Tag Archive "performance"
David Page’s Camp X and From Here to There at Rutgers’ Stedman Gallery, Camden
–Andrea’s encounter with a performance succeeds in making her and the other viewers uncomfortable. The performance was part of a now-closed exhibit across the river from Philadelphia in Camden.–the artblog editors———————->Rutgers University’s Camden campus is hidden in plain sight from most Philadelphians, even though it is one stop on the PATCO train from 8th and Market Streets. The faculty exhibition at the university’s Stedman Gallery had a novel format this year. Cyril Reade, Director of the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts (which includes the Stedman Gallery and the Gordon Theater) asked five faculty members from disparate fields to curate an ... More » »
The New World Order of Plato’s Porno Cave at Little Berlin
By Julius Ferraro Plato’s Porno Cave: The New World is March’s curatorial project at Kensington’s Little Berlin gallery. The programming, featuring ten events priced at less than $10 each, includes movie nights, musical performances, shamans, acrobats, puppets, fire breathers, interactive structural art pieces, two original plays, and a wild opening night reception party. The purpose of Plato’s Porno Cave (PPC), according to curators Marshall James Kavanaugh and Augustus Depenbrock, is to explore “economics, science, language, and physical reality,” and “create a mythology for a truly new world,” based on the ethics of Plato’s Republic, the myths of the Mayan Popol Vuh, and ... More » »
Thematic Exhibitions at the ICA, Grizzly Grizzly and Locks Gallery play with body adornment, materials and art history
White Petals Surround Your Yellow Heart at the ICA Self-adornment is surely homo sapiens’ first art form: body painting, scarification, tattooing. Garments that offer anything more than basic protection from the elements or environment can be said to participate in that tradition. White Petals Surround Your Yellow Heart at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), University of Pennsylvania, through July 28 takes a broad, and as the title’s reference to Ovid suggests, rather poetic view of the subject. The exhibition, curated by Anthony Elms, makes no distinction between attire that was worn (RAMMΣLLZΣΣ) and clothing forms meant to be exhibited ... More » »
Ryan Kelly’s Mazeppa – a simple, poignant piece
Ryan Kelly‘s performance, Mazeppa, part of his Wind Challenge show, is a short piece with a rather profound sad meaning. I saw it on Oct. 6 at Fleisher Art Memorial. From a simple childhood trope, a rocking horse, Kelly has ridden into being the idea of the Everyman, who is beset by fears and hobgoblins. As he rocks back and forth going nowhere, passive and lulled by the comfort of the rocking horse, life is a dream that passes him by. This somber piece is heartfelt by the artist, who acknowledges in his statement the despair and pathos in the ... More » »
David McKenzie; Everything’s alright, nothing’s okay! at the Rosenwald Wolf Gallery
A young man in the nondescript uniform of his generation (trainers, tee shirt,…) dances in front of the automatic doors to a grocery store. His solo (captured on video) veers between street dancing and modern dance, then turns into the stumbling of a drunk. The slow motion, repeats and jump cuts of the video manipulation creates its own, sophisticated choreography. Edward and Me (2000) is the first of six videos in the Rosenwald Wolf Gallery‘s exhibition, David McKenzie; Everything’s alright, nothing’s okay! (through September 28). The video is smart and appealing – yet raises the question of what assumptions we’d ... More » »
Art in the Dark part 1: Tino Sehgal’s This Variation at Documenta XIII
There have always been artists who are challenged by working at the edge of visibility. For painters that originally meant night scenes, which are famously difficult, but wonderful when they work. Ad Reinhardt’s black paintings are a twentieth-century example; a more recent one is Martin Creed’s Work No. 227, The Lights Going On And Off (2000), which I loved because it emphasized the essential, but often ignored, necessity of light for all vision. My thoughts on the phenomenon are prompted by work in two different locations that take place in the dark – take place, because both are performative: Tino Sehgal’s ... More » »
Jenny Drumgoole on Husky, Socks, Wing Bowl and those crazy cream cheese recipes for Paula Deene
Jenny Drumgoole’s subversive videos make us smile. The artist stars in her videos as a larger than life parody of a kind of super woman or super adolescent. She gives her character a task in some contest or other (Wing Bowl, Paula Deene Real Women of Philadelphia online recipe contest) and voila, she’s off and running with funny, visceral videos that sample from archival film footage as need be to mix it up. (See Drumgoole’s videos here). Her slimy and ridiculous recipes for cream cheese dishes will have you hesitate the next time you reach for the white spread in the ... More » »
Rivane Neuenschwander in Dublin, Lygia Pape in London, and a book on Art under Conditions of Political Repression
Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other opened at the New Museum, New York in June, 2010 and I caught up with it at its final stop, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA, on through January 29, 2012). Organized by the two museums, the exhibition was also seen in in St. Louis, Scottsdale and Miami. Neuenschwander is from the first generation of Brazilian artists to come to international attention early in their careers, but she inevitably stands on the shoulders of the Frente and Neo-Concret artists of the late 1950s-1960s (Helio Oticica, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and others). Some ... More » »
Miss Rockaway Armada dreams on the muddy, mighty Schuylkill
“Oh that the sky is just an ocean. Won’t you float away with me?” sang the satyr to the children, while sweet accordion music gently rocked the crowd of onlookers along the banks of the mighty Schuylkill. It was the Miss Rockaway Armada, presenting a spectacle of performance — and sculptural boats and other objects created entirely of recycled and salvaged materials. A motley crew manned the flotilla: they were three parts gypsy, two parts sexy pirate, two parts circus freak, one part flotsam, half part jetsam, three quarters fish and one quarter goat. The flotilla, produced by The Philadelphia ... More » »
Matt Savitsky – our next podcast coming up on artblog radio
Matt Savitsky is a young artist who makes forlorn sculptural installations — mostly autobiographical — and sometimes performs in the character of Minty. Minty played a puppy in a window at Bodega last summer, a memorable performance full of come-hither looks, floppy hair falling over the eyes and my dog Spot black and white makeup on his face. Savitsky graduated with a BFA from Cooper Union in 2005 and he just left the East Coast for San Diego where he’s beginning an MFA program focused on interdisciplinary arts. Matt is a Pennsylvania native and openly gay. And while he only ... More » »
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