Tag Archive "philagrafika"

Art and technology in Kensington

Much of the work around the Kensington area this month questions the divide between technology and artist. First up is the Brad Troemel Pre-career Retrospective at Extra Extra Gallery. The gallery directors curated the show entirely from Troemel’s website selecting images of work, installations, and videos and installing the show without consulting the artist in the process. On the Extra Extra website they explain: “This gesture of presenting work without the consent of the creator is emblematic of immaterial art’s free movement into any receptive home.”

‘What in the World?’ at the Penn Museum, Print Invitational at Little Berlin, ‘Dead Flowers’ at Vox Populi

For the past couple decades ever more museums have invited artists into their store rooms to curate exhibitions: in an early example, the RISD Museum invited Andy Warhol; MoMA asked Chuck Close and Scott Burden; and Fred Wilson has made a career of the practice.  The results have almost always been interesting.  Artists, of course, have their own questions of and approaches to objects and collections and it’s always enlightening to see familiar things in unexpected ways.

Alexander Arrechea at Crane Arts Building and Miller Lagos at Penn

Alexander Arrechea’s installation, Orange Tree, occupied Crane Arts‘ huge Icebox as well as the Grey Box leading to it from Jan. 21-Feb. 21, 2010, and it definitely held its ground within that vast space.  Arrechea’s work, combining suggestions of menace and the high-tech production values of the latest Hollywood movie, rose to the challenge of the monumental scale.  On entering the darkened Grey Box visitors were confronted with Black Sun (2009), a silent video projection of a swinging wrecking ball that marked time in the exhibition like a destructive pendulum.

Isolated Fictions at FLUXspace–our collective memory

You have a few days left to get to Isolated Fictions, an evocative exhibit at FLUXspace of work related to the publication of The North Georgia Gazette, a beautiful reprint of an 1821 shipboard journal, by Chicago’s Green Lantern Press.

Big bang, small bang at Gallery Joe

The big shock in Gallery Joe‘s current show is what has happened to the space. The usual Joe m.o. is to hang the work in calmest presentation possible, neatly arrayed around the small gallery’s spaces.

Mourning: Osorio and Munoz at PAFA and PMA

Maybe because Murray’s mother died a month ago (see his Op Ed in today’s Inquirer), two works in the big Philagrafika 2010 exhibit have been gnawing about me. Pepon Osorio at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has printed a blow-up of an X-ray image of his mother’s skull atop a thick, black bed of confetti, laid on the floor like a fresh grave. The installation is to honor the memory of his mother, who died recently. And the memorial suggests all the medical interventions that fail and the way an individual, irreplaceable and unique and loved, is quantified in ...

The Duke of Riley meets the King of Petty’s Island

We wandered over to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania last week while Duke Riley was installing his show about Ralston Laird and Petty’s Island, his chosen subject for his Philagrafika project. The artist, 38, had the society’s large glass cases full of artifacts and photos from his excursions to Petty’s Island, and he’d made a large family history drawing based on research he did about the Laird clan. Over the mantle was a photo taken in a helicopter flyover of Riley’s piece de resistance for the project, a mural painted on top of a Citgo oil holding tank that sits ...

Some conversations with Philagrafika artists

We’ve been making some of the rounds, talking to a variety of Philagrafika artists in The Graphic Unconscious and Out of Print exhibits. Here are some tidbits, mostly recollected, but I noted when the conversation is based on notes.

Events in Philadelphia and Elsewhere

An incomplete, biased and otherwise personal list of some of the events I hope to get to in the next two weeks: Tuesday, Feb.  2, 6 pm YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, a Seoul based web-art group, will be speaking at Temple where their work is part of Philagrafika. 126 AUDITORIUM, Temple University Architecture building,  1947 North 12th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122 Free and open to the public Who wouldn’t want to hear from artists who did a web piece called CUNNILINGUS IN N0RTH K0REA?  You can see it, and more of their work at their site.

Temple Philagrafika talk 2-5 today

I’m dashing toff to Temple Gallery for the artist’s talk inconjunction with the Philagrafika show there. The talk, featuring artists Carl Pope, Frencesc Ruiz, Barthelemy Toguo and YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, plus Curators Sheryl Conkelton and Jose Roca, sounds pretty interesting.