The group exhibition, “Making a Difference: Social and Political Activism in Clay,” causes our reviewer to ponder the deeper meaning behind the words in the show’s title and to weigh in on how art can or cannot be an effective tool to spark societal change. This provocative exhibit is at The Clay Studio through Nov. 17, 2018, so run over and see it.
Read MoreMichael is moved by the exhibit of works at the AAMP. The works touch on social injustice issues — the aftermath of slavery, police shootings of Black victims, Afro-Futurist utopias created to escape and take revenge. The imagery is stirring if also grisly in some cases, he says.
Read MoreMichael visits Stanek Gallery to review People, Places & Things, the Old City fixture‘s first exhibit of photography. Comprised of works from the past 60 years by ten photographers, including several notable locals, this show is as engaging as it is stylistically varied. Be sure to catch it before it closes on March 26th!
Read MoreMichael Lieberman attends Rebirths, Returns and Comebacks, a story slam for deaf and hearing people alike, sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wolf Humanities Center. The experience opened his eyes to the complex history and expressive capacity of American Sign Language (ASL).
Read MoreIn this sponsored post, Michael takes a tour of the Philadelphia International Airport’s extensive contemporary art exhibitions and shares a few highlights from the nationally-unique program. With the help of Airport curator, Leah Douglas, Artblog brings you as close to these beauties as you can get without a plane ticket.
Read MoreMichael visits “Space Invaders,” on view through April 19th at Rutgers Camden’s Stedman Gallery. For this collaborative group show, artists have been commissioned to produce new works in dialogue, not only with the interior of the gallery itself, but with each other. The result is a show that pushes the boundaries of medium, combining sculpture, projection, sound and lighting to suggest the complexity of the ties that bind objects in memory and in the world. “Space Invaders” includes work by Elizabeth Mackie, Andi Steele, Kaitlyn Paston, Joanna Platt, and Jacintha Clark.
Read MoreMichael visits “How Wide is the Gulf?”, a timely group exhibition now at Gravy Studio + Gallery. Presenting a thematically-tight cluster of three artists who address North America’s migratory past and present, curator Rebekah Flake highlights the power differentials that exists between nations and the (brown) bodies that navigate them. Not to be missed, “How Wide is the Gulf?” is on view through March 13th.
Read MoreThe Cuban-American artist Anthony Goicolea presents a photo, drawing and prints exhibition that is a moving reverie on the rupture of displacement and migration on families and abandoned homelands. Michael reviews.
Read MoreMichael visited the art fairs in Miami in December and writes about one artist he found whose work resonated loudly and who, now in her 50s, is beginning to break into the national art scene.
Read MoreIntrigued by the work of photographer Rosamond Purcell, Michael sees a documentary about the 75-year-old artist, and he is moved and by the images of odd bits of nature and human-made detritus that are her mainstay. He calls Purcell the Diane Arbus of the natural world. The film comes to Lightbox Film Center in March, 2018.
Read More“Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City” is a dense and fact-filled rumination on the character of the city of Philadelphia as reticent, wallflowerish, and modest — a hidden city. Written by self-titled urban observers Nathaniel Popkin and Peter Woodall, and including over one hundred stunning photographs by Joseph E.B. Elliott, of iconic architectural spaces and places in the city, the book has many charms (including the photos and the beautiful hardback cover). Michael says it’s a difficult read, however, as the narrative about the city’s character, written in densely-packed paragraphs with history references galore, is at times overwhelming.
Read MoreThe new biopic about Tom of Finland tells the story of a gay man in post-WWII Finland, who escaped his country’s and family’s rejection of his homosexuality by celebrating gay love in his erotic art. Censored for years, the art of the stylized and beefy gay men nonetheless circulated and “…played an important part in the movement towards gay liberation,” says Michael in his review. This movie, with brilliant acting, was produced in Finland, an appropriate reparation. It brings the important and under-known artist and his struggle and triumph to a new audience. Opening in Philadelphia at the Ritz Bourse, Nov. 24.
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Support for Artblog has been provided by The Philadelphia Cultural Fund.