saw Josh Rickards at BYOTY at Little Berlin while I was thinking about the photos and Hendricks, so then I gave some thought to what Rickards is doing. He, like Hendricks, takes the subject out of a real environment. Sometimes the background is a blank color, but sometimes he creates a flat, abstracted environment that represents a milieu, a time and a place. And his stylized faces, which draw from craft veneer drawing, emphasizes the deadpan ordinariness of his subject. These are not so much personal portraits; they are pictures of a lifestyle and subculture.

Personal Views: Contemporary Photographic Portraiture in Philadelphia is up through November 14, 2009 and Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool is up to January 3, 2010.

Obamarama

Fallon and Rosof, Obama OK book, project of the Zero .1% for Art Commission, in Obamarama at Projects Gallery. Giveaway will be one night only — or as long as supplies last.

We’re in a group show with Elizabeth Bisbing, Jim Brossy, Lenny Campello, James Dupree, Cheryl Harper, Frank Hyder, Tom Judd, Alex Queral, Shelley Spector, Ira Upin and others. Come get your book and say hello. Meanwhile, in another show at Projects feed your libido.

Guilty Pleasures — viewer discretion is advised.

Andy Bloxham, from Guilty Pleasures at Projects

“You Open so Late, You Close so Early” is Amy Adams first outing with the Fleisher/Ollman winter invitational, and although she is only one part of the curatorial team (see comment at end of post), there clearly is a difference.

Previous shows were kind of like the show titles–daring you to figure out what the hell they meant, but invariably they showed you work you were really excited to see. In its place is a show that feels like it belongs in Fleisher/Ollman, for starters. For seconders, it feels like dead-on Philadelphia at its finest (most of the artists are Philly folks). In other words, there’s more of an interest in pleasing here–and please it does. (I’m not saying I didn’t love the exhibits that William Pym helped curate. But they were more uneven, with big surprises that sometimes were exciting and on target, sometimes were just unclear and uncooked).

I’m having a little war within myself as I try to pick out my favorites in this year’s emerging artists invitational. To put it another way, there was a lot in this exhibit that I loved. (If you think you already read this post, it’s because Roberta wrote about it for the Weekly. But I couldn’t deprive myself of writing about it, too).

So here, in no particular order, are my top picks.

Nicholas Lenker, Always Remember Your Place, 2008. clay, glaze, luster; enamel, wood. 12x14x14 inches

Nicholas Lenker, long a personal favorite, appears to have emerged from an identity crisis and is back mucking around in his natural medium–clay. But he’s using some of the stuff he was doing in other media and making sense of it now.

His Greek-oid trophy-like vases are top-notch wifty, weird, and beautiful, with humanimals, beasts, and exhortatory cryptic writings that have a medieval torture and mythic kind of tone. The Masons ain’t got nothing on Nick when it comes to secret codes and rituals. The work is hell-fire and back again. Brrr. It gives me the chills.

Unlike some of the work about to appear at the ICA in their upcoming show on clay, this doesn’t have the exuberant juiciness of Betty Woodman, Robert Arneson or Kathy Butterly. Nor does it have the financial politics of Jane Irish’s work, about to open at Locks. This is dark stuff that brings to mind funerary urns and museum displays and extreme Olympian athletes of ancient Greece. I thought it was great.

Semiotics of the Alchemical Forest, 2004-2008, oil on panel, 11 x 11 inches (The four year stretch reflects Thornton’s practice of going back in to each painting, over and over again.)

Shawn Thornton, another long-held personal fave of mine, brings visionary obsession to his paintings on panel. It’s Paul Laffoley on acid (oops, Laffoley also looks like he’s on acid, but Shawn takes it way further) in a video game world in which all the layers are visible at once. Try to find your way and you’re lost in Shawn’s mental mandalas, which in part are a product of a tumor on his pineal gland and the therapy that ensued. Honest, you can’t write stuff like this and get away with it! Some of the pieces have portraits in them (one’s a self portrait) that remind me of Russian icons.

Josh Rickards, My Dad if he Lived up North, 2008, acrylic, flashe & oil on paper, 36 x 36 inches

And speaking of icons, Josh Rickards’ ultra-flat portraits with tumescent noses convey a lot without a lot of information. The deadpan plaid shirt of My Dad if he Lived up North, and the deadpan striped robe of Drug Rug are each just flat pattern on a generic shape. But the choices of information nail what Rickards is getting at. I want to relate these lumpy humans to the elegant Pop figures of Barkley Hendricks with those minimal backgrounds and fashion (or in Rickard’s case, anti-fashion) sensibility.

Mark Stockton, Pete 1974, 2008, graphite on BFK Rives paper, 26 x 22 inches

Also in the portraits realm, Mark Stockton’s confrontational portraits of Patty Hearst (her mug shots), Pete Rose (holding his crotch) and a young, pumped-up, 8-foot tall drawing of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a body-building pose–they all combine beautiful drawing with a sort of Pop culture horror! Really, seeing the three in such ludicrous detail is simply chilling. The highlighting of the very thing they are each most unappealing for is a smart move–and a commentary on the celebrity circus.

In the realm of sculpture, there’s a surprising amount of wood. Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala’s bunyanesque Sledge Hammer is similar to a piece they showed at their Fleisher Challenge, but this one takes the idea even further, and adds a touch of anti-macho commentary (at least that’s how I read it). That same sly undercutting of macho extremes is personified in Long Chuck, an altered digital image of an endless sneaker. Both pieces out-Oldenburg Claes Oldenburg with a lot less bombast and a lot more material pleasure. The work carries a self-deprecating, boyish charm that might fool you into thinking that’s all there is. Not so.

David Clayton, When I Grow Up, 2007, plywood, grass paper, ABS plastic, silk flowers, 30 x 16 x 12 inches

While we’re in the zone of boyish charm, David Clayton’s models of Americana and space are first cousins to Nick Paparone’s blow-up pickle in a box and his orbiting fried eggs in front of a digital print of space. At the other extreme, Charles Hobbs, who used to make models, surprised with ultra-crafted wood snakes and tree forms, all calling for a caress of the hand.

David Clayton, Neil Armstrong Dreams of Ohio, 2006, found object, pink foam, ceramic dry material, 8 x 14 x 20 inches

The one woman in the show, C. Pazia Mannella, offered a sort of counterpoint to the Dufalas’ Long Chuck fashion statement–a boa of multiple sewn-together zippers, displayed as a giant ruffle across the floor.

Also in the exhibit, Jeremy Drummond’s USA map, a bird’s eye view of an “ex-urban development” for each state, and Alex Lukas’ drawn-on prints of flooded cityscapes and other infrastructure disasters. Yikes! The end is near.

All in all, a great show. It’s up until Jan. 17!

(I tried to use images that Roberta didn’t use, so if you want to see more, check out her post, and also you can look at my Flickr set, as usual).

Shawn Thornton, one of five paintings in the show, oil on panel, 11×11″

Sly and serpentine works turn Fleisher-Ollman’s sixth annual emerging artist show into an Eden with bite. F-O is known for exhibiting the works of visionary outsider artists like James Castle.  But in this annual winter emerging artist exhibit it’s unusual to see a visionary.  So painter Shawn Thornton is the surprise. 

Thornton at the opening reception, posing with two of his works.

His colorful, heavily-worked oil paintings of complex diagrammatic interweavoven lines, nodes, dots and symbols are like 2-D Rube Golderg machines without the punchline at the end.  Several of the five paintings look like super tricked-out gameboards — Candyland or Parchesi for four-dimensional thinkers. The artist – (BFA 2000, VCU) who in 2006 had brain surgery and radiation therapy for a tumor on his pineal gland – is puzzling out life’s flow, energy and meaning right in front of your eyes.  Deeply personal yet somehow universal, the works are fascinating and gorgeous.
 

Steven and Billy Dufala, Long Chuck, 2008. archival digital print, ed. 5. 41×82″ That’s Ann Northrup caught studying the Photoshop whizbang image.

Steven and Billy Dufala‘s digitally-rendered photo of an improbably-long sneaker is another puzzle.  The iconic trick shoe curls into a snaky S curve that evokes snakes, skateboarding and roller coasters,  This virtuoso Photoshopping of a dirty sneaker into a pristine icon is funny and unexpected from the two makers of rough-hewn installations like their Fleisher Challenge show last year.  

Steven and Billy Dufala, Sledge Hammer. 2008. steel and oak. 33 1/4 x 12 1/2 x 6 1/2″

Also unlikely is the Dufala sculpture, Sledge Hammer.  With a a beautifully-finished wood shaft that looks like it’s an entire small tree trunk, the double-headed hammer is a fairy tale of a piece – it may be a lesson about double-dealing but the sculpture is pure seduction. 

Nick Lenker, Sacrifices Will Be Made, 2008. clay, glaze, enamel, wood, metal. 16x8x8″
Always Remember Your Place, 2008. clay, glaze, luster; enamel, wood. 12x14x14″

Next to the hammer — and all the more fragile for being there – are Nick Lenker‘s two ceramic pots in a glass vitrine.  The pieces mimic ancient Grecian urns with beautiful repeat patterns and central images of nudes or draped figures in some ambiguous narrative.  But the wowza pots are 21st Century constructs – the images are made with digital ceramic decals. 
 

Nick Paparone with his IHop special universe, The Long Now, 2008. laminated poster, aluminum foil, carpet, motor and light bulb. 78x24x25″

Nick Paparone‘s mischievous installation of a spinning breakfast special (2 eggs, pancakes, sausage and bacon on a white plate) in front of a laminated poster of the universe explores reality today.  The plastic breakfast is as real as the impossible picture of the universe, and the whole thing is comical.  Truly we are Lost in Space. 

Josh Rickards, Drug Rug, 2008. acrylic and oil on panel. 21×22″

Josh Rickards paintings of people with mutant noses (think Ed Paschke) and 70s hair are wonderfully deadpan; and Charles Hobbs‘ hand-carved snakes and wood installations are beautiful.

Mark Stockton, Mr. Olympia 1974. 2008. charcoal on paper, 104×60″
 
Also good are Mark Stockton‘s figure drawings, especially the 8 ½ ft. tall charcoal drawing of a young, monstrously pumped up Arnold Schwartzennegger; David Clayton‘s mini landscapes; C. Pazia Mannella‘s snake-like zipper constructions; and Jeremy Drummond‘s aerial photos of snaking suburban housing developments.

Charles Hobbs, Untitled. wood, 44x40x4″

Jeremy Drummond, 65-Point Plan for Sustainable Living, 2008. 65 lambda prints face and back-mounted plexi

C. Pazia Mannella, Your Grace, 2008. zippers, thread.

Alex Lukas’ untitled book pages like this one feature a post-deluge metropolis right out of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.  2008. ink, acrylic, gouache and silkscreen on book page. 10×14″

With beauty, virtuoso craftsmanship and dark humor throughout, the exhibition’s an unexpected holiday present.

“You Open So Late, You Close So Early.”
Through Jan. 17.
Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, 1616 Walnut St., suite 100.
215.545.7562.

Crazy Like a Vox
First Friday has moved out of Old City.

Old City is becoming a hard sell on First Fridays. Chinatown North galleries Vox Populi, Copy, Screening, Space 1026 and (coming soon) the Fabric Workshop and Museum constitute a critical mass of openings that are far more exciting than what’s on display in the old art neighborhood.

Max Lawrence’s electronic installation (detail) from 2006 at Vox Populi.

The coming together of Vox, Copy and Screening at 319A N. 11th St. makes that building the new locus of First Friday calisthenics. What you see doesn’t always please the eye, but it almost always provokes. All three venues have strong programs with cutting-edge video, audio and installation works. And Vox, a nonprofit cooperative, takes its mission to educate seriously. If you can’t make the opening, or if what you see puzzles you, check out the gallery’s monthly curatorial walkthrough.

Max Lawrence (r) and Libby in his current work-in-progress installation at Vox Populi the night of the opening. Lawrence is also a Space 1026 member and founder of the music/book publishing house Free News.

Vox members Micah Danges, Maximillian Lawrence and Joshua Rickards are on tap this month with strong showings in the video lounge and Fourth Room (for visiting artists). Because a cooperative gallery allows its members to blue sky it, you’ll occasionally see something like Lawrence’s audio-electronic installation which is set up like a low-tech Santa’s workshop. The piece was so “in-progress” at the opening it was hard to imagine, but that’s part of the point: Come see the tinkerer at work in his shop.

Lawrence is a self-taught electronics geek. “Radio Shack was my school,” he says, showing off some small beaded speakers, a keyboard and the circuitry that someday soon will light up and make noise when activated. Lawrence has shown interactive electronica previously, and it’ll be interesting to see what he pulls together.

Joshua Rickards painting in his show at Vox.

Joshua Rickards’ portrait paintings of imaginary double-faced or double-headed hippies (and Charles Darwin)—each with the oddest bowling-pin-like nose ever drawn—continue to intrigue. While not exactly mocking in tone, Rickards’ brightly colored cartoon-like works look at other eras with bemusement.

Rickards has three portraits of Charles Darwin in his show. He told us at the opening he’s interested in how people say they believe in Darwin (or don’t believe in Darwin), like Darwin is a kind of god or religion.

Micah Danges’ fake holograms and faux crystals in a fern bed are funny, although beyond humor their meaning is unclear.

Micah Danges. I believe this is one of the faux holograms. A little bit Blair Witch-y.

Vox’s Fourth Room exhibits have historically been some of the best in town, and this month’s work—Drift-a-Weight by Stephanie Dotson—doesn’t dissapoint. The piece has paintings with home-crafted charms on what might be driftwood, and a shamanistic wall sculpture with spools of what looks like crepe paper (suggesting wheels of fortune or industry) against a backdrop of cut-wood pieces that fan out like Mummers on the wall.

Stephanie Dotson’s large shamanistic/Mummer-esque piece at Vox’s Fourth Room.

Kara Hearn, Oriana Fox and Lauren Friedman in the video lounge—in a show curated by Rickards—are solo performers who reconfigure movies and television in hilarious non-Hollywood style. The deadpan Hearn takes on movies like Fame and E.T.

Kara Hearn in one of her one-woman re-imaginings of a Hollywood movie.

With all the talent at Vox, you could spend your whole evening there. Good beer too.

Micah Danges, Maximillian Lawrence, Joshua Rickards, Stephanie Dotson, Kara Hearn, Oriana Fox & Lauren Friedman
Through Dec. 30. Free. Vox Populi, 319A N. 11th St., third fl. 215.238.1236.

Here’s some of what we’re excited about. For gallery times and locations, check the links to the gallery websites.

David Kessler‘s Shadow World videos and Candace Karch’s black and white photographs at Bambi.

At Vox Pop, members Josh Rickards (image above), Max Lawrence and Micah Danges, plus more in the 4th room, the video lounge and in Screening!!

Jane Irish, Room with Blue Vases/VVAW San Francisco, 2006. oil on Tyvec with raised letters and modeling paste, 5 x 8 feet
Irish is at Locks Gallery along with etchings by Lucien Freud and work by Elizabeth Osborne.

Keith Newhouse, Lip Construction 34″ x 26.5″. Newhouse has a show at Rodger Lapelle Galleries.

And don’t forget the Space 1026 auction!

MY VOX IN A BOX

Brent Wahl, Tear, at Vox Populi’s new members’ show. Tear is nicely ambiguous–it’s a tear drop shape but the dance it does is like a tear on a tear. And the red color makes it a blood drop which connotes a tear in the skin…or other bodily organ.

Vox Populi’s new members show romps in a playground where the scary, the existential and the humorous are separated by a heartbeat, and emotion swings with the wind. Brent Wahl’s Tear animation—in which a solitary red teardrop dances crazily in a white void, then swan dives out of sight—is funny, sad, seductive and lovable. Andrew Suggs’ shiny black tabletop with music speakers and a chain interweaves thoughts of teen fan worship. Like Julianna Foster’s back-lit flower pictures, James Johnson’s digital photos and Jonathan Prull’s sci-fi warrior sculpture, these pristine works are Death Star-perfect. Their self-confidence is a little terrifying.

Kara Crombie, video, Yo Yo’s Spinner, DVD 4 min. 2007

On the other hand, Kara Crombie’s video and Anna Neighbor’s photos are earthy and earnest, while both Jamie Dillon’s striped plaster cones and Nick Paparone’s painted trompe d’oeil bulletin board evoke the magic circus that is art.

Josh Richards, Couple, oil and acrylic on panel. 2007. Rickards moved to Philadelphia recently. He was part of Team Lump, recently featured at Space 1026 in Road Show.

Josh Rickards’ paintings of Simpsons-style hippies and Andrew David James’ poured and splattered abstract paintings thumb their nose at convention, creating perfect pictures in their own way. This show’s combination of angst and sunshine is downright captivating.

Nick Paparone, Discovering Myth, wood, canvas, paint, hinges. 2007. Trompe l’oeil painting, propped open at the back by a row of duracell batteries. I thought the work was a bulletin board even in spite of the fact that the propped open back clearly gives the magic away showing it to be canvas stretched over stretchers. Paparone commissioned the painting which was done by a trompe l’oeil painter. I’m sorry i didn’t get the name.

“It Was Easy. It Was All New.”
Through Aug. 29. Vox Populi, 319A N. 11th St., third fl. 215.238.1236.