Tag Archive "nadia-hironaka"

1967 and 2011 – Nadia Hironaka and Matt Suib at Locks Gallery

The gigantic first floor space at Locks Gallery is occupied this month by the massive, multi-channel video installation 1967 by Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib. The collaborative project by the husband and wife team uses appropriated footage from cinema and protest videos to raise questions about political dissent, utopian movements and the role of mass media in driving protest movements in general.

Weekly Update – ICA’s focus on collaboration and Warhol

Collaboration is a road paved with landmines, and the way to avoid those is to stay focused on the goal. Luckily for the artists involved in the Institute of Contemporary Art’s “One is the Loneliest Number,” they have their eye on the prize. The exhibit features five collaborative teams, each comprised of two emerging artists who’ve been working together for four, six, even 10 years. Some of the work feels like the call and response of two individual voices, while other works sing with one voice. The show is haunting, as several pieces focus on isolation or miscommunication, shedding light ...

Black and white and relevant – Battle of Algiers

Something about Matt Suib and Nadia Hironaka’s “Whiteout” at Locks Gallery tripped my memory of another desert/militarist/high contrast black and white moving picture, The Battle of Algiers. (Note: Whiteout really doesn’t bear strong resemblance to the 1966 movie but nevertheless the sand, the b&w…I guess I’m suggestible.  See a few images of Whiteout at flickr, and more on the Locks show in Weekly Update next Wednesday).

Re-making History; J. Makary and Hironaka and Suib at Landmarks Contemporary Projects

Historic house museums all face considerable challenges. On the practical level, their fund-raising depends upon visitor numbers and these days there’s a lot of competition for visitors’ leisure time. Furthermore, historic houses have been premised on the idea of stepping back to a particular moment in time, an idea that has made historians increasingly uncomfortable.   Heritage properties have often portrayed simplified and sanitized histories that mislead as much as educate. Since 2006 the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks has engaged artists both to attract new audiences for changing art installations and to offer more complex interpretations of its ...

People we love in places we love that are not Philadelphia!

If you’re on the road this summer, or hanging out far and wide, we have some tips here of Philadelphia artists who are all over the place. Italy to Cyprus by way of L.A.

Hironaka video graces Asian Arts and passersby

There’s a fabulous piece of public art–a video projected on a window on Vine Street–good enough to make you slow down your car and forget to drive it.

The wonderfulness of this week’s too much stuff

Another crazy week, art campers.  We’ll start with First Friday and work our way forwards and backwards all at once.  It seemed logical to us. FRIDAY, April 3 Man’s best art opening

Weekly Update – Spring for grand openings everywhere

 This week’s Weekly has my Spring Roundup article.  Below is the copy with some pictures. Openings are de rigueur in the art world. But this spring grand openings trump all as Tyler School of Art launches its flagship space, Temple Gallery, in the school’s new building at 12th and Norris streets in North Philadelphia.

More of Philly out and about

Matthew Suib and Nadia Hironika, The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West, as seen at the Crane’s Ice Box space here in Philadelphia. It’s traveling to L.A. This from Matthew Suib and Nadia Hironaka: If you’re in LA or NYC in the next week, we hope you’ll be able to check out our most recent projects–The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West, and Black Hole. The Soft Epic opens at Telic Arts Exchange in LA’s Chinatown this coming Saturday, July 26th, and runs through late August. Helen Cahng has organized the exhibition and related public programs ...

Soft Epic redux and Grothusen’s memory house

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib’s Soft Epic (detail) at the Icebox. I caught Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib‘s Soft Epic video projection at the Icebox on the last day of its run and want to add my appreciation here to what Andrea wrote previously. Deep into a seemingly endless war and at a time of severe ecological peril, The Soft Epic rides both those waves of anxiety and yet, with its sweep of imagery and magical sound, the work has beauty as well. The post-apocalyptic panorama, with fires consuming the urban landscape and animal-headed avatars watching, had a kind of ...