Anne Tyng's double helix installation

The exhibit is spare, with some small architectural models and some enormous geometrical forms large enough to step into–all below an enormous hanging double-helix, spiraling around the overhead gallery. Entering into the space is dramatic and physical. In contrast, Tyng herself is a tiny nonagenarian, erect in comfortable pants topped by a shawl.

Large forms based on Tyng's drawings of Platonic solids dominate the gallery space.

You may or may not be aware of Tyng, a Philadelphia architect whose presence in the popular culture is mostly tied to her role as Louis Kahn’s mistress. This exhibit aims to correct this wrong. Her ideas about geometric forms and her collaborations with Louis Kahn were groundbreaking. As was typical in the ’50s and ’60s, the man took all the credit for what was truly collaborative work; and Tyng’s ideas had a life-long influence on his later work, as well as on architecture theory.

Anne Tyng, notes and sketches for ICA installation, 2010. Courtesy of the artist.

The groundbreaking nature of Tyng’s mathematical and geometrical approach is confirmed in letters (one from Buckminster Fuller, in case you’re thinking, Big deal, how’s this different from a geodesic dome?) and displayed in numeric calculations, drawings and architectural models–all drawn from the University of Pennsylvania’s architectural archives.

Anne Tyng, Four Poster House. In the background is a model of the house's framework.

The elegance of the small models, also drawn from the archives, is equally convincing. My favorite, The Four-Poster House, is shown in four phases of construction, in which each of the geometric layers adds to the strength and beauty of the first core layer.

In an art world that’s enamored with Fibonacci sequences and obsessive drawing practices, Tyng’s architectural explorations look perfectly at home.

Open Video Call

Jeroen Nelemans, How to disappear Completely, 2008, video, color, sound, 3:02 minutes. A faux sunset.

Also at the ICA, Open Video Call is a loop of 11 videos, many of them from new faces (to me), and all of them worth some time. The theme of real and not real weaves through all the selections, from Alex DaCorte’s playful and troubling special effects in Chelsea Hotel to tiona.m’s politically loaded but exuberant Americanly Speaking. Performance kicks in with Ted Cary’s a jackhammer is so real (it was in Vox’s Solid Gold show in 2008) and Leslie Rogers’ The Meeting. There’s also a lot of virtual landscape here, including two from Lee Arnold (these would have looked better larger) and one brief one from Jeroen Nelemans. Also in the selections are work by Ted Knighton, Jared Dyer, Lindsey Martin, and Sam Belkowitz with Tyler Kline (beautiful but kind of long). A national call followed the original Philadelphia call for submissions, but the jurors–Claire Iltis, (Fleisher/Ollman Gallery), Kate Kraczon (ICA), Jesse Pires (International House Philadelphia); and Adelina Vlas (Philadelphia Museum of Art)–stuck pretty close to their original choices, Kraczon mentioned opening night. So it’s 10 from Philadelphia, and only one from out of town–Chicago artist Nelemans.

The Illuminations Project

Shary Boyle, Soldiers Aren't Afraid of Blood, 2005, ink and gouache on paper, 18 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

In the Project Room, Shary Boyle & Emily Duke’s The Illuminations Project explores feminist rage and vulnerability amid male cruelty and mysogyny through a series of drawings by Boyle paired with text by Duke. The long-distance, multi-year collaboration interested me, and Boyle’s drawings are stunningly beautiful with jewel-like colors. The images are the female counterpart to Hernan Bas–only better.

Shary Boyle, I Want to be Afraid of Nature, 2003, ink and gouache on paper, 18 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

But for all its beauty, I had a mixed reaction to this. The 21st century visceral rage of the piece is weakened by overused conventions–the outpourings of menstrual blood, wolf-pack male cruelty, pro-forma witchery and pretentious archaic locutions.

This exhibit in this space is in keeping with an overall sense of new work and new people breaking down the barricades to redefine art. The video is fresh. Anne Tyng is a long-overdue reconsideration. And Illuminations, organized by ICA’s 2010-2011 Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow Virginia Solomon, brings in a distinctly female queer viewpoint.

The three shows are up through March 20, 2011.
Held over through Feb. 13 are Virgil Marti’s wonderful, theatrical Set Pieces (objects selected from the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s storage), and also the hot-button David Wojnarowicz video ejected from the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek show.

The exhibit includes work by 11 artists selected by singer-songwriter Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. The work in the show is a suprising mix of homey and slick, the result of what I imagine is one guy’s personal taste mixed with loyalty to his posse of frenz.

But after seeing Lori Damiano’s video animation, Lord I: The Records Keeper, 2003-2009, I think I want to be frenz with her, even though she lives on the West Coast.

Lori Damiano, Lord I: The Records Keeper, 2003-2009, animation, 14:15, 3rd state

She is mining mythology and fairytales, using archetypal themes like journeys, Pandora’s box, the house in the forest, the decision at the crossroads, etc. etc. The story book drawing is charming–a forest of Mr. Softee cone-shaped trees, flat dollops of curls, chunky figures.

Lori Damiano, Lord I: The Records Keeper, 2003-2009, animation, 14:15, 3rd state

The end result is wonderful–although it’s apparently not really the end result. John Ollman told me the video, which Damiano has been working on since 2003, had to practically be wrested out of her hands. She was still madly at work when the show was about to open. Yo, Lori, it’s perfect. Let it go and move on (not that she’s been unproductive; you can check out her website, but it’s a little slow-loading).

One of the comics in Kramer's Ergot 7, 2008, Sammy Harkham, ed. (I don't know who did this particular page), hardcover, 96 00. full-color, 21 x 16 inches, compilation book by numerous contributors

A beautiful compilation book of comics, all two-page spreads, from a wide range of artists, including Matt Groening, was edited by Frenz contributor and ultra-hot comics artist Sammy Harkham. Kramer’s Ergot 7 blew me away, and you can see the complete list of who contributed to the book on the link here. Harkham, who’s a productive life-force of his own,  also contributed a number of his own comics in book and drawing formats, including the books Crickets #2 and Poor Sailor.

Abel Brown, Christ on Water, 2009, ink, watercolor and typewriter ink on paper, 9 1/2 x 8 inches

On the funky side of cartooning, I enjoyed drawings from Kyle Field and Abel Brown. Brown is more about the human condition, and his irreverent Christ as a surfer dude seems like a good, down-to-earth explanation for walking on water.

Kyle Field, 2008, ink, watercolor on paper,

Field has a sharp eye on the culture, drawing the world and people around him. But the people look like medieval peasants–as if they are Renaissance Faire reenactors in Midtown Manhattan.

Shary Boyle, detail Moon Hunter , 2009, paper, ink, tissue, mac-tac, acetate, pins, glitter, fabric, variable materials, with Netsuke, 2007, ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches on left

An installation by Shary Boyle, Moon Hunter, is theatrical and stylish. In another part of her life, she draws live on an overhead projector during concerts, including during Will Oldham’s, so theatrical effects must be on her mind. In her installation here, the central figure, a 2-D woman dressed in a part 3-D hip take on men’s Elizabethan clothing, works at a wired-up computer-ish screen. The look is storybook dreamy–a trope emphasized by using the two sides of the wall, like the front and back of a page and like the inside and outside of a house. On the reverse side of the wall, a single tower emits a blinking signal that appears to go out to a starry universe of glitter. The contemporary hyperconnectivity mixed with loneliness and yearning is almost buried in the glib beauty.

Shary Boyle, detail of the reverse side of the wall, Moon Hunter, 2009, paper, ink, tissue, mac-tac, acetate, pins, glitter, fabric, variable materials

Frenz, on view through the end of the summer, also includes work by Jill Gallenstein, Alan Licht, Ashley Macomber, Joanne Oldham, Leslie Shows and Spencer Sweeney.