Robert Scobey, dishwasher/chandelier. Photo by Robert Scobey

Scobey (MFA, PAFA, 2009) has filled the downstairs space at Freeman’s auction house with his exhibit The Past Was Always Better.

Installation at Freeman's. Photo by Robert Scobey

The show is dominated by a number of large sculptures–improbable mergers of appliances, a toilet, and other house accoutrements modified to  a cheerful uselessness. A bicycle powers an inaccessible deck on wheels. An air conditioner in a free-standing window cools a cooler. An umbrella drains into gutters and a downspout. If the pieces weren’t so funny, ingenious and charming they’d be dreams of a desperate homeowner trying to keep one step ahead of household disintegration.

Robert Scobey, cooler cooled by air conditioner.

On what at first blush seems an entirely different note, Scobey has filled the display cases at Freeman’s with carved-into books. He calls them landscapes, but they are mindscapes. Scobey has cut through the layers of images in a book to reveal in an instant the depths that normally get reached through time via the action of reading.

Robert Scobey, carved book

The resulting juxtapositions and forms are at once beautiful and provocative–and not so unlike the large sculptures. The book has lost its original use. But its modified form offers other meanings and views. Both the books and other sculptures offer a touch of nostalgia, but also a wiggy optimism, a belief that there are other ways to see.

Robert Scobey, Miss August (Predator Drone) Inkjet Print 2010

The photo collages, also produced with a layering method similar to the one Scobey uses in the books, are not quite as impressive.  They lack the beauty (the lovely Miss June et. al. notwithstanding), and the juxtapositions seem to start with the idea, not with the images.

More pictures at Libby’s flickr and Roberta’s flickr.

Seripop, the Montreal screenprinting duo, blows into Space 1026 with a load of 400 rock band posters, books and zines to show and sell. Seripop, founded in 2002 by Chloe Lun and Yannick Desranleau, is the Space 1026 of Canada—an alternative print studio whose products have a funky, psychedelic vibe. The duo has won awards for their “gigposters” for underground music phenoms including Wolf Parade, Chinese Stars and their own band, AIDS wolf.

Seripop poster. Space 1026

Seripop’s bold graphic style and use of monsters, skulls and cartoon characters channel high school sketchbook art. The colors are a surprise—’50s-era pastels with weirdly non-complementary shades of orange, ochre, brown and lots of black. The text is almost unreadable in letters that seem to be melting, burning or twisting themselves into knots. But like rock posters from the 1960s, these contemporary works are less about the information than they are about commemorating the moment.

Nick Paparone. Vox Populi

There’s lots of great stuff at Vox Populi this month but Nick Paparone’s swansong installation is funnier, edgier and odder than anything else you’ll see. The Vox Pop member and co-founder of Black Floor, Copy and Print Liberation is headed to graduate school. Known for being secretive, Paparone doesn’t share what his installations look like before they’re hung but he’s known for his iconic representations of the human condition—usually made with common materials and gag props and sometimes involving performers. Previous works used black trash bags, rubber fried eggs and Mountain Dew in nauseating excess.

Two Together: Craig Kane and TImon Meyer at Mt. Airy Contemporary

Queens artists Craig Kane and Timon Meyers mine pop culture, mythology and personal history at Mount Airy Contemporary. Kane’s tiny, delicate sculptural installations in boxes, on the floor or on the wall use found materials—such as photos and tree branches—with hand-carved words to whisper about the ephemeral nature of life and human vulnerability. Meyers’ easel-sized digital photos merge appropriated television images from daytime tv with appropriated online images of mythological creatures like centaurs, the minotaur and elves. Television’s garish colors and harsh lighting make a great backdrop for beast-on-beast fighting scenes and close-ups of elfin-eared ladies.

Robert Scobey. Projects Gallery

Twenty-six young artists debut in Projects Gallery’s “Fresh,” a roundup that continues the gallery’s annual exploration of work by recent graduates who are relative unknowns. Gallery director Helen Meyrick says this year’s group is less focused on the body than in the past. Notable in a show that spans a wide range of materials, subjects and styles is David Solan’s futuristic installation in the gallery’s front window with spaceships suspended from the ceiling, exploding animals, pods and other sci-fi trappings all from recycled materials and metal. And watch out for Robert Scobey’s First Aid, a carved book that turns a first aid manual into a sexy collage of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and hands touching skin.

Seripop IBU400 x 2”: Through Sept. 15. Reception: Fri., Sept. 4, 7-10pm. Space 1026, 1026 Arch St., second fl. space1026.com
“Two Together”: Through Oct. 16. Reception: Fri., Sept. 4, 6-9pm. Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space, 25 W. Mount Airy Ave. 215.764.5621. mountairycontemporary.com
“30 Days in the Hole”: Through Sept. 27. Reception: Fri., Sept. 4, 6-11 pm. Vox Populi, 319 N. 11th St., third fl. 215.238.1236. voxpopuligallery.org
“Fresh, 2009”: Through Oct. 31. Reception: Sun., Sept. 6, 6-9pm. Projects Gallery, 629 N. Second St. 267.303.9652.projectsgallery.com

Philadelphia Sculptors also gets kudos for going beyond art school faculty and having the courage to take a chance on Joe and Chris, inviting them to curate the exhibit. Joe and Chris, in their usual collaborative way, asked for a little help from their friends. So even if the P.R. says the two of them curated, the truth is it was more of a team effort.

The resulting show(s), 5 into 1 + 1, is plus-one in a couple of ways. For the first time the exhibit includes students from a sixth school–Arcadia–in addition to the newly minted grads and up-and-coming students from Tyler, Penn, PAFA, UArts and Moore. Also for the first time, the exhibit is in two venues–the usual Moore College space, plus one– FLUXspace itself.

Is the FLUX show get viewers beyond the usual intrepid art fans willing to brave the wilds of North Philadelphia? I don’t know. But I for one think I would have missed something if I had missed that second venue.

I loved a lot of the work in the exhibits (in addition to the excellent work of Nicholas Poyner–see post here).

At FLUX, I want to give special plugs to:

Gregory Farrar Scott, Critter Portrait

Gregory Farrar Scott‘s broom-like millipedes, in Pop yellow, blue and red merge the lovable with creepy-crawlies. I loved they way they were displayed, too, high up on the wall and in the crotch where two walls meet.

Constantina Zavitsanos, Pierce Plowman (b text)

Constantina Zavitsanos’ dome-topped buckets won the what-is-it award for the exhibit. At the top of each was a peep-hole above which an illusion floated from somewhere within the bucket. One of the illusions was a compass pointer. The second one was the hands of a watch (I think–who knows?). Which way they pointed was open to interpretation and where they came from was open to interpretation and their visibility was also open to interpretation. So it is in the world of the imagination. Alas, the title only muddied the waters for me.

Daniel Gallaway, Polyvinyl Chloride

On the opposite side of muddy, Daniel Gallaway‘s ceramic PVC pipes, with just enough asymmetry to assure you that all is not perfect in the world of handmade and the world in general, spoke their message loud and clear–with elegance. A similar package of real PVC pipes would not have much charm, and in there is the poetics and philosophy of this piece.

Robert Scobey, Furniture Refinishing and Repair from the Home Library series of books

Three D trumps 2-D in Robert Scobey‘s carved how-to-do-it books. Borrowing the charm of the books’ dated-looking illustrations, Scobey turns them into spatial puzzles.

Also in the FLUXspace part of the exhibit–work from Maxwell Hartley (who uses sculpture in his video), Adam Bush, and Julie Ann McConnell (whose work I did not see), as well as the aforementioned Nick Poyner.

Kurt Freyer, untitled, 2008, video

At the Moore College space, a video based on sculptural materials, from Kurt Freyer, merged visual juiciness and color with an abstract narrative line of things piling up and then being hemmed in by netting. Both the pile, and then the netting grow in front of our eyes, alternating between threat and exuberance. That three videos are in this sculpture show, all using the sculpture as props is pretty intriguing as trends go. Besides Freyer, there’s the Poyner work in both spaces and then there’s Hartley‘s trap at FLUX. It intrigues me not just for its strategy, but for what it says about pop culture movies having an influence on art.

Brian Goodhart, Alligator Hopscotch, black tape

Brian Goodhart‘s Alligator Hopscotch, a caligraphic sculpture of black tape that cominates a huge amount of space, including floor, wall, ceiling, and the space in between as the tape stretches through the air.

Katie Popelak, untitled, oil on canvas

Also playing with space, but using the most unsculpture-ly material is Katie Popelak, whose trompe l’oeil shower makes a good pairing with Poyner’s horror movie props. Popelak’s piece is oil on canvas! and she mixes trompe-l’oeil painting with 3-D space. Also mixing it up with 2- and 3-D is Tad Sare. Unfortunately, I could not get his 3-D binoculars to focus on the King Kong drawing. I thought maybe it was because my eyes were off, but another person who came in the gallery had the same problem. I honestly don’t know if the 3-D was a bogus issue to frustrate the viewer or if the binoculars were simply misplaced. And then Scott’s piece at Moore, “Polish Irish Blend” is a sheet of wallpaper printed on the back, buckling its way up the wall. These three pieces, plus Goodhart’s tape piece plus Scobey’s cut-out book at FLUX, made for another mini-trend.

Samantha Hill, Fear of Water, 2006, synthetic hair, oak, cedar

I won’t write about Samantha Hill‘s piece, Fear of Water, which she showed at Voxxoxo last year. She’s in the ID show we curated now up at Projects, and it brings anything I can say right now into question. But Roberta wrote about work related to this piece last year. Here’s Roberta’s post.

Here’s who comes from which school: The Arcadia artists are Katie Popelak, Dan Galloway and Julie McConnell. Moore is represented by Samantha Hill; PAFA by Ted Sare, Gregory Scott, Robert Scobey, and Tina Zavitsanos; Tyler by Brian Goodhart; The University of the Arts by Adam Bush, Max Hartley, and Nicholas Poyner; and the University of Pennsylvania by Kurt Freyer.