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

Nick Paparone at Vox Populi

King Kiosk

Nick Paparone
Vox Populi
Cliffs, Bluffs and Steamy Lowlands
Through June 1st.

Cliffs, Bluffs and Steamy Lowlands , Nick Paparone's first exhibition at Vox Populi, almost smells like a male adolescent that hasn't yet learned to use deodorant. If each separate sculpture and print were a painting you could say Mr. Paparone's palette was heavy on the reds and yellows associated with fast food restaurants, comic books, and the logos of corporate america. The work is compelling and repulsive at the same time.

The duel manipulated posters of Cindy Crawford; 400 Horsepower #1 and 2 (Mr. Paparone cleverly used the one with bananas for hair as his announcement card) are so gorgeous you almost want to lick them. In them Cindy is glistening in her revealing yellow bathing suit, chest puffed out, feminine and yet looking remarkably strong. The addition of fruit to her head turns the image upside down; instead of being a subject of masturbation and sexual fantasy her image becomes absurdist in nature. If this is representative of a Freudian-type fear of being dominated by sex then the artist has made a marvelous attempt at exorcising the demon.


400 Horsepower #2

The tour de force of the exhibition is easy enough to find as it dominates the entire space, leaving the other artworks little room to breathe; King Kiosk is a about the size of a garden shack with no entrance and completely covered by comic books. The eyes at the bottom of the structure, compounded with the sticks jutting out the top (which to me read as a sort of deer-antler-like attachment) lend the object animate properties, yet it has a shelf, almost (obviously) like a kiosk. Perhaps most mysterious is the fact that it wears chains. If I were to draw conclusions they would again be sexual, adolescent, and angst-ridden in nature. It is an object that seems like it could explode from the various forces pulling at it at any instant.

A moment of rest, though it too seems a little dangerous comes, quite literally, from a light in the corner. The Wonder Wander, a stand alone corner lamp, seemingly circa 1990, has a motorized spinning globe, laminated with aluminum foil and colored with markers, about it's middle. Immediately I think of this song.


The Wonder Wander

(Bravo Nick!)

(It should be noted that all the exhibits at Vox Populi are good right now and in due time I hope to talk about Stefan Abrams and Jack Sloss.)

TONIGHT IS FIRST FRIDAY (The Fish is Bananas Mr. Damien Hirst):

Copy Galley Presents: Mono Fish

A Live Performance Arranged By Jamie Dillon

Opening this Friday: May 2, 6-11 p.m. One Night Only

Copy Gallery (gee Nick advertise on Copy's website a little bit more why don't you?)

VOX POPULI: Nick Paparone's Cliffs, Bluffs and Steamy Lowlands, A Jack Sloss video, plus Eva Wylie and Stefan Abrams.



The Wexler Gallery hosts a group show with a Damien Hirst (Randell Sellers, Adelaide Paul, Tim Tate, Anne Siems, Dirk Staschke and Joe Boruchow) in it. Read this.

201 N 3rd. Opens tonight 5-8!

ON SUNDAY (May 4th)!!!!!!!! DO NOT FORGET!!!!!!! ZOE STRAUSS 1-4 UNDER I-95 at Front and Mifflin!!!!!! PHOTOGRAPHS!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVEN IF IT RAINS!!!!!!!!!!

And in the future this looks way cool:



Taller Puertorriqueño, Galería Lorenzo Homar presents Miguel Luciano.

May 9 – July 19, 2008. Opening Reception Friday, May 9th 5:30-8:30 p.m.

ALEX DA CORTE, FOREVER AND EVER.

Alex DaCorte

Alex Da Corte has an exhibition opening, Love Explosion, on Friday (with Jack Sloss) at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. It's not the sort of thing you should miss out on. The text below is the transcripted version of a talk with Alex DaCorte over the hum of traffic outside The Last Drop. If you would like to actually hear that hum, please visit: oneculture.mypodcast.com and download the podcast.

For a quick primer on Alex visit his work on the web, or read this review I wrote not long ago.

IN WHICH THE INTERVIEWER CALLS THE INTERVIEWEE A HUSTLER AND THEY BOTH LAUGH

Annette: I don't want you to be insulted by my first question but we've talked about it before and I think you can handle it.

Alex: Okay.

Annette: I wanted to talk about how people perceive you as a person who plays the "art game" really well, for lack of a better term, a hustler.

Alex: That's alright I think I've used that term myself. It doesn't insult me.

Annette: So I guess, how do you perceive the way you are going about selling yourself?

Alex: Um.

Annette: I know. That's a tough one. Do you even think that you're doing that?

Alex: I think there's a certain amount of "right place, right time" that is just in life, but you do sometimes have to create those "right places, right times" for yourself by pre-pla--not pre-planning, but by putting yourself out there.

Annette: Do you think that's an important part of being an artist today?

Alex: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

. . . But if you're talking about meeting someone who is interested in you, or is part of an arts world or an arts group?. . . I never was part of any kind of collective in the city. I was around, at most, at first fridays or something. I'm not afraid to ask people for something that I want. For instance, I asked Virgil if he needed an assistant, because when you need work that's what you do, you ask someone. Did I know that Virgil made work in the city? Yeah. I knew he worked at The Fabric Workshop and all of that stuff, but I was really naive about things like Chelsea, so I wasn't being opportunistic. I knew he was an art guy who could teach me things.

Even when I met you, I knew you had a gallery so I wanted to show you my work but I don't know if that's. . . I know that's part of making art but you still need to be in your studio working and things like that.

It flip flops. Then they'll be months and months where no one sees me, because I'm in my studio and I'm working on stuff.

Annette: Yeah.

Alex: I don't know If I'm answering your question.


Just give me a fucking chance

DO YOU HAVE TO SELL YOURSELF OR SELL YOUR ART?

Annette: I think you did answer my question. I guess I wanted to talk a little bit more about how much do you think a person has to sell themselves and actually make art? How much is that a part of being an artist?

Alex: I know a lot of really great artists who are painfully shy and they really don't show their work and I think that stops them from making more work because they don't get it out there.

I really don't know why my work is out there in the way that it is out there. I guess it all starts to snowball after awhile. You make a name for yourself from show to show, so I don't think it has to be that aggressive. I don't think it has to be despicable. I like people so I talk to people.

It is a necessary part. Art is a business, so you have to have a certain amount of. . . business savvy.

Annette: Do you consider yourself a career artist?

Alex: Yeah. I want to do this for the rest of my life. I'm not good enough at anything else.

Annette: This is what you want to do. 24/7 all the time?

Alex: Yeah, for the rest of my life.


Luren Jenison of Copy Gallery wacks Alex's "This is This" at the Institute for Contemporary Art

IN WHICH ALEX (INTERVIEWEE) PROFESSES HIS LOVE FOR DISNEY

Annette: Your work also has a surface of being really beautiful and it sells itself really well. It's very pretty, and I think there is a darker underbelly.

I see you embracing a very decadent side of art that's been embraced by Damien Hirst, or Matthew Barney. . .

Why does that appeal to you?

Alex: I was thinking about this the other day. Growing up I always liked things like Disney, I guess, things that are very slick. Even when I was a little kid I liked things that were really well packaged, it might just be me being a Virgo, but I just gravitated towards things that were tightly put together and constructed, things like Andy Warhol, when I started learning about art.

I think people like Damien Hirst and Matthew Barney, those types of people have a very slick way of approaching art and that was my taste. I like that idea, of something that you toil over for a really long time but it still looks like you bought it.

End part one. Look for part two tomorrow, or listen to it all at: oneculture.mypodcast.com