In mid-November, the medieval cathedral of Burgos in northern Spain was lit from within–not by any divine power, but by the miracle of technology. For her temporary light installation “Chromotopia Santa María,” (November 3-13, 2016) Vienna-based artist Victoria Coeln used projected rays of light in brilliant colors to fill the ample space of the cathedral, the white limestone walls intensifying the vivid colors. It’s as if the cathedral’s stained glass windows had turned themselves inside out, dissolving the solid stone structure into layers of light.
Read MoreI lost track of time as Cassils (who prefers the pronoun “they”) attacked the clay in a frenzy of finely choreographed violence. A single photographer circled the performer, the brilliant strobe lights of camera flashes sporadically illuminating Cassils, a small but impressively muscular figure.
Read MoreSheherzade, the storyteller from The 1001 Nights, is a master of survival, able to keep herself and her sister alive by entertaining the king (who wants to kill them) with nightly stories that always end on a cliffhanger at the break of day. Like Sheherzade’s tales, the works by thirteen Muslim-American women in Sheherzade’s Gift are sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always clever.
Read MoreAt 91, Lorrie Goulet’s dedication to the carver’s art is unwavering, even though she cannot wield the carver’s tools like she could as a young woman. Throughout a recent wide-ranging conversation I had with her at her home and studio in Chelsea, I was struck by Goulet’s deep commitment to the physical work of carving, its tools, techniques, and materials. Her eyes light up and her gestures become animated when talking about stone, its myriad types, colors, and textures. For Goulet, stone–her primary material–is alive, and each stone has its own personality. “I put my life with the stone’s life,” she told me, following up with “I don’t have many stones left.”
Read MoreResonance–visual, musical, thematic–characterizes Darkwater Revival: After Terry Adkins, the current exhibition at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Conceived as an homage to the late revered University of Pennsylvania professor, who died tragically of a heart attack in 2014, the show contains work by Adkins as well as eleven young artists who trained with him. Adkins’ absence haunts the exhibition, but his presence is felt in each work.
Read MoreYou might not think of a library as a concert venue, but on September 14 the Free Library hosted a rollicking rhythm-fest of a concert. Philadelphia-based percussionist Pablo Batista and his 7-piece Latin Jazz Ensemble played to a packed house on the beautiful 4th floor west-facing skylight room as the sun set over the city skyline.
Read MoreTogether, the paint box, palette, and paintbrush reminded me of the relics of saints–the remains of holy men and women, or the objects, earth, or clothing that came in contact with them during their lives. Too precious for human hands to touch, too powerful to stay buried in the ground (or archive), they can only be accessed through the containers that surround them. The saint’s (or artist’s) power is manifested by his ability to produce miracles through his relics. With His Study of Life, Orellana offers us the possibility of a sort of post-modern miracle, making a tongue-in-cheek yet deeply serious exploration of the religion of art, and of the ghost in the machine.
Read MoreHoning in on the small body of work left to us by Hieronymus Bosch (some 25 paintings in museums across the world), the film opens with a series of luscious details of paint. Although cracking with age, the surface of the paintings still bears witness to the agile brush and even more agile mind of the artist. Lovingly detailed brushwork brings an almost jewel-like precision to the perverse devils and monsters that populate Bosch’s paintings, their forms dissolving into abstractions of color, line, and shape through the magnifying lens of the camera. The film is a paean to close looking, the sort of slow and deep observation that so few people seem to engage in–after all, recent studies have suggested that the average museum visitor spends about 15–30 seconds looking at a work of art.
Read MoreThe integration of the visual and the visceral was particularly successful in “Bonzi,” whose titular character (dancer Edgar Anido) is a traveling salesman who leads a humdrum life trying to sell people things they neither want nor need. At the start of the performance, the bowler-hatted Bonzi knocks on a plain white door and sets in motion a series of surreal vignettes involving multiple doors, bowler hats, apples, and eggs–all motifs familiar from the paintings of Magritte. Dancers hiding behind movable doors on casters swirled around the stage, dazzling poor Bonzi as well as the audience. With constant costume changes and the clever use of props, the dancers playfully shift personas from alluring coquettes with quixotic tree-like headgear circling around Bonzi, to a self-contained corps of dancers that largely ignores him. By the end of the performance, Bonzi seems to enter the dancers’ madcap surreal world, leaving behind his heavy black briefcase with unrestrained glee.
Read MoreOne of the most unconventional places to view art this summer is the cruiser Olympia, docked on the Delaware River. Commissioned in 1895 and now part of the Independence Seaport Museum, Olympia is the oldest steel warship still afloat in the world–and now it is playing host to sculptural installations that show up in the most unlikely spaces, from officers’ cabins to bathrooms to the galley kitchen.
Read MoreDespite all the technical know-how that goes into producing this work, there is something distinctly painterly about Portlock’s approach to image-making. and his futuristic landscapes owe a great deal to the golden age of American landscape painting in the nineteenth century. What separates Portlock’s work from the Hudson River School’s optimism is the artist’s pragmatic engagement with the difficult issues facing many American cities in the 21st century, such as the growing socioeconomic divide between rich and poor, the housing crisis, and environmental degradation. He presents a vision of Philadelphia that is terrifyingly realistic, for depending on where you live, litter-filled streets and boarded-up buildings are all too familiar. As a new resident, I still see the scars of poverty and gentrification that crisscross the city, but exposure and familiarity can blunt the impact of painful reality. Bringing together historical references, contemporary issues, and digital technology, he helps us to see our city with new eyes.
Read MoreFletcher Williams III’s work demands that we confront uncomfortable facts about both our present and our past, reflected in these lost lives and blighted neighborhoods. The façades depicted in Beyond the Rainbow hint at the individuals who lived there and the community that struggles to survive against the twin challenges of poverty and racism. Jonathan Green’s site-specific Porgy Houses likewise ask us to reflect on black history in Charleston and the whitewashed present.
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