With our reviews, we lead the discussion about what is valuable and why.
Our writing team covers exhibitions and performances in Philadelphia and elsewhere. We also cover books and movies. We look, take notes, ask questions and listen. We take pictures, make video and audio recordings. We think about what we see and have opinions. And we write our hearts out, every day.
Artblog returning contributor, Elizabeth Johnson, reviews a New York exhibit inspired by pandemic isolation and its impact on the human need to connect.
Read MoreOn a trip to the to see “Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas,” Logan Cryer is disappointed by the lack of context provided about the artist, whose “work has a bit of a reputation as not being as well-liked as some major art institutions would advertise,” Logan says. Wanting to better understand the abstract artist’s popularity, Logan felt alienated when they found no clear or compelling defense of the work, neither in the wall text, nor through the (lack of) display of documents from the artist himself. What does unimaginative curation mean for the legacy of the artist? Read the review to find out what Logan thinks!
Read MoreCalling it Faith Ringgold’s “moment to shine,” Janyce Denise Glasper writes about the experience of spending an entire day immersing herself in Faith Ringgold’s detailed expressive works at The New Museum and ACA Galleries. She comments that Ringgold “invested so much in her brave, revolutionary practice. The audience must perform that same duty to her.” Both shows are up until early or mid-June, 2022. Links and more information at the bottom of this post.
Read MoreKate Brock reviews “House and Travels,” paintings by Dona Nelson, Emily Davidson and Zachary Rawe. Though each artist’s painting style and subject matter is distinct, their handling of color and paint reveals their connection: Davidson and Rawe both studied under Nelson at Tyler School of Art, and they all share an interest in breaking down the hidebound categories of “abstraction” and “representation.” Organized by the artists themselves, Kate Brock says this is a “stubborn, delightful group of paintings,” on view at Atelier Art Gallery through April 15th.
Read MoreMorgan reviews “Mouth to Mouth,” a suspenseful new novel by Antoine Wilson about told almost entirely through one conversation. When the narrator (a nameless struggling author) runs into an old acquaintance from UCLA (successful art dealer Jeff Cook) at the airport, Jeff confesses to saving a drowning man’s life. When he learns the man’s identity, renowned gallery owner Francis Arsenault, he becomes obsessed with determining if he is a “good person” worthy of being saved.
Read MoreKate Brock says this rich and complex tpairing of shows at Arcadia invites “dialogue around intergenerational, artistic exchange.” Polly Apfelbaum- maybe best known for her hand-dyed, velvet “fallen paintings”- is is an artist who shows widely; David Ellinger, who was born 42 years before Apfelbaum, was a painter of some renown, of Dutch-German-influenced scenes. He was also an antiquarian and a ‘female impersonator.’ The show, and its documentary materials about Ellinger’s life, explores the intersection of two artists of different generations who never met but whose work seems to be in dialogue.
Read MoreSyd Carpenter’s Farm Bowls are mini-portraits of the farms and people she met on trips through the South. Named after these family farms, the Farm Bowls are “remarkable variations on the same, simple form” says reviewer Andrea Kirsh, who also comments about the “Mother Pins” that “they have stunning ranges of textures, coloring, and forms.” The exhibit is at Rowan University Art Gallery until March 26, 2022.
Read MoreAndrea sees works on paper that she first saw in the late 1960s by Anne Ryan, and notes that the highly controlled collages stood apart from the time’s big gestures by abstract expressionists. Andrea says Ryan’s collages are “important reminders… that first-rate art comes in many forms and needn’t follow the common path.” See it at Washburn Gallery, NYC, thru April 2, 2022.
Read MoreKate Brock has a close encounter with Sarah Gamble’s paintings and drawings, works that Brock says are in the lineage of the “spiritual-abstract” of Hilma af Klint and the surrealism of Leonora Carrington. She also brings up the exoticism of Elvis! “I see Gamble’s kaleidoscopic worlds as an effort toward a speculative realm, wherein the spiritual, the creaturely, astronomical, atomic, and Elvis all bump into each other, and new poetry is formed.” Enjoy this great review, and catch the exhibit at Fleisher-Ollman, up until March 12, 2022.
Read MorePatrick Coué sees the materially-complex paintings by Shwarga Bhattacharjee and calls the works a perfect immersion into a reverie space far away from our “world of constant mediated inputs.” The works are both abstract historical landscapes and topographic maps, that are layered with meanings and feelings, Patrick says.
Read MoreMary Obering’s geometric abstractions glow from the placement of gold leaf on their tops or sides and Andrea Kirsh says they are like nothing else being made today. The work is up at Bortolami through Feb. 26, we recommend you get over and see this under-known artist and her glowing works.
Read MoreUsing hand-bent neon sculptures, artist Alissa Eberle installs a warm, candy-colored electric cavern into a small gallery space at HOT•BED. Our contributor Corey Qureshi’s review plays with the ideas of an intimate space treated with what are typically public and extroverted sign materials, and says the installation will put you in two different moods that feel loose and enjoyable. The show is up til Feb. 19, 2022.
Read MoreFeminist artist Joan Semmel’s first solo museum exhibit is long overdue. Our contributor Andrea Kirsh says that Semmel “…breaks taboos about the depiction of women, their bodies and their thoughts.” The show is at PAFA through April 3, 2022. Be sure to catch it.
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Support for Artblog has been provided by The Philadelphia Cultural Fund.
