Closing tomorrow and a show you don’t want to miss, Samson Kambalu’s Crossing Borders critiques colonial history in Africa using beautiful black-and-white videos, spooky cut-outs of African soldiers in uniform and throughout makes pointed charges at the harms of colonialism.
Read MoreCalling some works startling and unnerving, Logan Cryer makes the case for the importance of Mike Cloud’s provocative, Afro-pessimistic multi-layered non-painting paintings. This is a show you should see, Logan says.
Read MoreOn this 39 minute episode of Artblog Radio, Roberta interviews Sid Sachs about his multi-venue exhibition “Invisible City” (now closed to the public due to Covid-19).
Read MoreRoberta speaks with Mark Thomas Gibson, a new arrival in Philadelphia, about his powerful show of Sumi ink drawings and collages at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts. Among other things, the artist, who is an Assistant Professor, Tenure-Track, at Tyler School of Art, talks about his ability to use narratives from American history channeled in old masters’ paintings to subvert the story telling and tell tales from our times. His works are filled with humor and passion tinged with anger. Mark talks about Philadelphia and is very happy to be in our community. He’s a great speaker with a lot of big thoughts about history, contemporary art, teaching art and more. Take a listen. Mark’s show at Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery is up through March 8, 2019. The podcast was recorded on Friday, Feb. 8, 2019. Thanks to Morgan Nitz for the great audio editing!
Read MoreNearly any contemporary art excursion around Philadelphia in 2016 is sure to yield a wide range of styles and spectacles, but one persistent–if scruffy–thread is certainly the DIY flavor of many Philly-based artists’ work. At Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery’s exhibit Circa 1995, this commonality is not merely present, it is represented in local art-historical context through objects crafted some twenty years ago. This juncture in Philadelphia’s visual culture would help give rise not only to the ongoing careers of the artists participating in this show, but to a distinctive artist-run flavor that persists in Philly to this day.
Read MoreIt seems to me that Matt Mullican doesn’t present ultimate solutions to these questions, but he ostensibly reveals a structural nexus behind the visual world driven by an archive of signs and symbols.
Read MoreThe artist’s choice of material makes the nature of tapestries a metaphor for man’s own nature, in which there is a struggle between control and spontaneity, the sacred and profane. The skilled art of creating a flokati rug is paired with Betbeze’s destruction of it, through both chemical processes (burning with fire and acid) and the careful act of sewing. The role of the artist is to create, but it is also to destroy the limits of what defines their medium. These paintings do precisely that, leaving the wall on which they are hung to spread at the feet of the viewer, the surface of fur and fiber a study in color and texture. Paired with the small, blackened sculpture, there is reverence to the elements as well as a mastery of them.
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