Abandoned StationTim Conte
This is one of my favorite galleries to visit. They've been showing a lot of cityscapes as I recall, which is something I'd rarely complain about. There's something about seeing a familiar place from an unfamiliar angle to make it seem other worldly and foreign but at the same time it makes you feel at home. Tim Conte's work does just that for me. Maybe it's the way he captured the hazy and humid light of summer that is just so 'Philadelphia in July' or maybe it's that it was just as stifling out this night as when he painted Abandoned Station. Either way, it has a closeness for me. It's familiar and not. Brain was happy to see Conte work in some of his favorite artists. Oh, yeah, and we ran into Chris there. Hmmm, funny he didn't come by Starbuck's before hand. Was he trying to avoid us?
Wizard TreePaulette Bensignor
QBix was surprisingly on the slow side this night. Maybe because they weren't running their usual Peroni beer sponsor or maybe people were put off all the flora and fauna from Paulette Bensignor. Brian hit the nail on the head when he said "so much work" after seeing all the brush strokes that made up the innumerable leaves in any given painting in the gallery that night. I second that. But beyond the technical feats, these paintings, while at first glance seem to be nothing more that something to hang over the couch at the doctor's office, are more than that. They get a little acid trippy. The sky tended to shift around on me and my eye drifted back into the landscape a bit. They pulled me in. If I were better versed in the subtleties of landscapes, or in art in general, maybe I would have seen or appreciated these paintings more. They were nice though.
Sarah DaubeDefinitely the highlight at Pentimenti was Sarah Daube. I did like the miniatures under glass, but Sarah's work was quite striking and refreshing. I had toyed with the idea of doing a series of small works but the theme kept eluding me. Sarah, I think, is able to pull off a nice, cohesive piece. She cuts silhouettes out of what I assume was found paper, maps mostly and while most of the pieces could certainly work individually, to see them all lined up along that huge wall made them all seem so much more unique in their sameness, if that makes any sense, and you start to see how each one stands out from the other and why certain maps where cut into certain shapes. Singularly, they would have been merely cleaver. All together, they are smart and witty.
Lamp IIIBrett Eberhardt
It was nice to have a break from the hyper/photo/uber realist that Artist House had been showing for a while with Adam Vinson, however beautiful and technically spot on. I really liked the trio of lamps by Brett Eberhardt. While not super crisp and clean as Vinson's work, Eberhardt's paintings had a way of allowing me to relax into them and really see the damaged shade, and the intricate wallpaper patterns; I was able to really see them as a whole. There were a couple of other artists showing there that I liked as well. Kate Brochman's sculpture, while I had see these pieces before, still commanded my attention as well as Amber Lia-Kloppel's.
Joel DuganOh, Lineage, what can I say. It's the same old stuff month after month. That is, until I see these small pencil drawings by Joel Dugan. Why, if you have this touch, this ability to created such a fantastic scene, why eff it all up with varnish? I swear, virtually everything else in the gallery was flat and dead and varnished to hell. Brian supposed that there's some guy in a basement in California manufacturing this style and cranking it out for the SoCal art masses to use. I'm thinking he may be right. But every month, here I am, heading into this gallery hoping I won't see wall to wall sameness, but I do. Joel Dugan's pencil drawings were the exception this month.
Did anyone else check these galleries out? Any replies? See something you think we should have checked out? let us know.
No comments:
Post a Comment