Itʼs always nice to walk into a minimal, simply curated show. I hate walking into a show that looks jumbled with too many pieces, or pieces that are too big for the space, etc…Grizzly Grizzlyʼs current show, Southern Cross, is a great example of how to curate a well balanced, comfortable show without overwhelming the space, allowing you to engage with the work in an uncluttered and personal way.

Gallery View

No doubt Grizzly Grizzly could be easily overwhelmed, as itʼs perhaps the smallest gallery in Philly, maybe 150 square feet at best. Still, despite the limited space, when a show is hung correctly and its curation is sound, the art is allowed to breath and a successful show is given life.

Southern Cross, the theme and title of the show, is a distinctive five-star constellation, visible year-round in the southern hemisphere. The five stars hang in a cross-like pattern. The show consists of five artists, each given a position in the gallery that represents one of the five stars. (The irony wasnʼt lost on this writer that they decided to present a show that alludes to a major star constellation that is probably billions of light years wide in a gallery smaller than a McMansionʼs coat closet!)

Chris Moss - "March Madness," 2011 - acrylic on masonite - 30 x 26 inches

Representing the star Mimosa is an excellent painting by Chris Moss. The picture depicts a loose pile of those cheap, plastic strings of multicolored flags youʼd see strung up in the parking lot of a car dealership, thrown into the hull of a dark wooden boat. The painting is really awesomely colored and painted flatly with a rich matte surface quality that would look great hanging over my couch – a proud addition of my art collection.

Matthew Fisher - "Below the Salt," 2011 - acrylic on canvas - 23 x 19 inches

Matthew Fisher’s cleanly painted “Below the Salt,” which hangs in for the star Gacrux, is an obsessively tight, well-crafted painting that seems to toy with a super-realist aesthetic. A lonely grass-like blade rises out of the sand on an eerie sunrise beach. The painting has a clean, well-balanced eggshell surface and radiates a lazy, calming, but strange light. The sand at the bottom of the picture is trippy and complex. I think much of its detail was applied with paint flicked with a toothbrush.

Rob Matthews - "Memorial," 2011 - Color pencil over ink wash - 8 x 6 inches

In for the star called Delta Cru is “Memorial,” a dark, smallish drawing by Rob Matthews. Based on a makeshift street memorial that the artist would pass on his way to work, the drawing depicts a crucifix leaning against a tree, with empty cans of Budweiser strewn around its base. The dark, somber scene brings pause, making you think of innocent youth snuffed out prematurely, like a best friend who has suddenly been lost.

Patrick Brennanm - "Montauk Discussion," (2009 - 2011) - Acrylic, Hand dyed silk, mylar, Paper, spray paint and popsicle sticks on Linen - 24" x 18"

The other two stars in the show include a sculpture by Stacy Fisher and a mixed media painting by Patrick Brennan. Fisher’s shiny black “Vampires from Mars” has a nice spatial presence and resembles some cylindrical core samples of oil or tar, bringing to mind the Mercury Rev lyrics, “Iʼm a vampire baby, suckin blood from the earth…” Brennan’s medium sized painting “Montauk Discussion” is aggressively textured with multiple mediums, including popsicle sticks.

Stacy Fisher (free standing sculpture) - "Vampires From Mars," 2011 - Hydrocal, spray paint, wood - 58" x 7 1/4" x 8 1/4"

All in all itʼs another enjoyable show at Grizzly Grizzly. The gaze-worthy show runs until Dec. 19.

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

In the middle of artist Matt Fisher‘s talk last week, I thought, gee, this is interesting. So I pulled out a pad and started taking notes.

Matt was speaking at Untitled, Jenny Jaskey Gallery‘s brand new forum on contemporary art that she hopes will help “people to appreciate (and buy!) contemporary art (and works made locally!),” Jaskey wrote us in an email.

This first event, organized around her current exhibit The Drawing Narrative, featured talks by Fisher, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Curator of Modern Art Robert Cozzolino, and Gallery Joe Director Rebecca Kerlin. The event drew in more than 100 people at the gallery, and they gamely stood through the whole thing or sat on the floor. Somehow, the standing made the contact between the speakers and the listeners more intimate–and also may have shortened the comments, which meant things moved along quite nicely.

By time I got my pen rolling, Matt Fisher was nearly done, so I don’t have much of what he said. He did say that although his work is narrative and the narrative is not the main reason for his making the art. “There’s enough openness for the viewer to fill in exactly what they want,” he said. He also said he thinks of himself as primarily a painter, and his drawings supported his paintings.

Rubens Ghenov, “An Unpruned Vine, A Lonelier Monk,” Sumi ink, Charcoal and graphite on paper; image taken from matthewstheyounger.blogspot.com

I did get many of the things Becky Kerlin said. Kerlin’s Gallery Joe shows mostly works on paper, and Print Center Curator John Caperton said this about her earlier this year in an interview: “Another person I admire is Becky Kerlin [at Gallery Joe]–she found a niche and operates in that niche that she’s really excelled at. They do great shows. If you bought one piece from each show, you’d have an amazing collection!”

After giving tribute to Anne d’Harnoncourt (see post on her death), Kerlin said, “As I learned the business, I began seeing I was more in tune with drawing [than other art forms]. …I think it has something to do with being the daughter of an architect.”

Kerlin said she grew up with a house full of drawings, and switched her gallery to drawing in 1999, after seing a Mark Lombardi show at the Drawing Center. “If this is drawing, if this is art, then this is what I want to be involved in,” she recalled saying to herself. Drawing burst on the art scene as a field of its own in the ’90s, she said, partly because of the Drawing Center‘s presence.

Sixty percent of Kerlin’s sales are outside Philadelphia. She does one or two art fairs a year to get her artists out in the world and “to validate what I’m doing.”

Rob Matthews, The Great Disappointment #4, 2007, graphite on paper, 11×18.25, image–one of the images in The Drawing Narrative; image courtesy the artist

As for me, I say, Yo, Philly, what’s with you? Buy art and buy it here in town.

Cozzolino staked his ground as the de facto drawing curator at PAFA because he is the only curator there right now. That drew a laugh. When he landed at PAFA, he got thrown into the mission of creating an enormous works on paper show for the 200th anniversary of PAFA, showing work dating from the 1700s to the present from the collection. “I looked at every work the Academy owns on paper.” Here are links to our posts on the show:
libby’s post
roberta’s post

Cozzolino cited Alfred Stieglitz, who made no hierarchical distinction between drawings, sculpture and painting. “It’s the idea of the thing that matters.”

The delicacy of drawings, though, raise questions about how to show them without degrading them, and how much to spend on them. He’s been asked when proposing to buy a drawing, “‘Do we really want to spend $25,000 on a drawing we can only show every few years because of preservation issues?’ Or do we spend that much money on a painting?”

His own view is, “Go for the great object, no matter what medium it’s in.” He also said that we can’t look into the future and know what kinds of lighting and conservation advances will be made. Perhaps perservation will not be an issue. He did mention that PAFA will be looking for a way to cover the skylights in the historic building to protect drawings on exhibit.

Astrid Bowlby drawing

Cozzolino also talked about his personal taste. His first love was 15th century Flemish paintings. The 20th century works he loves now include symbolism, narrative constructivism and mystery–which all refer back to the Flemish work. He likes work that is visceral, creates its own parallel world, and is personal. He mentioned that Astrid Bowlby‘s and Rob Matthews‘ work both have that (Matthews is one of the artists in Jaskey’s The Drawing Narrative exhibit; the others, besides Fisher, are Holly Coulis, Rubens Ghenov, Ridley Howard, Robyn O’Neil and Charlotta Westergren).

The question and answer session brought up some other issues in drawing:

Question on validity of digital drawings
Cozzolino would include them as legitimate drawings. He referred to recent Pew winner Charles Burwell’s recent work using computers as an example. Fisher said he himself uses Google images to search, as part of his process. Kerlin held back a little, saying she hadn’t yet seen computer work that interested her, but that things in the last five years have gotten more interesting.

Charles Burwell, Flood, 21 x 21, archival digital print, created on the computer and shown in October at Bridgette Mayer Gallery.

Question on the seeming increase of interest in drawings
Kerlin suggested that it may have had to do with the influence of cartoons. “I have a son, a drawer. And he is not alone. …There was a tremendous amount of stuff they [her son and his friends] were doing that had to do with superheroes, drawing action on paper. …It allowed the figure to come back into art in a way that wasn’t precious.”

Cozzolino agreed. He also credited the graphic novel. “Also the graffiti boom of the ’80s and the ’90s spilled over into the art world.

And Fisher talked about drawing being more affordable than a painting. An art lover “can buy a drawing for a tenth of the price.”

Abington Art Center Curator Sue Spaid (in the audience) added the influence of Raymond Pettibon, Paul McCarthy and Martin Kippenberger, as well as Ed Ruscha, may have increased the interest in drawing.

Cozzolino also added that the DIY aesthetic may have contributed.

Question on how define drawing.
Cozzolino said, I don’t define drawing. I let the object tell me what it is. I let the artist tell me what it is. Even Lightening Field, that could be a drawing directly lightening to make marks in space.

Fisher, applied the old line about pornography to drawing: When you see it, you know it.

Kerlin said people can imagine the time it takes to make a drawing. They can imagine how it was done, how long it took to make each mark.

Art critic and curator Judith Stein mentioned The world’s Largest Drawing, a YouTube phenomenon, in which an artist draws his self portrait on the earth, using the trajectories of a series of airplane trips as the medium.

While I was answering a cell phone call during the talk, someone asked how people kept up with everything going on in Philadelphia, and Cozzolino answered, Roberta and Libby. This tidbit from Roberta. I had to put that in to sort of make it real because I missed it!

This being the first of the Untitled forums, it was free and open to one and all, but Jaskey is creating a (nominal, I think) membership requirement for the events, and promises behind-the-scene tours of area institutions, visits with private collections, and talks by contemporary art experts and enthusiasts. When I ever get through to Jenny (I’ve been trying for days) I’ll add it to the post. She probably was busy with last night’s fundraiser for Art Briefs, a Philadelphia art calendar in the works that she has been working on with others, including David Kessler, Annette Monnier and Rebecca Saylor Sack.

Breezy Does It
Pentimenti’s group show offers loveliness and edge.

“In Summer the Song Sings Itself”
Through Sept. 15 (gallery closed July 24-Aug. 28). Pentimenti Gallery, 145 N. Second St. 215.625.9990.

Thomas Doyle’s miniature environments at Pentimenti escape the trap of precious and instead intrigue with their mystery narrative content.

Pentimenti’s summer group show is like one of those eight-countries-in-eight-days European tours. The whirlwind of color, texture, mountains, cities, beaches and woods leaves you panting. And when you’re home, you’ll have delicious memories—even if you don’t remember half of the specifics.

Eight emerging artists work in a variety of media, and whether abstract or representational, the works exude a smiling, breezy confidence that while life’s not always a beach, it’s not a total black hole either.

Matthew Fisher, oil on canvas, at Pentimenti. Fisher had a solo show at Spector Gallery a few years back. The paintings here are complex, beautifully painted and full of romantic landscapes and forlorn militarists.

There are edgy dark sentiments (Matthew Fisher) and madcap moments (Thomas Doyle, Deborah Hamon, Scot Wittman), all tempered by spots of sheer elegance and beauty (Cara Enteles, Kirk McCarthy, Sarah Daub, Gabe Brown).

Matthew Fisher, painting showing soldiers and a little bird. Birds are often minor albeit important characters in Fisher’s works.

What tickles me most in this solid group show is to see Brooklyn’s Matthew Fisher join Pentimenti’s ranks. Fisher’s paintings of forlorn Prussian soldiers (seen at Spector Gallery in 2005) are embodiments of both state and masculinity gone awry. They’re also the epitome of deadpan cool. The toy soldiers (they’d make great bobblehead dolls) are emblems of war and empire that provoke feelings of introspection and emotional fragility.

Deborah Hammon’s digital prints merge photo background and a painted figure. Their ambiance is whimsical and playful.

Beset by repeat encounters with ogre-like song birds, and overpowered by romantic landscapes, Fisher’s soldiers all but fall apart and weep. Whether they’re AWOL or just on R&R (there are no battlefields), these soldiers need a little tenderness. You can’t help but read today’s military men (and women) into these guys, which makes them all the more dear.

Scot Wittman’s cut paper maps translate into heraldic and iconic images. Here a map of Paris becomes a lady with a blue skirt.

New to me is New Jersey’s Scot Wittman, whose cut-paper silhouettes made from city maps are a tour de force. In Wittman’s 50 works the streets of Paris, London and Berlin translate with an uncanny charm into animals, knights, ladies and loving couples.

Sarah Daub’s cut paper pieces involve delicate outlines of objects layered together in non-narrative arrangements. The meaning eludes but the delicate shapes please.

Philadelphian Sarah Daub’s delicate lacy cut-paper pieces achieve lift-off as never before. New Yorker Thomas Doyle’s miniature sculptures under glass are excellent make-your-own-adventure stories. California’s Deborah Hamon creates a new paradigm for revisionist history with great faux snapshots that merge painted figures and photographic landscapes.

Cara Enteles, uses pink glass as a foil for her silhouette-tree-scape. Look at it big to see the little bird. This is a detail of a larger work.

Elsewhere Cara Enteles, Gabe Brown and Kirk McCarthy use citrus colors and undulating shapes in beautiful works that reference summer trees, sky, waves, magical twilights and the cosmos. It’s great to be reminded of these transcendental wonders, and they add to the show’s easy, breezy summer feel.

Over time Pentimenti has tweaked its stable of artists to present a show that’s edgy, playful and ridiculously pretty. It’s clear Christine Pfister has hit her stride as a gallerist. The program is sure-footed, and the gallery’s participation in national art fairs has broadened its reach in both selling and scouting new talent—something that certainly benefits Philadelphia’s art scene.

It’s not fireworks, but there’s some good stuff coming up this Friday. Libby will be in
Chicago and miss the sparklers, but Roberta will be out on the town and hopes to see so of you. Here’s our short list of where you might bump into her.

VOXXOXO
For the third year in a row, Vox Populi (6-11 p.m.) invited curators to jury an emerging artists show. As with other years, the list looks full of recent grads, some whose names stood out from the crowd include cartoon-inspired sculptor Joseph Borelli and printmaker Amze Emmons.
This year’s jurors, Kirby Gookin and Sheryl Conkleton, anointed these 24 artists out of nearly 300 submissions.

Here’s who’s in:

* Jose Sarinana
* Pat Arnao
* Kirsten Ullrich
* Melissa Barrett Lundquist
* MaryKate Maher
* Lydia Conklin
* Kim Loewe
* Joseph Borelli
* Colleen Rudolf
* Françoise Duresse
* Samantha Hill
* Adam Parker Smith
* George Pfau
* Steven Millar
* Chris Fennell
* Dylan Beck
* Erin Arnold
* Amy Lincoln
* Vincent Balistrieri
* Felicia Megginson
* Amze Emmons
* Jaime Treadwell
* Jennie Thwing
* Natasha Bowdoin

Matthew Fisher’s soldier is a revelation; there’s a Where’s Waldo in this painting. Look around.

Pentimenti Gallery (6:30-8:30 p.m.)
In Summer, the Song Sings Itself is a song of eight artists, some familiar, some not. We’re looking forward to new work from Sarah Daub and Matthew Fisher. The other names are new but Roberta ran by the gallery for a quick look and says two thumbs up.

Here’s who: Gabe Brown, Sarah Daub, Thomas Doyle, Cara Enteles, Matthew Fisher, Deborah Hamon, Kirk McCarthy, Scot Wittman.

Everyone’s favorite Jayson Scott Musson poster from exhibits past.

Topstitch Boutique (6-9pm.)
Climb the stairs to see what’s on the minds of Jayson Scott Musson and Heather Rae Morton in their exhibit, “Phantom Limb.” We don’t know Morton, but Musson is always thinking up a storm.

GARBAGE MAGIC- at COPY (7-11 p.m.)
An exhibition of new work by Chris Ward is a mystery to us, but we were intrigued enough to put it in the list. We don’t get how garbage is magic. That’s why we’re interested. Also, he’s an ex-Philly guy who says he’s reevaluating our local habitat by exploring man vs. nature.

Jacob Fossum, Ganesha Gone Wild, 96″ x 96″

Rodger LaPelle
We haven’t been in here for a while, but this month’s postcards really caught our collective eye. Two figurative painters might be fun–Jacob Fossum brings animals to Odd Nerdum oddness and Nathaniel T. Rogers fiddles in Matt Bollinger’s territory, adding some play-acting.

Samantha Simpson, Possessions, ballpoint pen

INK! at Gallery Joe (6-8 p.m.)

This year’s summer group show is curated by Sarah Holloran instead of by gallerist Rebecca Kerlin. Eleven artists include:

William Anastasi
Astrid Bowlby
Emily Brown
Jacob El Hanani
Roland Flexner
Simon Frost
Gil Kerlin
Linn Meyers
Sharyn O’Mara
Samantha Simpson
Martin Wilner

The press release came with the Samantha Simpson image, and we love it!

A show of paintings and drawings of modest size at UArts Gallery 817 (upstairs from Rosenwald-Wolf) is definitely worth attention. The show called “Posture and Expression” was curated by artist Rob Matthews.

The title lets you know right off the bat that the show has some lessons to teach; it also lets you know that this show reflects some of Matthews’ own art-making concerns. It’s old-fashioned didacticism made me think of all the injunctions from my mother to sit up straight and stop frowning. I still slouch and I still frown. Can’t help it. But the artists in the show, all of whose names have appeared here numerous times, have learned their lesson well, and then reshaped the lesson to their own lights. In Matthews’ press notice, he wrote:

The exhibition was assembled to highlight Philadelphia artists that work with the figure but not necessarily in a traditional Philadelphia/Academy approach.

House Arrest, by Mark Shetabi

I liked almost every piece in the show, so picking a couple of pictures is hard; I put the whole suite of my photos of the show on Flickr.

Even though it’s not a human figure, I sure did like the fine figure cut by an ass in Matt Fisher’s Birch Bark Ass–a somewhat lost creature out of his own element in an endless expanse. I took the beast as a symbol for a human being.

House Arrest, by Mark Shetabi, brings the big world of international affairs and politics into the little gallery in a poignant image of a man whose life is on hold–but not his mind.

Healer #1, by Rob Matthews

Also in the exhibit are interesting works by Jane Irish (from the Operation RAW suite), Rebecca Westcott (also something you may have seen before), Susan Moore (she’s painting on acrylic gel medium in which beads are suspended, giving her a smaller, slicker version of the chunky oil stick marks she used in her enormous portraits), Norm Paris (continuing his Michael Jordan obsession with great drawing style), Sarah Roche (with a couple of oddly lit, eerie pieces), and Matthews himself (with a noir self-portrait with his wife in the midst of some questionable goings on that the title and her upturned hand put in the realm of religion).

The show has only 13 works, most pretty small, but they serve as a strong argument for how traditional technique can serve contemporary visions.