Nick Lenker, Golem # 2 "Prima Materia," ceramic, glaze, wood, adobe, string lights, and in the right rear, Ascension,wood, ceramic, glaze, oil, fire; the golem is a nearly life-size effigy of the artist as sacrificial rain king

The story he weaves has no real plot, just a ritual at its base and an idea of archetypal myths. An effigy of the artist, coated in cracking slip, lies on a bed of fire in the center of the gallery’s main space.

Nick Lenker, The Destruction and Creation of Man, video, viewed through a peephole; the artist/demigod is sitting in a ring of fire

A video (through a peephole) shows the artist undergoing a ritual trial of earth, fire and then water. A ladder to heaven (the ceramic treads were lit at the opening) suggest another challenge by fire.
But it’s the art objects, the things you can take home, that really take the cake: Ceramic urns and capes are props from the ritual. And “paintings” that are really printed digital images on canvas either capture pieces and ideas of the ritual.

Nick Lenker, The Destruction and Creation of Man, Edition 2 of 5, archival pigment print on canvas, ceramic, luster, ceramic decals, plaster, gold leaf, wood

Some of the paintings look very photographic. Others look very old-masters oily, with dark dark backgrounds and vivid flames. The flatness of the digital images, which make no pretense of being otherwise with their visible collage junctures, is a surprising contrast to the worked-over hand-made quality of the cast and painted plaster frames. The result, an ominous gothic take on traditional gilt frames is a startling juxtaposition to the cyberpaintings, which from a distance do pass for something of another era. But there’s also something video-game-ish about them, as there is in the ladder to another level of reality.

Nick Lenker Prop # 3 "Puke Bucket," ceramic, glaze, ceramic decals, luster, chain, vomit

The crazy ceramic jugs that purports to hold vomit from the ritual quotes (consciously or unconsciously) Nicole Cerubini, with its cup handles and chains. But these chains are S&M, not come-hither necklaces–or maybe they are another variety of come hither. And the hand/lid covering the mouth of the jug, which is the mouth of an upturned face, is creepy with pierced finger tips (or futuristic loops developed by the next generation). The chains drape down from the loops to the cup handles. The conceit of a hand over a mouth of a face for a jug holding vomit is definitely something to write home about. Another jug is a two-faced Ewer with beautiful, dense glazes.

Nick Lenker, Prop # 4 "Ewer," ceramic, glaze, luster, ceramic decals; the ewer is Janus-like, with two mouth spouts

It’s clear from the pieces in the show that Lenker comes from a ceramics background. But he’s reaching far beyond its limits, and I can’t wait to see what’s next. I don’t know what kind of peyote buttons Lenker is smoking, but clearly he’s having some visions!

Matthew Osborn’s “My Bones – Your Skin” at Pageant and “Candida Hofer – Philadelphia” at Arcadia University are two shows that take you to the limits of 2-D art being shown locally.  Osborn’s drawings and Hofer’s color photographs represent some of the best of what’s being done here — from hip musings in ink on paper by a young local talent to majestic architectural photographs by an internationally-acclaimed artist at the top of her game.

Matthew Osborn, drawing from his show at Pageant. The artist plays with the duality of personality and with the difficulties in personal relationships.

Osborn’s show is chock full of drawings and paintings and a video animation.  The 50-something works in the show — all made in the last two months according to gallerist Daniel Dalseth – are but a small fraction of what the artist brought to the gallery to install.   (See short clip of the video here.)

Matthew Osborn, drawing. The words are an important part of the drawings which sometimes have an R. Crumb-ian notebook style of internal musings

The images combine cartoon characters and words in turgid, funny, chatty, confessional pieces that channel both monsters and our better angels.  Osborn’s fascinated with the duality of identity and people’s ability to slip from one face to another.  At a time of increasing cyber-identity games and confusion, the many-faceted human personality is a great subject to be working.

Matthew Osborn. Scary image, sweet (or could be interpreted that way) sentiment of the words.

Part of the charm of the works is their word-smithing.  Osborn is a gifted artist/writer on par with Scottish artist David Shrigley.  In places the words achieve almost Hallmark Card sentiments about relationships and inner strength “Last night, today, tomorrow, forever” says one poster-like work with a pattern of upside-down spades in red, black and white.  “Either we can choose to be humble or we can be compelled,” says another.  In both works you might expect a pleasant graphic to accompany the words but what you get instead is a big hairy monster shouting the phrase at you like in some nasty dream.  And hello art buyers, Osborn’s works are incredibly affordable—prices range from $10-$1000 with most works priced under $100. 

Candida Hofer, Beth Shalom Synagogue Philadelphia I. 2007 C-print. 72 7/8 x 97 ¼ inches (185 x 247 cm). Photo courtesy Sonnabend Gallery. The photo captures the building's nautical charms. The sails, the mast...and the almost '50s auto ornament colored sculpture are captured beautifully.

Hofer, a German artist, came to town in 2007 via a local connection, collector Mari Shaw, who helped the artist gain access to the interiors of some of Philadelphia’s landmark buildings.  Hofer, who is known for her photos of historic interiors makes large scale works with crisp detail that showcase rooms where humans interact, laws get written, books get read and audiences watch.  

Candida Hofer, City Hall Law Library, 2007. C-print. 72 7/8 x 98 3/8 inches (185 x 250 cm). Photo courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery.

Hofer has made works that enfold the viewer in their spaces and make them feel the space with their bodies.  After the 911 attacks Hofer had not done a photo shoot in the US until now, she said at a seminar at Slought the year she was here.  The buildings she chose in Philadelphia continue her fascination with light, color, space and the activities of humans. 

Candida Hofer, Masonic Temple Philadelphia I, 2007. C-print. 72 7/8 x 97 ¼ inches (185 x 247 cm). Photo courtesy of Sonnabend. As with all her photos, she puts you right inside that space where you feel you are surrounded by the ceiling, walls, decoration and details. It's photo magic.

Last January, Hofer’s Chelsea gallery, Sonnabend, exhibited eight of the Philadelphia photographs (see all).  Four are on display at Arcadia and even if you know the buildings(PAFA’s Furness building; Fisher Library at University of Pennsylvania; Beth Shalom Synagogue; Masonic Temple) you will be wowed by the images which allow you to linger in the rooms and observe details you would probably overlook when visiting them in person.

>>Matthew Osborn-My Bones-Your Skin, to May 2.  Pageant Gallery, 607 Bainbridge St.,  215 925 1536

>>Candida Hofer-Philadelphia, to April 19.  Lecture and reception, Sat. April 11, 4 PM, Stiteler Auditorium and reception to follow in the gallery.  Arcadia University Art Gallery, Spruance Fine Arts Center, 450 South Easton Rd, Glenside.  215 572 2131. 

Here’s what the press release said:

PAPER CRYSTALS’
CHRIS KLINE AND JASON HSU
WANT YOU TO GET YOUR RECYCLE ON ALREADY

CHRIS AND JASON put together this event in conjunction with Aryon Hoselton, who rounded up (legally, indeed with their blessing) 100 City of Philadelphia recycling bins. On Sunday February 22nd they will be giving them away here at Pageant:Soloveev Gallery and Chris, Jason and friends will be on hand customizing them with stencils, paint and vinyl stickers to help make your bin way rad and totally yours. No more having the neighbors jack your bin on the sly

ART CAN BE USEFUL

FEBRUARY 22ND 2009
2 PM – 5 PM ( or untill the bins run out)
PAGEANT:SOLOVEEV
607 BAINBRIDGE STREET
PHILADELPHIA

We were standing in Pageant Gallery Saturday afternoon and a steady stream of lookers came by to get up close and personal with what lured them in from outside the window. Chris Kline and Jason Hsu‘s exuberant, gargantuan installation knocked us and all the other visitors out with its boyish comic charm and high key color brushwork. Amazing what you can do with a little house paint on cardboard and some hard work…..ok some talent too.

Phillies Fan

The bold patterning and psychedelic charms immediately reminded us of the Hairy Who and Chicago Imagists–who also were mining comic books, cartooning, pot culture and pop culture. We want to say Karl Wirsum, Jim Nutt, Roger Brown and Ed Paschke just to drop some names.

Crab on a skateboard

Hsu and Klein’s collaboration spun off Space 1026 Paper Jams (they’re both members) — weekly exquisite corpse drawing sessions. Pageant has plenty of the Paper Jam drawings on view–and a time-lapse video made by Hsu that demonstrates the creation of one drawing.

For the Paper Crystals show, Hsu made the sculptural objects out of cardboard and Kline was painter in chief. The pieces are modular and can be stacked different ways. The artists told us they might be coming back to re-arrange the furniture. They may collaborate again in the future but for right now they’re tired and are taking a break.

Jaws on the wall

They had lots of friends stopping by while installing and gave props to Max Lawrence in particular who encouraged them to place some of the work on the walls.

Palm tree

Kline (aka Snax) told us he’s working on a children’s Hebrew alphabet book with a Brooklyn printer he met at Prints Gone Wild, Cannonball Press’ print jam in Brooklyn. Hsu told us he’s looking for a job. He does web design (see link at top of post).

Matthew Osborn, untitled drawing at Pageant’s Rag and Bone.

Rag and Bone, Pageant Gallery’s Winter Invitational, brings together 26 artists, some of them familiar names and some gallery newcomers.  The exhibition continues Pageant’s shaggy-around-the-edges aesthetic – drawings pinned to the walls; tv monitors sitting on the floor;  sculpture in the gallery’s odd nooks and crannies.  It’s a sprawling show and treasures abound.
 

Matthew Osborn, Financial Oblivion

Matthew Osborn‘s wall of cartoon drawings kept me engaged for quite a while.  “Tools are weapons and weapons are tools” says one drawing of an alien-like man in a white shirt and striped tie whose hands shake. Osborn is one part cartoonist one part philosopher like internationally-acclaimed artist David Shrigley whose angsty and verbally-adept works are in this year’s Carnegie International. 

Osborn’s drawings evoke Philip Guston as well as Shrigley.

Osborn has his eyes on the world as well as on his inner id.  “Financial oblivion” is repeated in one drawing of a man being swallowed by a fat, toothy worm.  Osborn, who is a painter, will have a show at Pageant in March, said gallerist Daniel Dalseth.
 

Sarah Everton’s German Shepherd in a Blanket

Works on paper make up a good part of the show.  Sarah Everton‘s drawing German Shepherd in a Blanket features a dog overlaid with a manic diamond pattern that creates an odd fight between the animal and the man-made, the natural and the decorative. 

Kate Stewart, Room with a View.

Kate Stewart‘s new photo collages with figures in interior spaces take her work in a great new direction—adding the surreal figures adds interest;

Christopher George‘s Washing Machine Song — lyrics written on a small piece of paper and nailed to the wall — is an odd relic.

 
Terry Adkins, First Feed, red velvet and Jimi Hendrix.

And now for the medium of the season, cut paper!! Three exhibits exploring the limits of paper as a medium are ripping up the town– Paper[space] at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Thanks to Mom and Dad/The Chain of the Worlds at Pageant Gallery, and a cleaner heart a do it at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, which dips into paper along with some other work.

All three shows are worth the effort to get there in this sweltering heat!

I find myself wondering about the passion for paper. This work is mostly incredibly fragile. Are we at such a state that the long haul seems not worth worrying about? Or is it that compared to pixels, paper looks like a powerful material?

I am mostly stunned by the effort it takes to produce this work, the time spent cutting something that with a flick or a move can be destroyed. Yet it is bravura work, remarkable for the most part, with the amount of labor and delicacy of hand required.

Jin Lee, detail, White Landscape 2, 2007; paper, 56 x 72 inches.
image courtesy the artist

Paper[space] at the Philadelphia Art Alliance is a wonderful show, with work from eight artists, some familiar to Philadelphia art lovers, some not. From Jin Lee‘s frothy cut-paper landscape installations (talk about delicacy and bravura cutting!) to Natasha Bowdoin’s powerful paper incantations which mix words and sculpture and magic, to Nami Yamamoto’s cool, glow-in-the-dark plant forms, this show pushes our expectations of paper in surprising ways. (I just want to say that the installation of Yamamoto’s piece in a dark room is the first time I’ve seen this work presented properly, and it’s a wow).

Sarah Julig, Untitled, 2007, paper and fishing line, dimensions variable.
image courtesy the artist

I also loved how Sarah Julig’s fold-up, torn improvisations resemble fold-up medusa jellyfish and humans on wobbly stilts. There’s a conversation going on between between Julig’s towers and Leslie Mutchler’s building system of standard building-block cards. They back-and-forth about portability and pack-and-go architecture seems just right for a time when Ikea furnishes our homes and people are nomadic, circling the globe looking for a better life.

Leslie Mutchler, Reconsidered, 2007; hand-recycled paper panels; variable dimensions. image courtesy the artist

In this context, Dawn Gavin’s map-inspired works make a lot of sense. Besides X-marks-the-spot map pins, she has excised backgrounds of maps to reveal the roads as a web for survival. Hunter Stabler’s psychedelic cut-paper tankas seem like the perfect escape from what’s happening here. Also in the exhibit, Donna Ruff makes lacy burnt pinhole drawings, many of which call to mind Rorschach tests and icons. The vitrine-like frames turn them into relics. I’d have liked them better laid bare, open on a shelf.

Hunter Stabler, Saint Vitus Architeuthis Manalishi with the Seven Tentacled Crown, photo by Roberta

Stabler also has a solo show right now at Pageant Gallery, and his magical mystery tour of dreamy mandala-like images in cut paper this time also includes some equally dreant ink on paper works. The labor involved, either in cutting paper or in inking the negative spaces, looks daunting. Stabler’s work is nothing short of hallucinatory, and this is a show not to be missed! (More on Stabler here). The exhibit will be up until August 3).

Jennifer Levonian, still from Holy Donuts! video

And over at Fleisher-Ollman, there’s a changing of the guard, with Amy Adams taking over William Pym‘s spot (he moved to New York). Adams is the whirlwind who’s been executive director of Vox Populi since 2005 (plus she’s the second-in-command at the Esther Klein Gallery). (Anyone know some great art fundraiser out there to take over at Vox? Just saying…)

This show is from the Pym era. A cleaner heart a do it features work by Jennifer Levonian, Casey Watson, Matthew Rich, and Bill Walton. It’s another winner, and three of the four artists showing there are using paper in interesting ways.

a cleaner heart a do it installation shot showing work by Casey Watson (two pieces on the right), Matthew Rich (far left, large circle in back, and on floor to right rear), and Bill Walton (on floor in front and back wall two items on left)

Levonian, who showed previously in Street Button (see post), the gallery’s 2007-8 emerging artist exhibit (post on her work here), uses paper-doll-like cut-outs for her stop-action animations–vignettes that deliver the icons of the culture with a dollop of cheerful cynicism and a sharp eye for human behavior. In this one, a young girl survives the boredom and weirdness of a plein-air Sunday service by observing the parishioners as they eat doughnuts and then by transmogrifying the doughnuts into holy symbols. Levonian’s drawings are charming. The animation technique is witty and I’m a big fan. Levonian is also exhibiting some of the drawings from her process.

Matthew Rich, Ring, 2008, latex paint on cut paper, 51 x 53 inches

Casey Watson’s baroque ink-and-paper cutouts inspired by foliage and birds have an ecstatic lushness tempered by an almost casual presentation in which detailed drawings and collages float off kilter on the white page. Watson was one of the artists in F/O’s 2006-7 emerging artists show, Morgellons. Matthew Rich’s cut-paper collage paintings, multiply basic shapes, some of them to great effect, as in Ring, a sort of abstracted still life on steroids.

Also in this exhibit are some great chunky sculptures from Bill Walton, blocks of wood on the wall, concrete boxes on the floor, austere and mysterious poems of dense materials that suck the light and air into their cores. Walton’s work is not cut paper.

Isskustvo Transmagica Provinces Animanina may be a bewildering title for an art exhibit, but the objects in the show at Pageant Soloveev Gallery are equally bewildering–and wonderful. I felt like I was walking into a space filled with gifts.

Pageant once again proves to be a gallery you can’t pin down, putting together a juried show of four emerging young artists that sparkles with alternative universes and alternative life forms that are the opposite of the plodding online parallel universe of Second Life. Instead these young artists use to world we know take off for parts unknown.

Jesse A. Greenberg, Binx Invitational Wall Unit, plastic, foam, rubber, urethane, mylar, paint, wood, steel, acrylic, plexiglass, aluminum, fabric

Jesse A. Greenberg’s small cast what-is-its of gum-drop-y resinous bits are scattered all around the edges of the place, resting atop radiators and window sills and shelves, looking like unnameable toys awaiting installation under some plastic Christmas bush. They made me think of Alan McCollum’s multiple ingots, but Greenberg’s are playful, and they are multiplying and mutating faster than fruit flies.

Greenberg, who Roberta wrote about here, in one gallery room installed a sort of anti-Ikea arrangement of lamps and shelves and such, bizarre enough to barely suggest the household-goods inspirations. He also created a flashy object of wood, goop and found gewgaws that looks like a slot machine married to a tanning lamp, with a handlebar mustache hanging underneath.

Kate Norton, Miner VA

Not quite so playful but equally mysterious are the hanging creatures and landscapes suggested by Kate Norton’s assemblage sculptures–one with what looks like a heating unit radiating from its center with red, feathery ears and stuffed, hanging appendages; one an enormous, architectural framework held up by knotted fabric lianas; one a chair-like fabric construction with crocheted appendage hanging from a wire–suggest alternate modes of survival in a strange world.

Kate Norton, Sprinkle Toes

The tumbling architecture of Sprinkle Toes reminds me of Sarah Sze, with its tenuous and delicate hold against gravity. The art works’ titles suggest creatures–Yellow Bellied Black Bones, Sprinkle Toes and Miner VA.

Nick Lenker, Untitled/Piggy Bank, archival pigment print

Nick Lenker’s two enormous, sexy digital pigment prints are photo collages of man as beast–one a pig surrounded piles of gold coins, whipping little naked slaves to help him amass still more. The other, equally cinematic, is a wolf, a man-beast crouching and slouching toward Bethlehem, with prominent genitals hanging down. Both make me think of Cecil B. DeMille, with the enormous crowd scenes of tiny extras looking like an army of ants beneath the giant scale of the wonders of Egypt. These works are allegories of power, greed and sex.

Sarah Everton, Bear and Skier (left), Countries Where Black Bears are Found (right), oil and graphite

Drawings by Sarah Everton of animals have a deadpan, DIY vibe. Bear and Skier, and Countries Where Black Bears are Found are both Olympics posters gone wrong. There’s a strange, celebratory quality mixed with threats in these images, in which bears star with laurel wreaths and a lot of scary red. Her Majestic Double Bunny is a mutant resting uncomfortably on stilt-like pedestals in a forcefield with religious overtones. These works express anxiety about values we blindly embrace.

Sarah Everton, Majestic Double Bunny, pen, ink, markers

This exhibit, which is as dark as any I have seen in the past year, also manages to inject bright notes. Greenberg has a jaunty optimism and playfulness in his manic creations and Everton has a sweetness and a belief in the natural world that helps to keep my spirits up. Norton seems to be creating a foothold for mankind in the outer reaches of a universe that operates under different rules. Lenker’s predatory seX-men, however, do not move on to some brave new world. The mutant man-beasts look back to fables, fairy tales and bestiaries. They are moral tales of the digital age.

FRIDAY, DEC. 14, 2007

Street Button–5th annual emerging artist show
FLEISHER/OLLMAN GALLERY,
1616 WALNUT STREET, SUITE 100
6-9pm

Jacob Hellman photo collage at White Lodge Gallery (in School of Rock building)

Jacob Hellman
Photographs and Installations
White Lodge Gallery
1508 Brandywine Street
5:30pm-8:30pm

SATURDAY, DEC. 15, 2007

Oliver Herring
FLUXspace
3000 N. Hope St.
6-10 pm

See slide show below for more HausWerk images

Tyler student working on installation at the soon to be demolished house in Paoli. More photos in slide show below.

Hauswerk–15 Tyler students take over a soon-to-be-demolished house in Paoli
1497 Sugartown Rd
Paoli
3-6:30 PM
(also by appointment until Jan. 4. call Athena Christakis (one of the students) at 215-900-0175 or athena.christakis@gmail.com)

Jesse Greenberg, Nick Lenker, Kate Norton and Sarah Everton at Pageant Gallery’s emerging artist show

“Isskustvo Transmagica Provinces Animamina”
Sarah Everton, Jesse Greenberg, Nick Lenker, and Kate Norton
Pageant Gallery
607 Bainbridge
through February 3rd,
7pm-???

Mummer’s costume on display last week at the Space 1026 auction.

SEWATHON : A Mummer Happening
Space 1026
$5 donation gets you 24 hours of fun!
12 Noon, Dec. 15 to 12 Noon, Dec. 16

from the press release:
The Vaudevillains, the 1026 Mummer Brigade, will be hosting a 24 hour sewing marathon and telethon style variety show to help raise funds for the upcoming Mummer’s Day Parade.

This event will bebroadcast live to the internet. Watch online and make a donation. Broadcast begins this Saturday at noon. We will be sewing, dancing, laughing, watching movies and sharing food for 24 hours straight. Come visit and show your support.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

“East Coast/West Coast” at Pageant: Soloveev Gallery has little to do with geography. What the group show seems to have on its mind is polarity and supposed opposites. The ideas are subtly handled, with art full of double meanings, innuendos and punch lines. Like The Sarah Silverman Program, the subtext is mightier than the surface.

Mikey Wild, detail, Demons and Angels, 30 acrylic paintings, at Pageant.

Mikey Wild’s Demons and Angels, a grid of 30 small acrylic paintings, comes close to expressing the AC/DC quality of the show all by itself. The paintings by the self-taught Philly fixture are of heads depicted in a washy, childish style that makes it hard to distinguish the angels from the demons. And when all is said and done, it doesn’t really matter. The guy with the widow’s peak and red lips—who’s to say he’s not somebody’s angel?

Michelle Colomer’s Hawk (far wall). That’s Libby taking a picture.

Michele Colomer’s Hawk, a large graphite drawing of a bird of prey looking a little old and battle-scarred, is, at a time of war, clearly a depiction of more than just a bird.

Alex Da Corte, three photographs, Activity 11, Activity 13 and the Miracle

Alex Da Corte’s three large digital photographs beg you to read between the lines. Two of the photos show a young man caught in midair while jumping on a twin bed in a white room. The boy-man wears nothing but colored Jockey underwear. The photos, shot from below, lop the subject off above the waist, focusing on the underwear and the manically splayed legs. In both pictures, childhood signifiers like a smiley face, balloons and birthday party swag convey a party atmosphere. The works have the deadpan titles Activity 11 and Activity 13, and something about the forced gaiety and ebullience—along with suggestions of a pedophile photo shoot—conveys the message that these pictures are really about the opposite of happiness and play.

Amy Kreiling’s sculpture using the Columbia Encyclopedia and two shovels — a critique of history as something useless.

Harry Muniz, Amy Kreiling and Roy Williams offer what appear to be social critiques of war, Western-centric history books and our body-obsessed culture. Their elliptical approaches are refreshing in times as unsubtle as our own. And Alphonse Calatrava-Ruisenor’s lush painted plank of wood—abstract and beautiful—offers a far darker side when studied.

A little ambiguity and double meaning in art is good. A lot, as here, is a mental workout. But it’s worth it.

“East Coast/West Coast”
Through Nov. 4. Pageant: Soloveev Gallery, 607 Bainbridge St. 215.925.1535.

Click the image for the FLASH VERSION:

Flash version. Click picture.

QUICKTIME VERSION:

Quicktime version. Click picture.