Stan Vanderbeek's Movie-Drome, Stony Point, NY 1962

From the gallery’s press release:

Local and regional artists are invited to project videos, images, and sound (playlists/mix tapes) using your own video/slide/overhead/shadow/homemade projectors and stereos/boom boxes to grow into a large chaotic critical mass – its total effect becoming a powerful and lively synthesis of multi-directional yet simultaneous imagery and sound.

Please RSVP by Friday, September 3 to Rachel Reese, Assistant Director: rachel@fleisher-ollmangallery.com

Include your proposed contribution and any installation specifics. Resources may be provided to artists who need help procuring projectors or necessary equipment.  Fleisher/Ollman gallery does not have equipment to loan.

TIMELINE FOR PARTICIPATION

RSVP:  by Friday, September 3
Installation: Wednesday, September 8 from 10:30 am – 6 pm
Exhibition Hours: Thursday, September 9 from 10:30 am – 6 pm
Reception: Thursday, September 9 from 6 – 9 pm
Deinstallation:  Friday, September 10 from 10:30 am – 6 pm

phone: 215.545.7562

Jen Schwarting, "double dip (black)". Sewn nylon.

The show features roughly an even mix of palpable works using paper or cloth and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, video, digital media, and performance. The pieces are arranged in a loose salon style, with flat-screen TV monitors and digital projections interspersed with works on paper. It is the video and digital media pieces that stand out.

The exhibition is curated by Will Pappenheimer. His piece, a collaboration with John Craig Freeman, is a 12-minute video which documents the experience of Second Life avatars on Virta-Flaneurazine, a drug meant to treat Wanderlust Deficit Disorder (internet addiction). The drug is a digital pill that Second Life users can download, but it has side-effects that can be dream-like and psychedelic, which watchers of the video will understand. In it, a tall figure with mouse ears and tail in a hospital gown floats across a misty, digital landscape. She reaches a Cliffside and hovers vaguely; her eyes light up in a red and white pinwheel. The tunneling theme was inspired by the delirious experiences of Mr. Pappenheimer’s patients (the Second Life users and their avatars).

Tunneling at Famous Accountants--Cooper Holoweski, prints from "Engine Brain" series and "Invisible Hand Holding"

Famous Accountants was started last fall by Ellen Letcher and Kevin Regan. Kevin, an energetic man with tousled grey hair and beard, describes it as “a labor of love.” It is apparent that for Ellen, a petite woman with cropped blonde hair, and Kevin, the space is an important venue to hold together a large, extended family of Bushwick artists and residents. They pay homage to members of the community that came before them, perhaps most importantly Lady Jaye and Genesis Breyer P-orrdige, the husband and wife duo who together are the artistic entity, Breyer P-orrdige. (The couple is well-known for their mission to make themselves look like each other through a succession of surgical operations). Lady Jaye’s grandmother owned the building until Lady Jaye and Genesis purchased it. Prior to her early death, a result of sudden heart failure related to stomach cancer, Lady Jaye renovated the gallery. Kevin, the admittedly louder of Famous Accountants’ directors, says that he and Ellen “are honored that, on some level, we are fulfilling Lady Jaye’s wishes”.

Jaye envisioned an organic space that would shift for different purposes. And, more or less, this is what Famous Accountants is. Tunneling uses the space like a laboratory, cramming in much disparate media to see what the results might be.

Time is warped, stopped, and chopped throughout. Up close the pieces lose the experience of time as encompassing and continuous, with a few exceptions. The viewer’s experience with the exhibition, particularly with certain pieces, for instance Rico Gatson’s Departure video, which applies a kaleidoscope effect to scenes from Alien, is like watching the broken second hand on a clock that progresses minutely, only to jump backwards, never advancing.

Takuji Kogo, "Nonsites". Flash videos.

This is literally what happens in Takuji Kogo’s video Nonsites, in which clips of individuals or small groups in vacant waiting areas play for one or two seconds then reverse and repeat, performing a jerky dance reminiscent of 90s gif animations. One clip records a man asleep at a dim Chinese food restaurant. The scene is dark and humorless, strange and lonely. While the ceiling fans above gyrate fractions of a circle, the entire image zooms slowly out, getting smaller but revealing a kaleidoscoped pattern of itself. Strangely, Kogo’s video is one of the few pieces that does retain a sense of time moving—one of the few that creates an enterable world. (I would include also the Virta-Flaneurazine program and Cooper Holoweski’s video—a slow, upside-down ride through a digital skyline)

Cooper Holoweski, prints from "Engine Brain" series and "Invisible Hand Holding"

As the fan blades in Kogo’s video meet their kaleidoscoped reflections they create a pattern of rays echoed across the wall in Jen Schwarting’s double dip (black). Forms all over the show morph and collide into each other, suggesting a reality that is multi-dimensional and fragmented. The work in Tunneling feels a bit like a bug got into your computer and made things go awfully awry, forgetting what is real and what is virtual.

Viewing the exhibition on a quiet Sunday the weekend after the opening is a bit like walking onto the set of a play that has already happened. Pieces like Irvin Morazan’s Death of a Ghettoblaster are exoskeletons without the performance. The sense of frenzy throughout Tunneling is produced in large part by work that is frenzied itself and lacks focus. However, this is not the rule and what is provided as an alternative to contemplative concentration is volatile energy. There is plenty to see—plenty of radiating images to compete for attention and Lady Jaye’s spirit reverberates throughout.

Tunneling is only up until September 4^th, so see it soon. There is a closing party this Saturday from 6-9pm. Famous Accountants is located at 1673 Gates Avenue, Ridgewood/Bushwick. Open Sundays and by appointment.

Jamie Dillon, Smoke, at his solo show at Vox Populi

Near-blind but still visionary painter David Kontra can only see a quarter-inch of his canvas at a time, but cooks up brushy and colorful expressionist canvases of everything from nudes to nightmarish, toothy ghosts; Kontra is flying in for the opening. Vox member Roxana Pérez-Méndez organized a group show on the theme of paradise lost in one gallery. Elsewhere, Jonathan Prull’s obsessive drawings of Clint Eastwood envision the aging Dirty Harry in his dotage. In the video lounge (formerly known as Screening Video), there’s more paradise lost in Sarah Christman’s documentary about the changing ecology on Broad Channel Island in New York’s Jamaica Bay. Stay tuned as Vox unveils a performance series later this fall in a new adjoining space they’re working on.  Read this article at Philadelphia Weekly.
Vox Populi, opening reception, 6pm-10 pm, Friday, Sept. 3.  
Through Sept. 26. 

319 N. 11th St.  
215.238.1236

Jacolby Satterwhite, video and performance at Jolie Laide Saturday night at 8 pm

Sexy, disturbing and electrifying, Jacolby Satterwhite’s video and live performance at Jolie Laide is a must-see. Satterwhite’s aesthetic combines queer culture, club culture, fashion, video gaming, Second Life, religious ritual and the words, music and drawings of his visionary, mentally ill mother. The videos explode at fever pitch, yet there’s something icy and passive-aggressive, too. In Adam for Adam, a body is hung upside down and whipped by acolytes to the ecstatic sounds of Carmina Burana mashed up with obsessive chanting and spoken word. Satterwhite (Penn MFA 2010) will perform nude and in a tricked-out spandex bodysuit with inset video monitors and speakers playing the voice of his mother. Stay for dancing at the block party afterwards.   Read this article at PW.
Jolie Laide, reception, 6-9pm Sat. Sept. 4.  Performance by Satterwhite @8pm., 224 N. Juniper St. 267.603.1295.

Chestnut Hill Arts Initiative’s premiere show, ‘Summer Phase’, proved to be a thoughtfully curated blend of conceptual installations in a variety of mediums, featuring the work of ten different artists.This was a particularly contemporary and progressive show in an otherwise conservative area.

Tom Judd, The World is Flat, mixed media on corrugated boxes

The initiative aims to create a presence of progressive and contemporary art installations in the commercial property windows along Germantown Ave. CAi is in partnership with The Chestnut Hill Business Association, the Chestnut Hill Community Association and Bowman Properties.

The old Magarity Ford Dealership features a site-specific installation piece by Tom Judd, entitled ‘The World is Flat’. It’s fills the enormous window of the dealership building with a painted world map. The piece is constructed of cardboard and framing, the markings and lettering from the cardboard boxes intentionally left visible, inviting us to view the map as a whole work, as well as reflect on the sum of its parts. It resembles a low-tech, whimsical class project. I had the opportunity to speak with him at the reception, and upon being asked what inspired this work, he said the size of the space inspired him to create something “patently silly and outrageous”, with the “exuberance of a sixth grade geography project.” It’s an irreverent, playful and exuberant piece.

Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, ‘Blue in Green’

There are two additional site-specific pieces, one from Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, ‘Blue in Green’, which is completely constructed with pipe cleaners, bits of recycled plastic, bottle caps….and it’s beautiful.  With a big colorful net, created around the exterior of a storefront, wrapping the windows, stoop and railing, Lathan-Stiefel plays with ideas of growth and sprawl, supporting the notion of it being an organic, living thing. It’s beautifully crafted, thoughtfully designed for the site and has the feeling of being a super-stylized, children’s programming version of an underwater creature-capturing device. At least to me, anyway. It’s fantastic.

Philip Scarpone, The Last Breath

‘The Last Breath’ by Philip Scarpone, is an installation using natural materials – milled wood, concrete, natural wood and a ground covering – mulch? woodchips? This is a beautiful, quiet installation piece reflecting a delicate balance of geometry and nature. It makes you want to whisper when in proximity.

Michael Kalmbach, High Definition

One piece that absolutely knocked me out, was ‘High Definition’ by Michael Kalmbach. This one is hard to describe, but the first thing I’ll say is that it’s unbelievably compelling. Granted, I am absolutely fanatical about interesting materials, and tactile surfaces and this piece did not disappoint.
The form is created with a poured acrylic, decorated with “stacks” of “dot strands”, in organic, ripply waves around the piece. I am in awe of this combination of really innovative uses of fluid acrylic, and other chemical means. Beautiful pieces.

Aaron Wiener with Visionary Fusion Glass Works, made of pattern-cut and fused glass

Two pieces from Aaron Wiener with Visionary Fusion Glass Works were displayed in one exhibition space. Created with pattern-cut and fused glass (I do not, I confess, completely understand this), not only are the forms distinct, and have an organic sensibility, but he has used glass brilliantly, in a newly realized way – the texture is as present as the form.

One of the pieces is colored glass formed in a fluid, not-unlike Chihuly manner, however, the other piece resembles a lacy bowl made of iron. Except it’s not. I know! It’s very hard to say what it’s made from, just by looking. But, actually is crafted of quartz glass with a metallic coating fused to the surface. Fantastic.

Surprisingly for me, the two-dimensional work didn’t speak to me quite as much as the other dynamic sculpture and installations. However, it was an eclectic offering, which I pretty much always appreciate.

‘Danger in Nature’ by Alexander Conner, is a collection of paintings, roughly 6’ x 4’, (UPDATE per comment below from the artist: Each of my works are 4′ Tall x 3′ Wide making them 4′ x 9′ Wide overall. They are not paintings, but full scale Cyanotypes, and were exposed in my backyard.) made to resemble those photosensitive paper experiments that you did with flowers and leaves, creating white silhouettes on that specific denim blue. His paintings playfully reflected that relationship between nature and our experience of- and place in it. Christopher Motta’s photography, is self-reflective, and it seems, a rather intimate view of his own recollections. I appreciated these as well-composed images, but for me, the meanings of them, at least as intended, didn’t quite translate. Except as good imagery.

Daniel Mahlman, Fun and Games, 4 x 4 feet, mixed media

There were two paintings by Daniel Mahlman, entitled ‘Fun and Games’ [4’ x 4’], mixed media paintings, in an illustrative, line drawing kind of style. They’re playful, and seem to be making a statement about guns. And candy. I like them, I like that I’m still thinking about them.

I am sorry I missed a couple of pieces–one by Brookes Britcher, who curated the show, and one by Jaime Alvarez. Britcher, who is also the CAi project coordinator, was responsible for a mixed media installation piece entitled “The Apple and the Tree,” a reconfiguration of a previously created installation. Being interested, like Judd, in usable, accessible materials to create a conversation about utility and new ways to look at objects, Britcher used found materials procured from local stores and restaurants. The good news is the installation had to come down because the store is rented. However, you can catch Brookes’ work in upcoming CAi shows. Sadly, I didn’t get the opportunity to see the work of Jaime Alvarez, a piece called GW. It seems to me, upon later seeing images of this work, that I’m missing out.

There is, for me, a very tangible thread throughout this well curated show, a certain levity, a lightheartedness, and images of Jaime’s GW display a very definitively whimsical feel.

As a show, I’m heartened to see such an energetic and conceptual art presence here in Chestnut Hill. Good sign for things to come, I hope.
CAi, which evolved out of Project Sketchbook – a curated show of area student artwork, is creating another work for the fall, entitled “Lessons’, featuring the work of art educators, with workshops offered from the artists throughout the season.

CAi – ‘Summer Phase’
Closing Reception: 6-9pm / Friday, August 20th 2010 / Magarity Ford
Hours: Free to the public everyday
Germantown Ave, between E Springfield Ave. and Hartwell Ln.
Chestnut Hill, 19118

after Gustave Courbet 'Self Portrait' (after 1880)

Usually, however, the term fake is reserved for a work created with the intention of fooling the viewer as to who made it and when. Attributions were traditionally made on the basis of visual comparison with other works, but beginning in the first half of the Twentieth Century scientific methods such as radiography and microscopic examination were increasingly employed to add to the art historian’s tools of archival research and visual judgement.  The Virgin and Child attributed to Francia (below) was confirmed a fake by a number of technical differences from the artist’s known methods and a laminated panel with old wood on the back so that a simple, visual examination would indicate age.  The exhibition brought all the tools of a modern scientific laboratory to examine the status of 37 old master through nineteenth-century paintings in the Gallery’s collection. One of the most interesting points it raised is that answers can be inconclusive, and that the original question, Who made this painting? may not in fact have a neat answer. The exhibition was also remarkably candid about the range of mistaken attributions made by gallery curators and directors in the past, before scientific examination was regularly employed to supplement art historical methods.

after Francesco Francia 'The Virgin and Child with an Angel' (probably second half of the 19th century)

Very few artists prior to the Nineteenth Century produced work according to our Romantic notion of the individual creator, isolated from fellow artists and the public.  Painting involves craft, and professional artists employed assistants and apprentices to mix paint, prepare panels (which would have been constructed by outside carpenters) or stretch and prepare canvases, and probably to transfer the design from a preparatory drawing.  The assistants might have contributed to varying amounts of the painting, as well. Some specialized in particular subjects, such as Jan Breughel, employed by Rubens to paint landscape backgrounds; others assisted throughout the painting as a way of increasing the studio’s production, with the master possibly adding finishing touches.

workshop of Albrecht Dürer 'The Virgin and Child' ('The Madonna with the Iris') (about 1500–10)

As we know ever more about historical workshop practice, the question of who painted a work becomes complicated, since all degrees of collaborative involvement carried the master’s name. ‘A Virgin and Child,’ purchased by the Gallery in 1945 as a Durer is now considered to have been painted by workshop assistants. Scientific examination can rarely distinguish a master’s work from that of his assistants, since they would have employed the same materials and techniques, but this re-attribution was based upon underdrawings revealed through infrared studies which indicated that changes were made throughout the painting’s process, suggesting that multiple artists were involved.

follower of Robert Campin 'The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen' (about 1440)

radiograph shows added wood at top and right; the latter has worm channels missing from the original

Paintings also change over time because of accidents, in order to modernize them, to fit them into new settings or make them more saleable. The question then becomes what part of the painting was done by the original artist and what changes are later.  A painting by a follower of Robert Campin had a broad strip added along the right side of the panel and a narrower one along the top. Examination revealed charring of the original panel, suggesting it had been damaged by fire and the later pieces were added to restore the panel’s original proportions.

Northern Italian 'Woman at a Window' (probably 1510–30)

‘Woman at a Window’ before cleaning and restoration in 1978

Another painting, of a young brunette at a window, turned out to have been modified to account for Victorian notions of propriety. The blond was given dark hair, her expression was softened  and her revealing bodice was altered to hide her nipples. In fact, most 16th century female portraits from the Veneto , such as this one, portrayed courtesans, hence the bleached hair and revealing dress.

The Gallery has an excellent website that functions as a catalog to the exhibition with studies of each of the paintings and associated technical images.  It also produced a small book to accompany the exhibition: A Closer Look: Deceptions and Discoveries by Marjorie E. Wieseman (National Gallery Company and Yale University Press: 2010) ISBN 978185709 486 2, which includes somewhat more information than the exhibition labels on the scientific techniques employed in the Gallery’s laboratory. It contains 16 short case studies, most, but not all, of paintings in the exhibition. Part of the Gallery’s A Closer Look series of short guides, it functions as a useful introduction to scientific examination of paintings (disclosure: I wrote a longer handbook on the physical examination of paintings for art historians, curators, artists, docents and serious museum-goers; it has less detailed discussion of scientific technique but emphasizes the range of art historical questions, well beyond attribution, that can be aided by an understanding of materials, techniques and the condition of paintings).

Center City gallery owner Sande Webster has some yarns to tell. She shares some personal history as she talks to us about art prices, selling (and refusing to sell) art, and how she makes the gallery business work for her. Below is the 30-second sample clip. And below that is the full 14-minute interview.

Sande Webster in her gallery.

30-second sample

full Sande Webster podcast
right click to download

Edited by Peter Crimmins. Music by Eric Biondo. Recorded at the Sande Webster Gallery. Thanks to the Knight Foundation for their support of this project.

Janet Fleisher in younger days

By Sally A. Downey, Inquirer Staff Writer

Janet Schafer Fleisher, 93, of Elkins Park, who operated the avant-garde Janet Fleisher Gallery near Rittenhouse Square for more than 30 years, died Monday, Aug. 2, at her home.

In 1952, Mrs. Fleisher and a college classmate, Eunice Leopold, opened the Little Gallery on Manning Street in Center City. Six years later, the women opened Gallerie Philadelphia on the Left Bank in Paris. The Inquirer reported in 1958 that the dual locations “makes it possible to sell American paintings in France and French paintings in America.”

Shipping art abroad was not without its difficulties, the women told The Inquirer, especially when they tried to explain Calder mobiles to customs officials.

In 1959, the women were asked to serve on a committee to select paintings by American artists for the International Art Exhibition in Paris.

Clients at both galleries were allowed to purchase art on a layaway plan, and works were priced from $5 to $5,000, including inexpensive watercolors and a Picasso with a four-figure price tag.

By the mid-1960s, Mrs. Fleisher had become the sole owner of Gallerie Philadelphia and the Little Gallery, which eventually moved to 17th Street and renamed the Janet Fleisher Gallery.

In 1970, she hired John Ollman, who had a master’s degree in fine arts, to be her assistant. He became gallery director in 1971. “We worked together on ideas and agreed what direction the gallery was going,” he said.

Both had an interest in exhibiting art by self-taught artists. Mrs. Fleisher was “very forward-looking” and was always discovering new artists on her travels, Ollman said.

“She had a keen eye for emerging artists and was a talented art appraiser,” said her daughters, Jill Bonovitz and Nancy Hellebrand Blood, both artists. …

a clay pile of J.J. McCracken's fruits and veggies

One of the artists who is pushing clay medium is J.J. McCracken.  Her installation/performance piece addresses an important issue affecting so much of the world: hunger.  The piece is appropriately named, Hunger, Philadelphia. In her work she addresses the hunger and food issue on a global level but also right here in Philadelphia.

I have to admit I wasn’t impressed with the clay pile of fruits and vegetables on exhibit, but after watching the performance piece and reading a bit more about the work I have changed my mind.  The performance piece is quite powerful; it is an odd experience watching clay-covered performance artists breaking off pieces of the clay fruits and veggies and actually eating them.  You can’t help but almost taste the dry, earthy clay ( I naively didn’t realize that people throughout the world consume clay for many reasons including mineral supplements and for eliminating toxins from the body).   The clay-eating performers highlight the significance of functioning potted gardens close by.   I believe the the clay produce makes an important reference to the foods our society eats, which too often are overly processed, full of preservatives and lacking any real nutritional value.  The potted gardens remind us all what real food is and, more than that, how simple it could be to incorporate gardening into our urban lives.  We could feed so much more of the world if we used our green thumbs.
Furthermore I was delighted to see this piece merge clay with performance art.  It really gives life to a sometimes stagnant medium.   Definitely check out the piece and her web-site….it’ll get you thinking.

Judythe VanAmringe's Crosses and Bones at The Clay Studio

There is more installation work by guest resident artist, Judythe VanAmringe.   Her piece Crosses, Bones, Cherry Trees, was on exhibit this past Spring at the Eastern State Penitentiary.   She brought some of that show to The Clay Studio for the current exhibition.  You can check out a pile of bones and crosses from the Penitentiary as well as beautiful black and white photographs of the installation.

The objects are beautiful in their own right.  But the photographs capture the transformation of the objects into a compelling and haunting story conjuring up thoughts of death, lingering spirits and untold tales.

The rest of the work in the show was a bit more traditional including work from Michael Moore, Deborah Schwartzkopf and Edith Garcia.

Michael Moore

Deborah Schwartzkopf

Edith Garcia

The show runs through Sept. 12.  For more information see the Clay Studio web site.

Parking lot land, where Jolie Laide makes its home

The gallery property is owned by the same people who own SAAW, Inc., a hip design firm that does interiors for retailers. Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie are two of their retail clients, but the firm does corporate spaces and residential ones as well.  Jolie Laide Gallery Director Travis Heck worked there as an artist and a designer.

Installation shot of the gallery, with sculptures by Lasserre, and paintings (left) by Dean and (right, primary colors) by Smith.

That professional sense of space shows in the gallery’s exposed brick and fancy plaster finish on the walls (venetian plaster if you must know). And it showed in the first show with chair- and architecture-themed art. This month, their show includes fragile what-is-its with encrusted surfaces from Fabienne Lasserre (contributor Emmy Thelander recently wrote about Lasserre’s show in Brooklyn), and dark narrative paintings from two artists–Joel Dean’s torutured figures in abstract tangles and Leslie Smith III’s ordinary, even cheerful, pictures of menace. Lasserre was the stand-out here, with her not quite people and not quite furniture.

Fabienne Lasserre's piece looks like an exhausted table and many other things

Jolie Laide’s big gallery space is a beachhead for a virtual compound. In the long term, the gallery has a couple of project spaces, one right across the street and another in the works. And this First Friday, to augment the opening reception for a show of work by Robert Horvath, 6-9 p.m., the gallery will take over the surrounding, never-used streets with performance and installations from an exciting crew, including recent Penn MFA Heather Ramsdale and suddenly-he’s-everywhere Tim Eads. Plus it looks like a terrific party. There’s more incredible stuff coming up the next evening (8-10 p.m.) by another recent Penn MFA, Jacolby Satterwhite, whose video/performance blew us away at the Penn show at the Ice Box. Music, too!

Heather Ramsdale, A Separate Time of Alone, 8 feet high by 12 feet x 5 feet, Nathan Thomas demos the piece

What I’m getting around to, however, is that with Jolie Laide, the Chinatown art scene has achieved critical mass.  Most of you know this, but for those who don’t, the neighborhood includes all the galleries in 319 N. 11th (Vox Populi, Marginal Utility, Grizzly Grizzly, Tiger Strikes Asteroid are the main players there right now), Space 1026 and the Fabric Workshop and Museum both on Arch, and the Asian Arts Initiative on Vine (I keep hoping their art program revives to equal the glory days; right now they seem more focused on performance and I have to assume that’s where there’s more funding money is available, a reflection of what’s wrong with the world of non-profits).

First Fridays has become delightfully impossible for us. Should we go to Chinatown? to Frankford? to Kensington? to NoLibs? or to dear old Old City? The city’s inaction in encouraging a gallery zone has had a happy result. All of these nabes are getting a boost. But this wealth of goodies means we are missing great stuff. And it has forced us to have lots of interns, fanning out across the city to cover each of the neighborhoods. We can’t do it all. But we want to.