I finally got over to 222 Gallery to see Deanne Cheuk‘s Mushroom Girls. Libby told you about the work in her First Friday roundup. I liked the almost clinical detail the artist and designer included in her mushroom paintings which, with their austere white backgrounds, reminded me of odd little botanical studies. They were sensuous and sexy.
I had to ask about the mushroom floor lamps. (pictured) These odd and sweet lights which the gallery folks plugged in for me, were found by the New York artist at a flea market somewhere. Phil Otto of ODG, 222’s parent, was there when I dropped by, and told me the lamps arrived with all the rest of the work without any attribution, and the gallery folks had thought maybe the artist made them. That’s what I thought, too. No matter, they were a perfect accompaniment.
I asked Otto if there was a connection between 222 and Cheuk and he said he had known her work for some time. Apparently their design auras had crossed paths from time to time. Cheuk has done work for Urban Outfitters which is one of ODG’s clients. And Cheuk was art director for Tokion magazine and ODG designed the offices for that group.
Dream boy
Meanwhile at Arthur Ross gallery on the Penn campus, be sure to see Scott Kahn‘s dreamy Surrealist works. I wrote about them for next week’s PW. It’ll be in a listings box (does anyone ever look for these things in the listings? I wonder).
The work is lovely in a traditional, surrealist fashion. (image is a group of portraits — sorry it’s cockeyed.) There’s a no blade of grass shall go unpainted quality that I loved.
Purposeful scale shifts (figures with tiny, tiny hands; a telephone that looms in the foreground like Godzilla) made the work a cross between naive painting (like our fave Sarah McEneaney — and some of those early American folk painters) and Salvador Dali who took lots of liberties with clocks and bodies.
Kahn’s show is in conjunction with the Penn Humanities Council lecture series 2004, “Dreams and Sleep.” (Kahn is a Penn alum (1967). He shows with Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery and has a concurrent exhibit there)
The Penn lecture series kicks off Sept. 9 with a talk by art critic David Cohen. Read.
