Self-Perpetuated Media Ghettoization?

The rapid-fire succession of having SGC International and NCECA in Philadelphia got me thinking about how the art exhibited in the city of late has really played to these particular audiences. The thought process in trotting out the work of ceramic artists or print artists specifically when their professional associations have come to town feels like a knee-jerk reaction to me. It is a gambit that lures the out-of-town conference attendees to one’s gallery space, estimating that they only have limited time to spend and will probably want to see work by artists within the same discipline. But the question that I want to ask is such: does this trend perpetuate the ghettoization of an artistic medium?

In some way I would liken this behavior to the quibbles that are often raised with heritage history months, such as Black History Month or Women’s History Month. It is important to set aside time for the examination and celebration of individual achievements within all communities, especially minority groups whose narratives may have been chronically treated short-shrift. But confining them to such a brief and finite time span can send the message that for the one month, the subject at hand is all that matters, and after that month is over, it is no longer of consequence until next year rolls around, keeping it neatly in its own little isolating cubicle.

For ceramics, a medium whose practitioners have historically been hyper self-conscious of the perceived lack of respect from critics and other artists, as well as persistently vigilant about their struggle to be seen as deeper than just decorative, I find this conundrum especially relevant. The fact that dozens of galleries within Philadelphia concentrate on ceramic artists only when NCECA is present, I fear, sends the message that ceramic art only matters to ceramic artists. Moreover, I would ask, is it really true that artists of a certain medium are single-mindedly focused on viewing art of this selfsame kind when they visit somewhere new?

I do not have answers to these questions, but I would love to hear commentary from anyone with perspective on the matter.

Barbarian Invasions at Crane Arts

Wolfbat Studios - Viking Ship, outside Crane Arts on March 26, 2010

With Philagrafika 2010 entering its final weeks and SGC International in town, what a remarkable time it has been for print in Philadelphia! Wolfbat Studios’ Viking Ship sat in the parking lot adjacent to the Crane Arts Building last night, poised to parade through the city streets, bringing its pastiche of donated art to the people, and to champion print’s ascendance to the vanguard of Philadelphia’s art scene. This was not a hostile takeover, as the militarism inherent in a Viking theme might suggest; it is a movement that has grown, building momentum through the dedication of artists and organizations like Philagrafika. Think of this as the victory procession.



The Viking Ship also got me thinking about Duke Riley (incidentally, presenting his current project Reclaiming the Lost Kingdom of Laird at The Historical Society of Philadelphia). Last summer he staged Those About to Die Salute You, a modern reinterpretation of an Ancient Roman naumachia (naval battle). An amphitheater, such as the Coliseum, would be flooded so that naval battles could be staged for public entertainment; think of them as gladiatorial combat on boats. Riley’s project pitted teams representing different museums in New York against one another, battling proudly for their respective institutions. If only we could convince Riley to restage this participatory event here in Philadelphia! Perhaps, instead of culling teams from museums, representatives from different art media could battle for dominance, giving print the chance to defend its newfound preeminence.


Video by Keith Ozar

Drive By Press at The Print Center

Last night I attended the wonderful Drive By Press event at The Print Center. The 1600 block of Latimer Street was closed to traffic, making way for their mobile printing stations. When I arrived, the Tower of Babel sculpture was well underway, pieced together from donated prints by local artists. Aficionados of the medium were lining up to get t-shirts, other garments, and bags printed at either the woodblock or the silk screen printing station.



There was also the innovative “Dumbo” press, built from a repurposed playground rocking horse, which was given its maiden voyage by Joseph Velasquez of Drive By Press. As the evening wore on, the crowd—a healthy mix of locals and visitors attending the Southern Graphics Council convention—swelled in size, filling the street, until the finished Tower was ceremoniously hoisted to cheers and applause. A selection of photos and video are posted below, with more available on my Flickr and Vimeo pages!

VIP Room

Virgil Marti - VIP Room

Virgil Marti’s VIP Room, currently on view at The Galleries at Moore as part of Philagrafika 2010, really resonated with me. I cannot help but think about it in contrast to the installation he did for The Fabric Workshop and Museum over the summer of 2009 (image here). He has distilled an essence of that installation into a directness of message that is richer with connotation. Less has become more. At FWM his installation felt overly-stuffed with its four pouffe settees, multiple arranged bone sculptures and bone curtains, and Austrian Swag trompe-l'œil wallpaper. The resulting hyper-decorative funereal ambience played with notions of taste in décor, as much of his work does. But if that work was more about our society’s rituals concerning death and burial—funeral parlors and their faux-homey interiors of sitting rooms appointed with plush furniture and false fireplaces, walls draped with luxurious satin fabric that call to mind casket linings—his new installation seems to comment on what comes afterward.


Virgil Marti - VIP Room (exterior view)

The allotted gallery space lends itself flawlessly to the premise of a VIP room: the wall of windows looking out on Logan Circle, rather than a de rigueur velvet rope, form the threshold through which the select and the general mass can see one another, but cannot cross. As for the layout of the gallery, its Spartan arrangement, limited to one shaggy pouffe and a dangling mirror ball casting its pale twinkling light, foster a carefully measured atmosphere that directs all attention to the wallpaper, the installation’s real star. The floral forms of his previous bone sculptures are still in use, having been translated into the repeat pattern for the wallpaper. The ingenious part of this fusion is the reflective backing (previously used in his Lotus Room wallpaper) above which the flat plane of the bone motif seems to float. The mirror-like property of the wallpaper allows the viewer to see him or herself in the work, making the personal implications of the memento mori effect all the more immediate.


Virgil Marti - VIP Room (Wallpaper detail)

Additionally, the downright frigid color palette, coupled with the openness of the gallery, creates a solitary experience for the viewer. I felt isolated and alone in the room, strengthening also the psychological ramifications of a VIP area, even with several other visitors present. The blurring effect of the wallpaper’s dimpled surface contributes to this feeling, because though you may see your own reflection, it is abstracted, and the reflections of others are even less discernible. The sum of its parts comes over as something like what purgatory might be. Here you find yourself in a waiting room, a holding pen, where through a window you can see an outside paradise, but must wait indefinitely for purification.


Virgil Marti - VIP Room (Wallpaper detail)

For some of Virgil's own thoughts about his work and printmaking, here is a great interview published by Philadelphia City Paper.

Rivane Neuenschwander and Regina Silveira

Quarta-Feira de Cinzas/Epilogue

For the blink-and-you-miss-it span of February 17-21, Quarta-Feira de Cinzas/Epilogue by Rivane Neuenschwander and Cao Guimarães was screening at The Institute of Contemporary Art as a selection in their Video Art: Replay, Part 2. The short film depicts a colony of ants collecting scattered sequins from the ground on Quarta-Feira de Cinzas (“Ash Wednesday”) against a minimal samba beat. They scamper over leafy ground, sometimes fighting over the colored discs, before pulling their booty into a dark hole. The ants also lick the sequins, surely tasting a cocktail coating of booze, salt, grime, sweat, and other unmentionable fluids. The sequins, ostensibly shed from samba dancers’ ornate costumes, represent Carnaval and all of the previous day’s debauched reveling.


Quarta-Feira de Cinzas/Epilogue

The timing was accurate, as the brief screening began on Ash Wednesday; but I don’t think that the work and its framing within this window of time translate appropriately. I say this because we do not celebrate carnaval. I was able to get in the mood a little bit, having watched some Brazilian Carnaval celebrations on Rede Globo. In Brazil, or other South American nations, this film is a no-brainer: you could show it to anyone, regardless of their background or formal education, and they would instantly “get it”. Maybe it would come off well in a city like New Orleans. But in Philadelphia, and I would think most other American cities, it falls flat because it floats divorced of a greater cultural context and awareness, which, I would argue, the filmmakers take for granted in this particular work. It simply seems fun, a little bit absurd, and possibly trifling to watch scurrying ants carrying sequins in their mandibles. Perhaps a more appropriate time to show the film in Philadelphia would be January 2, the day after The Mummer’s Parade? But so much collective hope and anticipation is placed in Carnaval, not to mention the magnitude of the collective catharsis released through it, that nothing here seems to aptly compare; do we have an event such as this? (I won’t count the Phils or Eagles winning something important—this same spirit exists in Brazil and is distinctly different from what I am grasping for here.)


Mundus Admirabilis

Interesting by comparison, though undoubtedly coincidental in its similar motif, is the work of Regina Silveira, now on display at The Galleries at Moore as part of Philagrafika 2010. Before entering Mundus Admirabilis, one must don shoe covers which shield the art, spanning the gallery walls and floor, from dirt and degradation, a fascinating paradox considering the creepy, crawly scene you are about to enter. Are we keeping pristine something already so gross, or is it we who are being offered a measure of protection from having to touch the teeming ground? Of course, I understand that this was done as conservational measure, the vinyl would certainly peel away from the floor with traffic and wear; the previous times that I had to put on shoe covers were at historic palaces in Europe with vulnerable patterned floorboards or mosaics. But I felt some kind of psychological barrier about it all, mostly because what you are about to experience, for me at least, engages in a gripping, horror vacui sensory assault. Imagine that the insects are real: what would you feel, hear, see, or even smell? Inserting a measure of prophylaxis between the viewer and a work like this make the experience more remote.


Mundus Admirabilis & Rerum Naturae

I’m not sure that I wholeheartedly embrace the Biblical end-times assertions about the work. Yes, it calls to mind Old Testament plagues. There still is something morbidly fun, cartoonish even, about the installation owing to the bugs’ exaggerated scale. I consider her insects to hew closer to the self-serious schlock of a 1950s B-movie like Them!, than the terrifyingly lethal creatures of a futuristic dystopia like in Starship Troopers. And the close layering of the vinyl forms began to abstract the insects themselves, leaving the impression of a non-representational graphic pattern the more that I gazed at it.


Rerum Naturae

Where her conceit comes off best is in Rerum Naturae, the table mid-gallery. The scale is appropriate, and the imagery is more powerful: envision your place setting crawling with bugs. Here, she mines the heart of her Brazilian unconscious, with the embroidered tablecloth and ceramic ware as spins on traditional handicraft. These items are an important part of the living cultural patrimony, available at any feira de artesanato (“handicraft market”) and found at the breakfast table of just about any home in Brazil. Her tweaking of these forms is simultaneously nauseating and beautiful, but also more subversive than the insects writ large all over the room.