Jennifer Levonian video still

The talk
More immediate is the April 12 talk there by Jennifer Levonian, the stop-action animation video artist who charms while pointing out our culture’s crazy disconnects. Her talk is noon-1 p.m. at the West Collection at SEI, 1 Freedom Valley Drive, Oaks, PA 19456 (for navigation and mapquest search 250 Cider Mill Rd., Collegeville, PA 19426). Open and free to the public. RSVP by Monday, April 11 to Lee Stoetzel, lee@westcollection.org

Easier climb to Tiger Strikes Asteroid
Tiger Strikes Asteroid is moving May 1–downstairs to the second floor of 319A N. 11th St., right nearby Grizzly Grizzly and Marginal Utility. For a grand opening, they will have a one-night-only show of all the collective’s members on April 15, 5-10 p.m. in the new space, and a simultaneous reception for the Theresa Saulin show in the tiny old 4th floor space. Even more simultaneity–this all coincides with Philadelphia Gallery Night. We didn’t much like hiking up to the 4th floor, so we’re totally thrilled.

Ai Weiwei and Slought
We got an email today from Slought Foundation deploring the arrest of Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. The Sloughties had “just begun working on a project about cultural dialogue” with the artist–hence their plea for people and institutions to advocate on Ai Weiwei’s behalf. Full text is on the Slought site.

John Oswald, Liaison, 2004, transparencies

The piece de resistance is Oswald’s Liaison, a nearly life-size pair of transparencies, one printed with a man’s front, the other with a man’s back, about 6 feet apart. The two bodies are wearing invisible clothes–well transparent clothes. And the magic here is that your point of view is critical. Are they looking at one another? Are they walking away from one another? Are they both staring at you? It all depends on where you place your own body–at either end or in the middle.

John Oswald, stillnessence, 2004- , 3-channel video projection, in which the clothes melt away

The two bodies belong to ordinary looking guys, a pair of dumb schmucks. Or maybe they are the same guy–one dumb schmuck. Either way, they are not eroticized in any way, even though the name of the piece is liaison (there’s that humor for you); the fade-away clothes make them rather foolish. Again I am struck by how Canadian this is. And also by how that Canadian point of view has permeated the current generation of younger artists who are unafraid to paint themselves as shlubs–an apotheosis of anti-heroics in the age of less.

Michael Snow, sheeploop, 2004, DVD (x4)

I also want to give props to Slought’s installation of Michael Snow’s loop video of sheep eating grass. It’s one of those watching-paint-dry experiences that the installation compensates for by installing it in four monitors placed around the gallery. So each time you pass a monitor, you see the progress of the sheep munching and looping across the field. This is entirely appropriate in that nothing much happens other than the bellwether leading the others, initiating the group’s circular path across the field. The influential Snow is about 25 years older than Oswald, but the pairing is terrific. Snow is about 80 but his recent work is fresh and lively, and Oswald is in his mid-50s. (Graham btw is just a few years older than Oswald).

Andrea mentioned this show in her recent coverage of notable International House events. There was a tie-in. The exhibit at Slought includes a number of playful videos and projections. The number of pieces is small enough to make navigating easy. For my taste the wall labels are a bit too clear and explanatory, depriving some of the works of the magic of discovery–and of humor.

Many Moving and Still Works by Two Torontonians
An exhibition of work by
Michael Snow and John Oswald
September 29 – October 29, 2010
Slought Foundation Exhibition

Thursday, Sept. 23 films by the Lumière Brothers and Georges Méliès. The beginnings of French cinema that established many of its conventions. Méliès particularly loved special effects.

George Méliès still from 'A Trip to the Moon'

Wednesday, Sept. 29 Michael Snow’s Corpus Callosum (2002); the artist will be  present. Snow is one of the most influential of experimental filmmakers who has also worked in painting, sculpture, photography, sound and  music.  Earlier in the evening the Slought Foundation is opening an exhibition of recent work by Snow and John Oswald.  Oswald is a fellow Torontonian who is best known within music and dance worlds; the duo will perform together at I House on Thursday, Sept. 30.

Michael Snow still from 'Corpus Callosum'

Saturday, Oct. 9 Mona Hatoum’s Measures of Distance (1988) and Shirin Neshat’s Women Without Men (2009) This last of three nights of films by women directors from North Africa and the Middle East features work by Hatoum, better known as a sculptor and installation artist, and the first feature-length film by Neshat, whose previous short films were usually shown as multi-screen, gallery installations. The Hatoum film is based on letters between the artist, living in Britian, and her mother in Beirut.  Not only her first feature but also the first to follow a clear narrative, Neshat’s film is based on the banned novel by Shahmush Parsipur, set in Iran in 1953; I saw a short version of the film at the Cisneros Collection in Miami last year, and am very much looking forward to the full-length version.

Mona Hatoum still from 'Measures of Distance'

Shirin Neshat still from 'Women Without Men'

Friday, Oct. 22  Teinosuke Kinugasa’s silent A Page of Madness (1926), with a live score for string quartet and koto, bass clarinet and shakuhachi played by Ensemble N_JP. I House describes this as one of the most acclaimed, but least seen, films in history. The music , commissioned by I House, was written by Gene Coleman and Akikazu Nakamura.

Teinosuke Kinugasa still from 'A Page of Madness'

Thursday, Nov. 18 Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927). One of several notable urban film portraits from the 20s which include Sheeler and Strand’s Manhatta and Dziga Vertov’s  Man With a Movie Camera.

Walter Ruttmann still from 'Berlin, Symphony of a Great City'

Aaron Levy, photo courtesy Scribe Media Arts&Culture channel

Levy, who is Slought’s senior curator, is writing his PhD dissertation in art history and cultural studies at the University of Leeds–1,000 words a day with a goal of 40,000 words total (he is at around 24,000 when we meet him).  He co-founded Slought Foundation with artist Osvaldo Romberg and philosopher Jean-Michel Rabate. Slought’s program is full of philosophical questioning, serious discussion, and art from around the world.

Before we sit down at the Metropolitan Cafe next to the gallery, we have a moment of confusion with the cashier that allows Levy to pick up the check for one of our drinks. We try to pay him back the $2, but he stands firm, and at some point to not accept would have been churlish.  Nonetheless, suddenly we find ourselves co-opted. Can we write up this interview fairly? Although it was unintentional, we are definitely implicated by this simple civility.

And that is the main point that Levy’s conversation leads us to and one of the main words he uses over and over–implicated.  We are all implicated in each other’s worlds.  So how can the role of the artist — the outsider critiquing society — work today if we’re all implicated?  How can you be an artist and make serious, socially critical work that has not been co-opted by the very society you are criticizing?

Aaron Levy at the command post, Slought Foundation

But that’s not where we start the conversation. We start by asking him to tell us about theory, what it is, what is its use in the world of art.

His answer is that philosophy is hysterical questioning.

What’s that, we ask. “Hysterical questioning is ongoing questioning about the world around you. There’s something anti-authoritarian about that position. It calls into question everything. It’s similar to the role of the artist in the ’60s and ’70s.”

So Levy sees the artist as a social critic. And he says that you can see how that plays out in the ’60s and ’70s in the dematerialization of the art object. Referring us to Lucy Lippard‘s book, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object (1973), he explains that things like land art, performance art, Dennis Oppenheim carving in ice were all new forms of practice — developed in opposition to minimalism’s focus on the object and its monumentality.

Other forms of opposition in that era include experimentation with collectives and belonging. “That’s what you see coming back today in Philadelphia.”

Another characteristic of the 60s and 70s is a clearer line drawn between the center and the periphery, he says. “Institutions like the New Museum and PS 1 were coming into being for the practice and exhibition of artwork through oppositional logic. PS 1 had a bombed out aesthetic, with holes in the wall. It was attractive and oppositional to the white box at MoMA.

Why is it important for art to be oppositional, we ask.

“It is [important] only if you believe that art has that role — to oppose.  I believe art has a responsibility (expressed through oppositionalism). In the ’60s and ’70s, there was an interest in probing the limits of the social order.   Romantic as it is, I still believe it’s the role of the artist — to question and redefine.”

We want to hear how Levy would apply theoretical ideas to what’s happening here in Philadelphia. “I don’t know that the questions in Philadelphia are different from the questions elsewhere, except that DIY culture is a big practice here.” But then he points to the poverty rate in Philadelphia (20 percent) and in Mantua, the neighborhood just north of Slought, (60 percent). He suggests art needs to ask questions about that.

However, most art isn’t oppositional, he says, because to survive and get attention today art needs to be easy to take in quickly; and it needs to have spectacle — which is inappropriate next door to such poverty.

We are interested in his idea about spectacle and the constant desire for newness and what we are seeing as the ever-increasing homogeneity of the art world.   What we’ve observed is that people (gallerists, collectors, artists) desire something new and spectacular, something for immediate consumption. But will that produce the most interesting practices? And with cultural tourism dependent on providing spectacle, what happens to more thoughtful, slower work that is not new or spectacular.

He says, “We have a perpetual desire for perpetual spectacularity. For me it’s a vexed question. Is it possible not to be subservient to the new and spectacular and to the allure of entertainment?”

But why fight spectacle at the risk of being marginalized, we ask. He is worried that by using spectacle the artist is implicated in society and its values, is co-opted, and is no longer fulfilling the function of critiquing society. But then, he says, “An artwork is a fairly small gesture, as much as I want it to be (bigger). Art can only do so much.  There are no answers to these questions, only perpetual questions, questions only meant to serve as productive generators of practice. Humility may be what we need today more than hubris.”

Humility –this seems a new theoretical idea to us.   Is anybody else talking about humility as the way to the future?

“I don’t know. There was a book about slowness in architecture a while ago. Nobody is writing about this.  We need more writing about it but I can’t get up and speak about modesty in a public forum (because I’ll look immodest).   It’s an aporia…(philosophical puzzle).”

Levy co-curated the project, Into the Open for the American architecture pavilion at the 2008 Venice Biennale and that effort was about showing real world issues of poverty, environmental activism and equal housing activism.  The whole thrust of the exhibition was anti-spectacle.  And the difficulty with that, he says, is, “It’s a downer.  Here’s a project in the most fun pavilion (the US pavilion) in a biennial that was called a “fun palace” by one media critic.  And we were modest….”
This “modesty proposal” is clearly not for everyone.  But then Levy defines art in a slightly different way from most people; he talks about how research can be art whether or not it results in a product or exhibit.    We wonder if he is saying in a roundabout way that there is too much art out there.  “Yes,” he says.

And apparently others are thinking that thought as well.  Levy tells us that at the recent panel discussion on the 50th anniversary of the Percent for Art program in Philadelphia, at which he was moderator, the discussion was about how we don’t need more public art but how we need new forms of “public” and new forms of art.  As surprised as he was to hear this, he applauds that thinking.

New definitions of public and art are what the Public Art Fund and Creative Time in New York are all about.  So, we are thinking it’s interesting that public art people in Philadelphia are groping towards those models, in which art is temporary and ephemeral in nature and has less of an obligation to please and more latitude to raise questions.

“And that’s why theory is so important today.  It can help us figure out new ways forward.”

But who’s writing this theory and what are they saying, we ask.

“Artforum,” he says, pointing to Antonio Negri‘s political writings about multitudes and post-colonial concerns.  Also, anything by Jacques Ranciere.

“Theory could be radical, like the Situationists or Futurists.  There is revolutionary potential,” he says.  “If theory is popularized, its revolutionary potential is co-opted, becoming hip and fashionable like every other commodity. It has to be more than something to read on Sunday morning and then you go out shopping.”

“I am interested in the theory of implication.  I tell my students about Theodore Adorno and his writings on the culture industry.  We see more than 1,000 ads a day and are incredibly implicated by the world around us.  Theory could help us contextualize.”

“Today there is only the inside [not the center and the periphery].  We are all inside.  We are all shiny and new.  I like shiny and new.   But there is more.  Theory allows us to sit back and think about our situation.”

Half Past Three (The Poet), 1911. Marc Chagall (French, born Belorussia, 1887 – 1985). Oil on canvas, 77 1/8 x 57 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

I’ve never written poetry (do limericks count?), and after college I put away my Norton Anthology and have not often taken it out to read  the works of Keats, Yeats, Coleridge and Eliot, words that I struggled with and loved and hated and wrote papers about.  Some years back, however, I heard Billy Collins reading his poems on the radio (Fresh Air on NPR) and was catapulted out the door to buy a book of his works.

This is poetry I didn’t think was possible. Poetry with humor and a quiet voice that told you a story that was about ordinary things like … eating Osso Buco; or ruminating on the girls in the pinup calendar on the wall at the car mechanic’s. Of course these poems are not really about Osso Buco or pinups. They start in the mundane world of the senses then slip into the realm of the spirit and often wind up in deep, mysterious places, like, at death’s door.

April is poetry month and by serendipity I heard a poetry reading on the radio while driving in my car.  Radio is perfect for poetry because it requires you to imagine.  I don’t listen to books on CD in the car, but I loved hearing poetry while I was out running errands.  It perked me right up.  (Listen to the Radio Times program here.)

Later on in April I went to two poetry readings, and each experience showed me how much art and poetry are alike in their ability to stimulate the imagination.

Sharon Black, a Philadelphia area poet who I heard at Slought as part of the new Slought Fellows series, is a disarmingly humble poet whose works are homey and yet, like a home, surrounded by prickly brambles and a some surprises inside and out. Black (I’m sorry I don’t have a photo) does some wonderful visual conjuring in her works like in the love poem to her house in which she talks about how the house sits “in the grass like a contented cow.”  Read another house poem of Black‘s.

Thomas Devaney, picture by Zoe Strauss from Devaney's website

Thomas Devaney, also a Philadelphia poet, was featured in the radio program along with Susan Stewart and Elaine Terranova.  Devaney, who teaches at Penn and works on many projects with the ICA, writes poems that are conversational and vernacular. Sonnet, which I believe he read on the radio, circles around three images — rain-soaked hair, reading a book of Milton and eating a BLT. Simple images but wrapped in a story that suggest a kind of failed love, a love from a distance that might have been. Read Devaney’s sonnet here.

Billy Collins, speaking at the Free Library last Thursday

Billy Collins spoke at the Free Library last Thursday to a packed audience prepared to laugh.  And laugh we did.  The man has the gift of the gab, and in between reading his often very funny poems he kept up a banter about this and that and where the poems may have taken off from. Collins is a maker of exquisite images. One I loved is in his Spring poem in which he is so happy with the arrival of Spring that he wants to share it with everyone — including those people trapped in the snow globe who he will liberate so they too can experience the new season. Collins, like all poets, is an eavesdropper. He’s also a college teacher attuned to the patois of the young. “What She Said” riffs on the phrase “Like give me a break” turning it this way and that and showing it as the kind of statement of the ridiculous that it really kind of is. After reading the poem, he quipped that he also knows now that Oh My God or OMG is a verb and has a past tense. His proof — a woman who says, “I was like OMG.”

Collins said he was a happy cribber of lines from other poets’ works. And he explained that he was influenced by Coleridge’s “domestic” poems which begin with the real world and then dive head first into the mystical.  He often gets inspired when he goes to a museum and looks at the art. He had been to the PMA earlier that day he said and loved some Amish works he saw, which he took copious notes on and which may turn into a poem some day.

The man was generous with his time — he read and answered questions for more than an hour.  He would have stayed longer but he had to go perform afterwards with the literary rock band, Rock Bottom Remainders at the Electric Factory who were performing around the country to raise money for Haiti relief groups and here in Philadelphia for the Free Library.

Here part of the audience Q&A that followed the reading.

Q. I love your CD. When are you doing another CD?
Billy Collins. That’s easy, I don’t know.

Q. How do you know when to leave a poem alone?
BC  To make a painting you need two people. One to paint and the other to cut the hands off the painter (when it’s done)….I usually have a destination in mind. If you have a destination, then you (have less trouble). It’s about structure. I like to start in Kansas and get to Oz. If you start in Oz you lose everyone. Every poem has a tornado in it. ….and revision is for weaklings (laughs).

Q.  What’s your process? Do you write every day?
BC  I try to write a poem in one sitting…I’m too curious about where this is going to go to the movies or (put it aside till next Monday). I want it to be a single experience. If it happens for me then there’s a chance that will be created for you.

Q. You’re at the top of the profession. Where do you find honest criticism of your new work?
BC Oh it’s out there (laughs). I’m shot down left and right. One thing. When you’re writing clear poetry you’re open to criticism.

Q. Jazz comes up a lot in your work. What is it about jazz?
BC  Nothing really. It’s on in the background a lot…jazz is just another metaphor. I hate jazz poetry, especially the mimetic kind. Jazz is there first like cooking or walking the dog. Someone said poetry and jazz are alike — they’re improvised. Well, a trumpet doesn’t have an eraser. You can’t call back those notes.

Q. Your work has twists and turns.
BC  Lots of people start somewhere (with a subject) but a poem wants to lose that subject. The idea is to lose the topic. The poet I learned from most is Coleridge, his Conversation poems, Nightengale, Frost at Midnight. They start in a domestic setting. I think that’s new with Coleridge. They start at home and 20 lines later he’s gone — into a speculation about…(the universe). If the poet stays with the topic and sets it down like a piece of furniture at the end it’s not too interesting.

Q. What’s your role in the Rock Bottom Remainders?
BC  I sang once. They allowed me to sing Gloria. There were pretty sure I could spell it.

Q. How long do you write?
BC I have no work habits…and no ambition. I never sit down at 9 o’clock to commit an act of literature. … I go to museums. I was at the PMA today and saw some Amish art and took notes….I don’t sit down to write. I walk around.

Q. When did you get your mature poet’s voice?
BC  You mean did I have a moment when I realized I was cool? Writing programs tell you you have to find your voice — that’s (bogus, hogwash…my notes failed me). I got my voice and other poets get voices by grabbing from other poets and finally you develop your own. Originality is covert imitation. Professors call it literary influence but it’s jealousy. Updike said it best…he said he felt he was swallowed by a hobby.

The Free Library is now podcasting some of its lectures, which is great. The Billy Collins is not up yet but I hope it will be.  Others available that I heard and can recommend are Michael Lewis, Adam Gopnik and Sherman Alexie.

Carolee Schneemann and cat, image from the artist's slide presentation.

Schneemann’s “Infinity Kisses – the Movie” (2008) is a silent slide show of photos of the artist being kissed by her pet cat, Vesper.  The photos are blurry, close-cropped and somewhat garish, echoing the low aesthetic appeal of pornographic images.  They’re also sensual — the artist, seen close-up, her mouth open and eyes closed, receives what are obviously pleasurable kisses from her pet.  But beyond the erotic intent, these documentary photos — taken over a number of years — raise issues about solitary practices in general.  Schneemann is dignifying what’s done in private and suggesting a human need for secret rituals and practices.   No matter what you think — Is it cute to kiss your cat or is it sickening? — what’s shocking here is the thought that this solitary pleasure, and others as well, might be ok or even an important part of the human experience.

EXPORT’s black and white video in the vault, “ Man, Woman, Animal” likewise suggests there’s something almost holy in human private practices. The film, made with her then-partner Peter Weibel, is an almost clinical portrayal of a woman masturbating.  The artist, nude, seen from the waist down, sits in a bathtub with a stream of water directed at her private parts which she displays for the camera.  The camera zooms in on the water and the private parts, and the sound of moaning in the background suggests the pleasure of the experience.  The full-frontal and accurate portray is shocking.  Yet, as in the Schneemann piece, there’s a level of dignity suggested.  There’s nothing to snicker at here.

Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala, Free Wall, drawing

Additional EXPORT and Weibel videos, and photos, drawings, sculpture, videos and installations by younger artists round out the show.  Notable are Gabe Martinez’s photo series of heterosexual men’s feet curled up at moment of climax after masturbating.  The pictures rise to the level of Schneemann and EXPORT in intent and sheer documentary impact, although there’s a Charlie Chaplin-esque mischief about the curled toes, too.  A selection of erotic drawings by Stephen and Billy Blaise Dufala, available as giveaways, suggest how art, being itself a solitary pleasure, has always sought to actively engage the viewer.

image: Gabriel Martinez, "Self-Portraits by Heterosexual Men/2007 (Rocco)" chromogenic print 20” x 30” 2007

Above the serious art, the walls are peppered with photocopies of antique porn images and quotable quotes about masturbation that are hand-written on torn spiral notebook pages.  The higgledy-piggledy wall ensembles are kitsch comic relief from the seriousness elsewhere.

Things done in alone have often resulted in great leaps forward for mankind.  Shakespeare didn’t write with a team; Einstein didn’t think up his equation brainstorming with math buddies.  Leonardo created Mona Lisa in private, with himself and the sitter alone together in the presumably silent studio.

In his essay for the show, curator Kevin Richards talks about the demonization of solitary pleasures — especially masturbation — characterized to this day as unhealthy addictive behavior.  But really, as Freud said (quoting from the show’s wall text) “The only thing about masturbation to be ashamed of is doing it badly.”

Two wonderful podcasts on the Slought website bring you lectures by Carolee Schneemann and curator Keith Richards, recorded at the opening.  Both are important to understand the broader intent of the show.

Solitary Pleasures, to April 21. Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut St. 215 701 4627

Read this story at PW.

Video is a huge part of the art world and many galleries now include the medium as part of their regular programming.    Shows of all video art are less frequent although they too occur. Slought’s “1:5:25” is an all-video show curated by a team of 5 and presenting works by 25 artists or artist groups.   A veritable dim sum video banquet of stuttering, fast-paced, culture-questioning videos, the show is good but it raises the question:  How much video is too much?

One of the videos at Slought. This appeared on a loop with other videos that used split-screen and pop-culture imagery. I think it's by David Romberg

 
1:5:25 decentralized the curating by inviting each of the 5 young co-curators to organize their own “mini” show on a theme. The videos loop on five screens, each dedicated to a different theme:  sex, the body, architecture, language or technology.  The resulting experience is like going to five shows in one gallery.

Same dancing split screen video--it really is a fun piece.

The individual pieces are short, and some of those I saw are very good.  Mariya Dimov’s upside down whirling dervish is a great take on everything from voyeurism to religious imagery to torture; David Romberg’s split-screen hip hop dance sampler shows the same dance moves around the world and is a great embrace of humanity as well as technology;  Jennie Thwing’s video of a sock-puppet-like leg snaking its way through a landscape is Pee Wee Herman meets Brothers Grimm—terrific and terrifically odd.

Mariya Dimov's upside down dervish. A performance/torture/religion piece.

Seating was not available for comfortable viewing when I was there at the crowded opening.   But I’m assured there is now seating which is great because standing to watch time-based media is an immediate turn-off.

Alana Bograd's swirling paintings look bolder and stronger than ever.

In Slought’s back gallery is another show, also, like 1:5:25, part of its emerging artist series.  Alana Bograd’s large colorful, loop-de-loop paintings are standouts; digital portraits of mom and dad and digital video by Asher Barkley are worth a look as are installations by Tina Zavitsanos and Aki Torri and deadpan photos by Didier Clain. 

Constantina Zavitsanos' mirror and video piece catches you coming and going. Zavitsanos has a similar piece in her Fleisher Challenge show.

“New Media in the White Cube and Beyond,” a collection of essays on the phenomena of all things new media (video, internet art, game-hacking art, etc) provides examples of alternative modes of display for mediated art.  Implied throughout the many essays is the need to engage the viewer and prevent viewer fatigue or frustration for works that demand much more than a painting does.  Sarah Cooke’s essay suggests, among other things, “one night stands,” instead of the 30-day show, for work that would benefit from artist-viewer interaction and explication. 

Didier Clain's street photos.

Asher Barkley, portrait of mom done with paint samples.

It’s a great idea and would work perfectly for “1:5:25.”  Maybe five one night stands, one for each theme, would allow viewers to get a grip and digest individually what’s presented here as a big smorgasbord.

Gary HIll, one of the video works focused on language and words and books at Slought.

Panel discussion at Slought. L-R in front, Charles Stein, Gary Hill, George Quasha. Rear, Aaron Levy, Osvaldo Romberg

The Seattle-based Hill (b. 1951) is an established big gun in video art, whose work is widely shown around the world.  He’s a 1998 MacArthur genius award recipient and his works — while conceptual — deal with language and the body in a mostly non-narrative but people-focused way.  

Gary Hill, video piece in which he pushes his body against a glass wall. The audio hums at an alarming decibel level.

The work that greets you in the darkened front gallery is a multi-channel video projection whose audio is a bone-rattling hum so loud and unnerving I ran out of the gallery several times for relief ( I was not alone).  This piece — whose images were close-up shots of the artist’s body parts straining against a glass wall — lives where language doesn’t often go, the fear/anxiety zone experienced in the body.  The work communicated nicely, without words.

The show — with works from the ’80s through the present — is beautifully installed, making use of the two vault spaces to show projected videos that would either upstage others in the exhibit or that need quiet space to digest.  Pacemaker alert:  Wall Piece (2000), which involves a strobe light that flashes to coincide with a video of the artist as he jumps against a wall and says a word, is another piece with a visceral impact on your body.  While the work has pizzazz and is quite likeable, its connection to language seems almost extraneous and what it most reminded me of is a child’s jump rope song where the words are tacked on to the act of jumping rope but seemingly have no meaning.  The impact of the piece does not lie in the words but in its visual spectacle.  See video here.

Gary Hill and Charles Stein at dinner doing some language games.

Remarks on Color (1994), which is not in the show, depicts the artist’s young daughter as she struggles to read from Wittgenstein, a text she clearly does not understand.  Many of the pieces at Slought — like Remarks on Color — deal with word comprehension, obfuscation and communication.  They all imply discomfort inflicted on the body by language.  (If you’ve ever been yelled at you will immediately “get” the connection between body and language.)

 The artist, who seems a charming sort, showed himself to be a beatnik-rapper guy when, at dinner after the opening, he broke into a sing-song nonsense verse accompanied by everyone’s hands clapping.  It was endearing if not comprehensible–and very in keeping with what was in the gallery a block away.  See video here.

TUESDAY MARCH 17

Gary Hill, Wall Piece, (2000); Single-channel video/sound installation. Video projector, strobe light and strobe controller with steel floor mount, two speakers, one DVD player and one DVD (color; stereo sound). All images courtesy of the artist and Donald Young Gallery, Chicago.

Gary Hill–NOTE:  AS OF 2 PM MONDAY, MAR. 16, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Hill has been working with video and sound since 1973. His intermedia use of text, speech and image explore the physicality of language and our thought processes. Winner of a MacArthur Foundation Genius award in 1998, and winner of the Leone díOro Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1995, his work has been included in six Whitney Biennials and Documenta IX.

Coinciding with the talk, a show of Hill’s work opens at Slought on Saturday, March 21. 6:30-8:30 pm, with a conversation between Hioll, George Quasha and Charles Stein at 7 pm. The show runs to May 1.

Gary Hill
UPenn Graduate Fine Arts Lecture
Cosponsored by Slought Foundation
5 pm, Meyerson Hall, B1
210 S. 34th St. Philadelphia PA 19104
Open to the public

WEDNESDAY, MAR 18

Barkley Hendricks

Barkley Hendricks
The talk, by this major African American painter who put his own stamp on Pop Art, is the precursor to Hendricks widely acclaimed upcoming exhibit at PAFA (now at the Studio Museum in Harlem). The PAFA show opens Oct. 17, 2009 and runs to Jan. 3, 2010.

Barkley Hendricks
5:00 PM
Upper Meyerson Gallery
Meyerson Hall
210 S. 34th St.
Open to the Public

Lawrence Weschler
Weschler is a former New Yorker writer and culture critic. He’ll be talking about the shift from books to blogs and instances of the world melting into thin air, i.e., the transitory quality of the internet and what it means for the culture.

Lawrence Weschler
All that is Solid
2008-2009 Penn Humanities Forum on Change
5:00 pm
Rainey Auditorium, Penn Museum
To register (required): go here
Event free and open to the public.

Drew Leshko, 2009, Untitled Installation (detail), paper, wire, plaster, basswood, plastic, acrylic, enamel, 40" x 80" x 40"

Seriously, Stupididity
And here’s a new show at a new outpost in North Philly. When you’ve had enough of the words and lectures, you can come up for air and look at some art. Damian Weinkrantz and Adam Wallacavage, both from Space 1026, are in charge here in a new space called Shadow’s Space Gallery above Kung Fu Necktie, a watering hole with one of the best signs on north Front Street.

showing work by
Drew Leshko, David Dunn, Danny Perez, Spencer Wunder, Mary Deevy, Manuel Dominguez Jr., Jessica Roberts, Gloria Joan Haag, Laura Lee and Susan Houwen, Brieann Robyn Tracey, Carrie Collins, Jason Goldberg, Isaac Lin, Kelly Turso, Adam Crawford, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Ken Sigafoos, Ben Woodward, Judith Schaechter, Amber Lynn Thompson, Crystal Stokowski, Matt Leines, Jim Houser, Jayson Musson, Andrew Clark, Plankton Art Co., Erich Weiss, Dan Tag, Dave Fox, Carolynne McNeel, Nick Paparone, Shelly Spector, Charles Burns, Aryon Hoselton, Paul E.

Seriously, Stupididity
Shadow’s Space Gallery
upstairs at Kung Fu Necktie
Opening Reception
Wednesday March 18, 2009
6:00-10:00
1248 N. Front Street
Philadelphia

THURSDAY, MAR 19

The new Temple Gallery at Tyler School of Art. Image from Temple Gallery.

New Temple Gallery Grand Opening
NEW Temple Gallery at Tyler School of Art on the main campus has its official opening Thurs. Mar. 19, 6-8 PM. It’s the kickoff for the series of student MFA shows as well. Those shows run Mar 18-May 9, with each student getting a 4-day slot in that window. First up and on view for the grand opening are Bassem Mostafa, Charlotte Rodenberg, Fabian Lopez, Tom Gallagher

Temple Gallery
Grand opening reception 6-8 PM
NEW ADDRESS: 2001 North 13th Street, Philadelphia 19122
215.777.9139

FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, MARCH  20 AND 21

George Tooker, Lunch, 1964

George Tooker Symposium
A scholarly array of scholars from around the country and across the pond discuss the art of George Tooker, whose 40-year retrospective is on display at PAFA now through April 5.

George Tooker Symposium
Friday, 9.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m.
Saturday, 9.00 a.m. – 3.00 p.m.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Broad and Cherry Streets
$50 members, $60 non-members, $30 students with ID. For tickets, please contact 215-972-0522 or rsvp@pafa.org.

Also on Saturday night, the reception for Gary Hill at Slought–see top entry.

Austrian artist Peter Weibel’s video and text art from the 1960s and ’70s, now on view at the Slought Foundation, fits perfectly in today’s concept-driven and media-obsessed art world. The work’s refusal to be beautiful shocked audiences back when most thought art was a pretty painting or figurative sculpture. But today, Weibel’s work—with its playful approach to subject and its smart wordsmithing—prefigures much contemporary art.

Vulcanology of Emotions 1971

Throughout the large show, Weibel’s works have an undeniable charm. Soliloquy (1973), a wry word piece that combines the artist’s fascination with words and electronic media, shows Weibel as he plays a recording of a sentence fragment then repeats the phrase, changing the placement of the words in the sentence into a string of nonsense. He’s an engaging performer.

Self-Description, 1971, video

Does the young Weibel not resemble Patrick Dempsey?

Videos like Parenthetical Identity, in which he tries to define himself by reading a script of his life like a news anchor while a slideshow plays behind him, are deadpan and endearing. (It doesn’t hurt that the young artist, with his muttonchop sideburns and thick wavy hair, resembles Patrick Dempsey.) His earnest attempts at self-discovery remind you that contemporary self-discoverer Alex Bag did not invent this genre, although she, too, does it well.

TV Aquarium (TV Death 1), 1970, video

Many of the works, for all their anti-aesthetics and anti-art leanings, are quite engaging. TV Aquarium (TV Death 1), from 1970, is a static tableau of a person watching television nested into a screen of another person watching television. It’s a striking image and a great critique of the media’s seduction.

Installation of Weibel’s works at Slought

Vulcanology of Emotions (1973) feels like a complete movie in a minute with a screaming argument and a tryst in the grass. And Trinity (1975), in which the artist’s face morphs slowly into an image of Jesus and back again, is a lovely and technically sophisticated work with relevance to today’s worship of the superstar artist.

Trinity, 1975, video

Weibel’s street performances with his then-partner Valie Export, still seem off-the-charts radical. In Tap and Touch Cinema (1968)—in which Export wore a small cardboard box over her naked chest—Weibel, like a carnival barker, extolled the beauty of her breasts and encouraged people to put their hands inside the box to touch them. This work transgressed social mores then and continues to do so today.

The Prince of Darkness, 1970

Through the years, Slought has provided a direct link to European theoretical and conceptual art, with great shows by Weibel, Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus and others. Highly relevant today and especially for young American artists whose view of art history is mostly confined to what’s happened in this country over the last 10 years, these shows provide a lesson on how to break ground and move forward.

Peter Weibel: “Rewriter.”
Through March 11.
Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut St.
215.701.4627.