This week’s Weekly has my short review of Mark Sheinkman and Annabel Daou’s exhibits at Gallery Joe. Below is the copy with some pictures and here’s the link to the Editor’s Picks page.
Mark Sheinkman
Like Gerhard Richter, whose realistic paintings of candles aren’t really about wax or wick but falseness of reality, Mark Sheinkman uses tropes of realism to evoke what lies beneath.
“Kerze,” by Gerhard Richter, oil on canvas, 35 3/8 by 37 3/8 inches, 1982
In his first solo exhibit in Philadelphia, the New York artist’s graphite-on-paper works suggest in every way the smoke from Richter’s candles. But unlike Richter, whose works have an unnerving quietude and focus on death, Sheinkman’s works have roistering rhythms that focus on life and the pleasures of experience. These works evoke natural and man-made wonders, from a delicious pea-soup fog and tree branches swaying in the wind to fireworks and scientific discoveries under the microscope. The artist says he listens to music (a lot of Steve Reich) when he works, and it shows in his work—in its lyricism, its almost symphonic rhythms, its quiet passages punctuated by tightly controlled bursts of energy.
Anabel Daou drawing that looks like a book with words from several languages merged together.
In the Vault Gallery Annabel Daou orchestrates her diaristic, word-based and language-mixed drawings into a fugue that culminates into a book and music. Poet and sound artist Greta Byrum contributes sound that tinkles enticingly like a Zen master’s bells.
Mark Sheinkman: “Drawings” and Annabel Daou: “A Book of Hours”
Through Feb. 24. Free. Gallery Joe, 302 Arch St. 215.592.7752.
