This week’s Weekly has my short editor’s pick review of Ink! at Gallery Joe. Below is the copy with some pictures. More photos at flickr.
Ink is a persnickety art material, but one with a cult following. Perfectionist artists often make their own inks (grinding pigments or using alternative liquids like tea), and many are fanatics about brushes and pens. Call them old-fashioned or visionary, but some day soon these artists will be our only link to the ancient material.
Gallery Joe’s summer show is a celebration of the material and the artists who love it. The show’s not about process, but you’re bound to wonder how some of the works are made. Jacob El Hanani and Astrid Bowlby build designs by accretion using tiny marks in microcosmic symphonies of black, white and gray.
Samantha Simpson. Spring (detail) 2007. ballpoint pen on paper, 30 x 22″
William Anastasi and Sharyn O’Mara chart their own movements through space in abstract works whose spidery lines and manic energy raise questions about human activity. Roland Flexner’s ink-dipped papers, manipulated while wet, are alchemical night scenes with shooting stars.
Martin Wilner.
Journal of Evidence Weekly, VOL 133. 2006 (det)
ink on accordian book
5 1/2 x 120″
Martin Wilner’s 10-foot-long accordion book, made on the New York subway, turns people and overheard conversations into a teeming river of word bubbles and body parts. And Samantha Simpson, Linn Meyers, Gil Kerlin, Simon Frost and Emily Brown add charm and finesse to a great show.
Ink!” Through July 28. Gallery Joe, 302 Arch St. 215.592.7752.
