This weekend the art is jammed-packed into the evening hours of Friday. Apparently May 1st is such an auspicious date for openings that the galleries around town all seized the same moment to unveil their offerings. My advice to you? Pick-and-choose carefully, because you are bound to (once again) miss a lot of what there is to see.
Friday
I’ll get the vanity out of the way with the announcement that I will have a piece in a group show at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. It’s part of “SALIGLIA: A Seven Deadly Sins Exhibition”- which is juried and curated by Steven R. Mendelson, and presented by Pittsburgh Society of Artists. This is the first work that I’ve ever shown at this institution, so suffice it to say I am rather excited. Maybe I’ll even be nervous. Who knows? Meanwhile, there are seven additional exhibitions opening on Friday at PCA, including those featuring Christopher Kardambikis (of Encyclopedia Destructica fame) and Aasta Deth. This is an opportunity to see lots of diverse artwork while making just one stop. Come by 6300 Fifth Avenue, between 5:30 and 8PM.
While you’re in that part of town (from 6-8PM), you can jump into the Miller Gallery at CMU (5000 Forbes Avenue) for “From the Vault”- a selection of pieces by the 2009 BFA class, including Olga Brindar. These students are billing themselves as “panpsychists, selcouthists, paralogists, and strikhedonists.” Crack that code how and when you so choose.
Of course… since this happens to be First Friday, we have a full bill over in the Penn Avenue Corridor for the May Unblurred, Here’s the schedule. The presence of several unfamiliar venues is particularly conspicuous this month. There’s a new clothing store called Tweek (4913 Penn), tree photography at the storefront office of Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest (5427 Penn), and three shutterbugs (including my friend Allison Pochapin) at 5131 Penn. There’s also a display of post-apocalyptic architecture down at EDGE studio (5411 Penn, drive there if you have the option) and shots from Route 66 by Scott Roller at Imagebox (4933 Penn). Be sure to visit the anchors as well- Garfield Artworks, Modern Formations, and Most Wanted Fine Art. Most of the stuff happens between the hours of 6 and 10PM. Can you handle all that?
And we’re not done yet, boys and girls. Because some local film industry people have collected some stuff for display at Mendelson Gallery (5874 Ellsworth Avenue) in Shadyside. Jolene Elyse Drylie, Mark L. Gualtieri, Smith Harper Hutchings, Shawn Watrous & Kevin Wenner are included in “The Scenics”, opening 6-9PM. Good stuff indeed.
At the risk of sounding like Ron Popeil, I feel some obligation to mention the fact that there’s EVEN MORE to see. Because the Society for Contemporary Craft is hosting their first reception (5:30-8PM) in more than half a year- “Beyond Shared Language: Contemporary Art & the Latin American Experience”. Don’t let the swanky atmosphere of this Strip District location (2100 Smallman Street) put you off- you are welcome to browse, and I have enjoyed my previous visits there. If they let a scumbag like me in… well…
Finally, Zombo Gallery (4900 Hatfield St.) is once again rolling out the art. This go ‘round they have works by Kill Taupe. The show is called “Imaginary Friends Club”. I have no idea what that’s all about. But the reception lasts from 6-11PM, making this a possible last stop for your meanderings on what should be a very busy night.
Saturday
We’ve got slim pickings after the whirlwind of activity on Friday. But Boxheart (on Liberty Ave. in Blooomfield) has the opening for Kim Curinga’s “Legacy: Digital Paintings Reception”. Check it after 5PM. Have fun.
Showing posts with label PCA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PCA. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Sunday, September 14, 2008
"Tikkun" means "to mend" : Suzanne Slavic at the PCA
Star lilies often decorate viewings of bodies before funerals, as their heavy sweet scent covers that of the body. I didn't notice the bouquet of star lilies gracing Suzanne Slavic (PCA's Artist of the Year) opening Friday night until I was making my second tour of the work.
It is a mixed symbol, a gorgeous flower that hides the smell of death. How appropriate to artwork in which Slavic applies a screen of beauty to photographs of human-wrought destruction.
I may be able to describe the physicality of the work with that single sentence, but the complexity and depth of experience provided by viewing it shows the artist's genius in her exploration of that single decision's possibility.
She has appropriated the visual language of disaster photography (the illusion of a represented reality) and applied another language, that of Islamic painting techniques to both the physical and illusive surface of the image.
Each still image contains competing narratives, the photographed 'reality' of destruction underneath the painted image. At times the photograph was printed in a way that points to it having been manipulated in some way, a manipulation that further indicates the illusion-atop-illusion parameters set up by Slavic.
Her painting technique echoes Islamic miniaturist tradition, and speaks to a vocabulary of inner reality referenced in Sufi poetry. I walked room to room recognizing scenes and passages from a variety of Arabic story-sources and comparing them to the contents in the photography. I considered the tension between 'real' and 'imagined' - photo referencing our belief in 'reality', and painting speaking to our 'imagined' re-creation of reality ...
And in the images wherein she overlays imagined repairs to a 'reality' destroyed by war or natural disaster? While in this room, the phrase "tikkun" means "to mend" insistantly ran through my mind. It made sense to me, looking at images of the middle east reconstructed with a Western hand in an Islamic gesture, that I would think of a phrase that comes from Kabbalah (another Middle-Eastern practice, although Jewish) - that the highest calling of a spiritual practitioner is to work to repair reality and the connections we have to, in, and with reality.
Slavic's work may not pull at those strings of those viewers who are not interested in those ideas, but instead it will challenge those who have a hard time looking at the consequences of human misbehavior. Its one of our oldest problems: Humans destroy things, nature destroys things, how do we look at the brokenness we make? How do we respond? Do we numb ourselves in order to tend to life's mundane necesseties? How can we maintain awareness of our ruined world?
My favorite response from a viewer was, "I feel guilty liking this work, because it gives me that silly childlike hope that we can deal with things." Perhaps it invokes the child's wish to bandage the world's wounds so the sounds of those wounds festering do not intrude on the child's experience of the world.
Suzanne Slavic has provided us with complex art for a complex time, the best food for thought. Check out the second floor of the PCA until the show comes down.
It is a mixed symbol, a gorgeous flower that hides the smell of death. How appropriate to artwork in which Slavic applies a screen of beauty to photographs of human-wrought destruction.
I may be able to describe the physicality of the work with that single sentence, but the complexity and depth of experience provided by viewing it shows the artist's genius in her exploration of that single decision's possibility.
She has appropriated the visual language of disaster photography (the illusion of a represented reality) and applied another language, that of Islamic painting techniques to both the physical and illusive surface of the image.
Each still image contains competing narratives, the photographed 'reality' of destruction underneath the painted image. At times the photograph was printed in a way that points to it having been manipulated in some way, a manipulation that further indicates the illusion-atop-illusion parameters set up by Slavic.
Her painting technique echoes Islamic miniaturist tradition, and speaks to a vocabulary of inner reality referenced in Sufi poetry. I walked room to room recognizing scenes and passages from a variety of Arabic story-sources and comparing them to the contents in the photography. I considered the tension between 'real' and 'imagined' - photo referencing our belief in 'reality', and painting speaking to our 'imagined' re-creation of reality ...
And in the images wherein she overlays imagined repairs to a 'reality' destroyed by war or natural disaster? While in this room, the phrase "tikkun" means "to mend" insistantly ran through my mind. It made sense to me, looking at images of the middle east reconstructed with a Western hand in an Islamic gesture, that I would think of a phrase that comes from Kabbalah (another Middle-Eastern practice, although Jewish) - that the highest calling of a spiritual practitioner is to work to repair reality and the connections we have to, in, and with reality.
Slavic's work may not pull at those strings of those viewers who are not interested in those ideas, but instead it will challenge those who have a hard time looking at the consequences of human misbehavior. Its one of our oldest problems: Humans destroy things, nature destroys things, how do we look at the brokenness we make? How do we respond? Do we numb ourselves in order to tend to life's mundane necesseties? How can we maintain awareness of our ruined world?
My favorite response from a viewer was, "I feel guilty liking this work, because it gives me that silly childlike hope that we can deal with things." Perhaps it invokes the child's wish to bandage the world's wounds so the sounds of those wounds festering do not intrude on the child's experience of the world.
Suzanne Slavic has provided us with complex art for a complex time, the best food for thought. Check out the second floor of the PCA until the show comes down.
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