Parts of the Whole

(A pie chart of un-excellence in art)


Me, in front of an Adam Cvijanovic.

It's been awhile since I've felt that special aesthetic feeling you get sometimes when you enter into an especially well-put together art exhibition. 50% of the problem can be blamed on my new job, which is taking up a large chunk of my aesthetic and intellectual experience these days, 20% might be on the account of summer which makes everything beside a mojito poolside look like hot poop on a stick, but I solidly believe a good 30% can rest on things really not being super-interesting of late. I guess that's to be expected, standing rumor being that the art-world takes a well-deserved break in the summer.

Still, in every stinky summer garbage heap there grows a surprisingly pretty weed and this particular web-log will be devoted to sharing the one's this blogger has lately spotted:

Maybe two weekends back I travelled to Upstate New york with pal Ben Peterson to see Future Tense: Reshaping the Landscape at The Neuberger Museum of Art. You can read the NY times review of the show here.

I wasn't that stoked on Ben's piece in the exhibition, though usually I am quite enamored, this drawing (not pictured, though hopefully you will be able to look it up via the web as soon as the museum's site lists the show in it's "past exhibitions", currently it must be lost somewhere between past and current.) left me feeling flat. However, there is no doubt that Mr. Peterson deserved to be in the exhibition, his work fit in with the pseudo-apocalyptic landscape thesis of the show really well, and I'm totally excited to see the work Ben's making for an exhibition at Ratio 3 coming up in January 2009.

My personal favorite piece in the show was the large-as-life landscape by Mr. Adam Cvijanovic. Many pieces (his included) would have worked well in a museum of natural history setting, perhaps as part of a diorama.

For some reason I had a better time at the museum's other exhibition; Reframing American Art: Selections from the Roy R. Neuberger Collection, which was a show of modern art from the museum's permanent collection. There was a very nice small Rothko, a weirdo Marsden Hartley that I actually liked (Mr. Hartley and I have never been great pals), a cute Lee Krasner next to a Jackson Pollock that wasn't very special as Jackson Pollock's go and a painting by Horace Pippin that I've been haunted by ever since I saw it:



The exhibition space was carpeted in brown, and in the middle of the floor was a box fan, unplugged. I was charmed to say the least.



I found these two sculptures of ash-trays at The Clay Studio the other day. I think they're amazing. I found out the artist's name but don't know how to spell it, evidently she's 90 and used to live in Hollywood. The style of the ash-tray looks very L.A., and I think they make a very good case for ash-trays, an art-form that grows ever-more extinct with the banning of cigarettes.

Finally, I went to the "mold opening" at Little Berlin the other night. I didn't think much of the show in general, though the atmosphere and fellowship was inspiring. However, I did think this piece; Jesus' face sculpted onto the bodies of several different cartoons and super-heros was more then clever:




You could write essays and essays on the jesus-type imagery in many cartoons and super-hero stories but I think looking at this would render just about any intellectual argument unnecessary.

The End.

LeRoy Johnson at Little Berlin

Men with Hats, 60th Street Series

LeRoy Johnson: Call and Response
Little Berlin   
Closes May 21

I've taught in the same program as LeRoy Johnson, the Claymobile, for about three years now and though I've meet him once or twice the only things I really "know" about him are little bits of information I've picked up from his teaching assistants. He's an older African American man (This press release for an exhibition of his at Swarthmore College describes his "50-year journey as an artist", so I'll put him down as 50+), who started creating art as a potter. I mention the fact that LeRoy is African American, male, and a potter because people have often commented to me that the combination is rare. I've been told time and again by the people who have worked closely with LeRoy that "he has his own way of doing things" but whatever this means, it seems to be a good thing most of the time because although they may sigh, everyone says it with a smile.

I had assumed, because he's taught clay sculpture to the urban youth of Philadelphia and because he has such a close relationship to the Clay Studio, that LeRoy creates pottery. I was wrong, and the show I viewed recently at Little Berlin; LeRoy Johnson: Call and Response, pretty much chalks LeRoy up to legendary in my book. Mr. Johnson uses "urban debris" to create art the mirrors the experience of urban life in Philadelphia. I am told that even his paintings and collages are on recycled or found canvas or panel, then covered over with various substances. The resulting sculptures and paintings look like what they are; something born of the bombed out and not-so-pretty neighborhoods of Philly.


LeRoy Johnson's mixed media sculpture, R.I.P, is reminiscent of a abandoned warehouse/street corner and acts as a memorial to the dead, both anonymous and legend.


This detail of R.I.P. highlights a familiar scene in Philadelphia; the street corner memorial.

Which is not say that Call and Response is all serious gloom and doom, or even pessimistic in any way. LeRoy's realistic subject matter, compounded with the fact that he works to better the neighborhoods he talks about, though sad in places, seems tinged with hope for the future. Some of the works, like a series of "Men with Hats" or five paintings entitled "Happy Happy" seem downright playful. Overall Call and Response seems to be an accurate take on Philadelphia's problems by a person who has continually shown his love and devotion to the area around him. Philly could use about twenty more LeRoy's, but the city is lucky to have just one.


Revelation


Three out of a series of five paintings titled; Happy Happy.

nuts and berries: objects and not

Little Berlin 1801 N. Howard St., Philadelphia.
Friday, December 14th- ?


A wall of found and manipulated objects, priced from low to "priceless"

nuts and berries: objects and not bills itself as a "visual agreement between daniel petraitis and martha savery" and each would-be capital letter was printed lower case as it is reproduced here. I can only assume the use of lower case implies that the artists (or the space) are extremely modest about their craft and its place in society. I think an adept parallel would be when a band chooses to play on the floor, becoming a part of the audience, rather then performing on an elevated stage. If anyone has ever produced or come across an in-depth study of the use of lower cases in text, especially when the capital "I" is replaced with the lower case "i" I would be happy to hear a discussion of it.


One of the objects on display at Little Berlin.

The "visual agreement" between the two artists in question is in actuality a nice way of saying a two-person show with a few collaborative pieces. However, I think the use of the term is especially apt in nuts and berries as the works of Daniel and Martha compliment each other in a seamless way. It would be possible to imagine the exhibition as a one-person show. As the title of the exhibition implies, the artists have gathered objects natural to their urban environment. The phrase "nuts and berries" becomes a metaphor for discarded objects; telephone books, pieces of pallets, old furniture, plastic trash and anything else that one might find abandoned to the sidewalks of the city. After gathering the "fruits" of the metropolis each artist transforms the trash into an arresting visual object or installation. In one collaborative work, the transformation is as simple as hanging the objects on a wall, numbering them, and giving them each a sale price.


A man sits on a piece of telephone pole beside Martha Savery's stack of yellow pages.


Daniel Petraitis' stack of pallets.

For me, the "tour de force" of the show was in a slightly separated room housing a mountain of artfully stacked telephone books (by Martha Savery) and pieces of old pallets (by Daniel Petraitis). The pallet ends had been painted bright colors by Mr. Petraitis in a move that immediately called to mind Jessica Stockholder, branded onto the ends of each wooden slat, however, were the initials "dp". The branding mirrors the industrial process, pulling this stack of wood into a highly Duchampian context, while turning each piece in the stack into a highly individualized artwork produced in multiple.

nuts and berries: objects and not , was a treat to visit, it's simple modesty and use of recycled materials was a breath of fresh air in today's decadent climate.

Also posted to artblog