News

Artist Rob Matthews, soon to be departing Philly for new ventures.

January begins with a bit of sad news for Philly. One of our favorite artists and the exhibition coordinator at Artspace Liberti, Rob Matthews, is relocating to Nashville for family reasons sometime this spring. He does, however, have plans for a solo show at Gallery Joe in 2014. Farewell and good luck, Rob!

Printeresting has gotten a phenomenal makeover, with a CC|Warhol Grant last year helping them devote time and energy toward a full site redesign for 2013.

Andrew Jeffrey Wright’s comedy troupe The New Dreamz has a couple of outings coming up, one in Philly and one in LA. For three Fridays in January at Space 1026, The New Dreamz are performing new pieces, workshopping new comedy and conducting joke club meetings to prepare for their coming LA mini tour. The dates are: Fri. Jan. 4th – doors 7:30 / comedy 8pm, Fri. Jan. 18th – doors 7:30 / comedy 8pm, and Fri. Jan. 25th – doors 7:30 / comedy 8pm. Each show is completely different, and you are welcome to come to all three. Let it be noted that shows are free, but apparently throwing gobs of money or even nickels at the performers is acceptable, apparently.

A change to one of Our Picks for January: Matt Kalasky, the organizer for Show-and-Share at the Moore College of Art Galleries tells us that Alex Klein had a conflict on Jan. 31 and is to be replaced by Suzanne Seesman and her talk Structure and Ritual/Values and Display: Modern Late-Century Public Displays of Intellectualism in the Post Revolutionary Period. This event takes place on January 31 at 6 PM at The Galleries at Moore.

You may have heard about a tiny little movie that came out recently to very little fanfare by a director who’s never been the center of any kind of controversy whatsoever. Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino’s antebellum revenge epic, is the subject of a panel discussion tonight at Vivant Art Collection. Moderated by Nadine Patterson and discussed by Mike Dennis, Stacey Muhammad, Suzi Nash and Dr Richard Cooper, this talk delves into the issues of slave stories, images, and the use of the “N” word to address current social issues. The talk begins at 3:00 PM and ends at 6:00 PM, for a $5 that includes light refreshments.

Opportunities

Margin, Haverford College’s alternative student-led academic publication, is calling for submissions, with the current theme Deploying Terror asking scholars, writers, and artists to consider the languages and images generated and deployed by the events of September 11, 2001. Contributions from all backgrounds and in all media are welcomed; the deadline for submission has been extended to January 21, 2012. Send submissions and questions to margin.journal@gmail.com as an email with the subject heading: “Deploying Terror, [Submission Title].” Written pieces must be submitted as Word documents with a .doc or .docx extension, and must use proper MLA citation style, and visual pieces must be saved as high-quality .tiff files.

Artist News

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Paul DeMuro’s New York debut “Revelations” at Zurcher Gallery, which has been getting rave reviews, is up until the 13th, so you still have a bit of time.

Mark Skwarek's "Master Pool with Grass," from his augmented reality series. — Mark Skwarek’s “Master Pool with Grass,” from his augmented reality series.

Mark Skwarek‘s new project augmented reality is as wild and cinematic as you’d expect from an exhibition designed by a man who moonlights as a stunt double: Skwarek has transformed different locations tied to the financial crisis into islands surrounded by a sea of fire, with visitors traveling from island to island in a special AR boat and partake in the tradition of “pool hopping”. The pool hopping originally began in New York City’s Financial District and is now being reprised on February 23, 2012 at 7:00 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel Heliport’s South Flower Street Entrance. The gist is this: viewers are ferried over a sea of fire to the Bank of America Plaza, making offerings to the “Plaza God” at a sacrificial altar viewers in the hopes of financial gain. The event is viewable, naturally, on smartphones. Knowing Skwarek’s repertoire of brilliant visions for virtual reality, passing this opportunity up sounds like a mistake.