Love Explosion at Fleisher/ Ollman Gallery

Screen, 2008, by Alex Da Corte

Love Explosion
Jack Sloss/ Alex Da Corte
Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. Philadelphia
April 18th-May 17th 2008 !!!!THIS IS THE LAST DAY!!!!

When I say or think the words "love explosion" I think of a penis dripping with cum. Then I think of hippies, weed, and the sixties in general. Then I think of Ray-Ban Sunglasses. Fleisher/ Ollman has produced an odd little show ripe with so many different layers of mystery, meaning, and intrigue that it was a little hard for me to make head or tail of it. (It has to be noted that Love Explosion (Cranial Sections with Gunshot Wounds) is also the title of a piece in the exhibition, produced by Jack Sloss.)

I even read the catalog, which is a forty-page zine compiled by William Pym, and it only brought to mind more questions; the most glaring being the odd pairing of artist Jack Sloss with Alex Da Corte. It becomes hard for me to focus, here, on the artist's work, when I am more worried about why I am viewing two wholly different oeuvres brought together. One can't help but wonder what the curator was thinking, as it seems like the medium (which is the message) of each artist's work negates the other's.

There is no cute little summary to describe Love Explosion. For one thing, I feel like I know the work of Alex Da Corte much better then I know the work of Jack Sloss. It is easier for me to analyze the work of Alex Da Corte because I can see his entire piece at once, while many of Mr. Sloss' artworks are time-based (video/film/other forms of motion picture), so I wasn't able to view them in their entirety. I get the feeling that Mr. Sloss wants to show me a divine and melancholic beauty that has it's eyes and ears on all the troubles of the planet; a world slashed with sublime flashes of sunshine over the shadows of dusty carpets in dark rooms. He has an eye towards decisive moments. . . I think that I begin to like him. There was a moment, when I was watching a montage of videos (?--didn't see a plot and it seemed like random videos all taken by the same person) shown on a TV placed upon the floor with two headphones to pick up and a rug to sit on, I and I Improv Impart IV, that I had a really safe feeling come over me, like I was a child again. I watched some show falling on the video-camera and I felt like I could stay there all day. (In reality I probably spent less then five minutes with the piece.)


I and I Improv Impart IV, 2006-2007, by Jack Sloss

Mr. Sloss' work is steeped in a dark palette; the color of Olde English, bronze, wood, ornate rugs, and images of muslims while Mr. Da Corte's pieces utilize glitter and run the gambit of the spectrum one would hope to find at a child's birthday party. It seems as though Alex's work turns a rose-colored lens to a world it knows is really ugly while the world in Jack's work is perfect, only marred by the violence within it. They are both wonderful artists.

But what is this thing called Love?


After Party, 2008, by Alex Da Corte