Tag Archive "virgil-marti"

News – Joan Mitchell grants, Whitney Biennial list, Helen Frankenthaler and more…

News Joan Mitchell Foundation grants The Joan Mitchell Foundation announced its 2011 Painters and Sculptors Grant Program recipients — 25 artists who will each receive $25,000. Among the winners are Philadelphians Virgil Marti, Jackie Tileston, and former Philly artist Anabeth Rosen.  Congratulations! Here’s the full list: Diana Al-Hadid, Brooklyn, NY Nicole Awai, Brooklyn, NY Keith Benjamin, Cleves, OH William Cordova, Miami, FL Cicely Cottingham, West Orange, NJ Florine Demosthene, Brooklyn, NY Daniel Douke, Fallbrook, CA Julie Green, Corvallis, OR Tommy Hartung, Ridgewood, NY Janelle Iglesias, Provincetown, MA Gary Kachadourian, Baltimore, MD Simone Leigh, Brooklyn, NY Andrew Lenaghan, Brooklyn, NY Anne Lindberg, Kansas City, MO Virgil ... More » »

PMA chief Timothy Rub talks of change

Have you risked your life and your ankle crossing the Parkway to get from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to its annex? Do you wonder how the august institution, so slow to change, will embrace the digital era?

Weekly Update – Deconstructing image, Wall Space at PPAC

Virgil Marti’s sculptures “Night Watch” and “Vesper” stand like sentinels at the entrance to the Philadelphia Photo Art Center with a kind of haunted-castle grandeur. The 6-foot, 80-pound slabs are shaped like ornate mirrors one might find in Snow White’s stepmom’s bedroom; instead of glass and foil, though, they’re made of rough plywood plated in chrome. They reflect a dull sheen from a nearby window, but no clear images—it’s a standoff between viewer and mirror in which Narcissus loses, and a perfect greeting to Wall Space, a great little show about image.

The Afterlife of Things: Virgil Marti’s “Set Pieces” at the ICA at Penn

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) invited the artist, Virgil Marti, to create an exhibition from works in the store rooms of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), and Marti’s discoveries among the museum’s overflow, dis-attributed, unfashionable, and otherwise overlooked collections were a spur to his imagination. The objects in storage reminded Marti of the final scenes of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, with its panning shot of the endless, largely unopened crates of Kane’s accumulated treasures. In Set Pieces (at the ICA through Feb. 13, 2011), Marti gives previously-silent objects new lives in a sequence of tableaux sprung from his ... More » »

Picasso and the Avant-Garde and who?

A stealth contemporary art work is nestling inside the very core of the Picasso and the Avant-Garde exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Weekly Update — Fab at the Fabric Workshop

This week’s Weekly has my review of the summer shows at the Fabric Workshop and Museum.  Below’s the copy with some pictures. Ryan Trecartin’s video projections are the wildest thing to come to the Fabric Workshop and Museum since Virgil Marti’s black-lighted Bullies Wallpaper appeared in the men’s bathroom in its old space in the Gilbert Building. Trecartin’s three lengthy narratives (clocking in at 68 minutes, 50 minutes and 31 minutes) are installed in separate prop-strewn screening rooms that mimic the colorful chaotic worlds in the videos.

Mezuzah love at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art

Image of Mezuzot from the show, A Kiss for the Mezuzah, curated by Matthew Singer of the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art. Not long ago Matt Singer, Curator of the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art emailed to ask me if I’d write an essay for a show he was putting together at the museum called “A Kiss for the Muzuzah.” The exhibit is all new commissioned works — each a Mezuzah — by a Philadelphia artist. Not all the artists are Jewish and together they represent a power team whose works I’ve long admired: Candy Depew, Jeanne Jaffe, Isaac Lin, ... More » »

Perelman Chronicles-square footage galore

The Exhibition Gallery (no name? waiting for a sponsor perhaps?) which now houses a show of sculpture. At 4,020 sq. ft, the new Exhibition Gallery in the Perelman Building –the one with the sculpture exhibit — is one of the biggest exhibit spaces in the city. The ICA’s cavern is undoubedtly bigger — but it has such a different feel I don’t want to compare it. What this space does resembe, in its generous rectangular space uninterrupted by support columns, is the Icebox Project Space at the Crane, which, at 5,000 sq. ft. is just a little bit bigger. The ... More » »

Weekly Update – PAFA’s new acquisitions!

This week’s Weekly has my review of the PAFA new acquisitions show This Place is Ours! Below is the copy with some pictures. More photos at flickr. And here’s Libby’s post. PAFA’s Got a Brand-New BagThe Academy lifts itself into the 21st century. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ new acquisitions show “This Place Is Ours!” rightly deserves the exclamation point in its title. Jim Houser, This Place is Ours! (right) and Eamon Ore-GIron, Exit Strategy, from Pafa’s new acquisitions show. The big show of more than 100 works of American art purchased since 2001 demonstrates a new vision ... More » »

PAFA’s hits three homers outta heeeere

This Place is Ours!, by Jim Houser, acrylic on paper collaged on canvas, 40 x 40 inches This is the age of aquarius over at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts–harmony and understanding and three star-quality shows. At last the the place is living up to that name that came and then slunk off into the night; what was it, the Museum of American Art? The place not only has recovered from the folly of meaningless corporate branding at the same time that it has actually become that museum it dreamed it was. So if you go there this ... More » »