From thrilling real-live bike tricks to a BMX video festival to multiple shifting exhibitions which wheel and reel, Moore College‘s galleries are exploring the nexus between art and bikes and Philadelphia, in Bicycle: people + ideas in motion.
I stopped in the galleries last week and saw lots of fun and energy. In the Window on Race is Lee Stoetzel’s 8-foot tall Big Bike, a gorgeous red-toned wood carving. The bike is a Platonic ideal–spectacular, for its scale, its lines, and its deadpan chain and gears. Gallery Director Lorie Mertes mentioned that little kids stop dead in their tracks when they pass by the window! Isn’t that great?
Stoetzel’s bike is up until July 4. Then the space will turn over to the Dufala brothers and their toilet bikes, in July into early August, and Megawords guy Dan Murphy (who was once a bike messenger) in September–all Philadelphia-based artists with bicycle-themed work. Somewhere along the line, Aaron Igler/LURE is also contributing some bicycle themed work, but as of today, the dates are up in the air.
When I stopped in, Mertes said she hadn’t realized what an amazing bike town Philadelphia is. But now that she knows, she’s reaching out in every direction of the bicycle culture, looking at the old-fashioned big-wheeled wonder at the Franklin Institute, seeking out the bicycle film footage in a movie from Philly film pioneer Siegmund Lubin, and trying to bring all of this history into the show along side a celebration of bikes and art in the here and now.
Artist and BMXer Ryan Humphrey has not only created a slick room installation of bicycles and bike-inspired works of art that bristles with energy and loads of bicycles, in the Levy Gallery. His exhibit Fast Forward, a recreation of this year’s Queens International installation, includes ramps of various configurations for BMX tricks. Bikes hang upside down from the ceiling. Marcel Duchamp-inspired bike wheels mounted on inverted stoolscan be flipped off their pedestals to serve as real unicycles (and they will be (see Silly bike tricks section below).
Philadelphia-based bike life will be represented with a shifting array of displays including hand-built bikes from Philly legend Steve Bilenky, fixies, tandems, and other sorts of bikes, from vintage to artistic to technological. The displays will at times include samples from the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby, and from grass-roots bike groups like the Pedal Co-op and the Neighborhood Bike Works.
Silly bike tricks–don’t miss ’em
But what’s a show about tricked out bikes without some bike tricks? On the exhibition reception Friday, June 26, those Duchampian unicycles will be part of a real-live, inside the gallery BMX riding performance featuring Humphrey, 80s BMX Pro John “Dizz” Hicks and some of Philadelphia’s own BMXers. This is free and open to the public.
And that’s not all. The same night, Moore will host a screening of the new bike documentary I Love My Bicycle: The Story of FBM Bikes–see the trailer here. Directed by Philadelphian Joe Stakun (BA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University), the movie is the opening event of Bicycle Film Festival Philadelphia, hosted by Moore, which will continue on Saturday, 2-8 p.m., with several other bike film screenings, also at the Moore galleries. Festival admission costs $7/day.
And out front the reception will include a street party on Race, featuring live music, food and bike demonstrations.
So put on your helmets and bike on over.
