Artsper is an online art marketplace with the mission of making fine art and art collecting accessible. In this sponsored post, Artsper highlights local Philadelphia artists whose work is available on Artsper– Alice Neel, Darryl McCray, and more– and explains their dedication to promoting overlooked artists. They also provide a useful overview of Artsper itself as a platform, for those who are unfamiliar.
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 MoreProvoked by the placement of Emma Amos’s art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an exhibit at the same time as the Jasper Johns exhibit, which seemed to put the Black woman artist’s works subsidiary to the white male artist’s, our contributor Janyce Denise Glasper muses on the two concurrent museum exhibits of Jennifer Packer (at the Whitney Museum and at LA MoCA), and says “Jennifer Packer shifts the narrative to where they (Black artists) can land if given the opportunity.” We hope you enjoy this thoughtful essay by a passionate young writer thinking about the power imbalance in the art world today.
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.
Read MoreNew Artblog Contributor Kate Brock reviews ‘Jennifer Packer: The Eye is Not Satisfied With Seeing,’ a retrospective of the painter’s radiant portraits, interiors, and funerary bouquets. “The lack of dimensional representation of Black people, especially Black women, in the history of painting… leaves the eye unsatisfied… Packer’s vision reveals the historic absences,” Kate says. Catch the show at the Whitney before it closes April 17, 2022.
Read MoreDeborah Krieger interviews Kelsey Halliday Johnson, artist and current Executive Director of Portland, Maine’s SPACE (plus former Philly resident/ arts worker/ member of Philly’s DIY-alternative community). Kelsey is enthusiastically dedicated to her role at SPACE, a multi-disciplinary independent maker hub; in particular their grantmaking program, the Kindling Fund.
Read MoreAlex Smith reviews Logan Cryer’s latest curation ‘Dark Sousveillance,’ inspired by Simone Browne’s research on Blackness and surveillance. The group show features Black and predominantly queer artists, examining “wanting to be seen by each other, and wanting to hide from the violence of hypervisibility.” The exhibition is on view at Vox Populi, by appointment, thru Jan. 16, 2022.
Read MoreAn artist’s visit to her mother’s birth place in Puerto Rico awakens her to the complexities of immigration and family – and to the dubious socio-political actions and inactions by the U.S. government in its far-flung territories. Our reviewer Andrea Kirsh is moved by the powerful collage works and double-sided quilts of Amber Robles-Gordon. The show closed Dec. 12.
Read MoreRegional women artists of all ages ply various media, from plaster and paint to fibers and installation, in a show that is a demonstration of women and non-binary artists’ power to create. Our reviewer Susan Isaacs says: ‘Given the particularly fraught moment we are facing now regarding… voting rights and control of women’s bodies and those with a uterus, “Fields and Formations” is an especially important statement about the creativity and commitment of women and non-binary artists. “ We encourage you to see this exhibit, up now to January 7, 2022.
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Support for Artblog has been provided by The Philadelphia Cultural Fund.