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About the Exhibition
Fifteen international artists will bring their artistically
sizzling but environmentally friendly sculptures and installations
to Philadelphia for Global Warming at the Icebox
, an autumn exhibition at the Crane Arts Building in Northern
Liberties. Recognized and emerging artists from Canada, Germany,
Ireland, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as the U.S. and Puerto
Rico, will install works that range across the globe using
science, satire, and wild imagination.
Curated by guest curator and project co-director Cheryl
Harper and Philadelphia Museum of Art Assistant Curator of
Modern and Contemporary Art, Adelina Vlas, the exhibition
demonstrates how art can take ideas based in science and then
stretch, tickle, and deconstruct them. Using a wide range
of sculptural media, individual artists from around the world
come together to create a dynamic exhibition of multi-media
installations giving visual form to a very complex topic.
With artists chosen through both an invitational and juried
process, Canadian artists have an unusually strong representation.
Québec, Ontario and Prince Edward Island are exporting
four of their artists for the event. Heavy on interactive
components, Toronto artist Michael Alstad’s “Melt”
employs a web cam to include exhibition viewers in his installation
on melting icecaps. Arriving before the exhibition, Québec
resident Andrew Chartier will go straight to the streets.
For his video installation he will dress in overalls, hard
hat, gas mask, goggles and gloves, appearing as a municipal
worker or scientific researcher. Carrying his “Dioxigrapher”,
a quirky-looking apparatus made from found objects, he will
infiltrate the streets of Philadelphia, “sniffing”
car mufflers for carbon dioxide emissions and eliciting a
wide range of responses from passersby.
New Orleans artist Chicory Miles brings in a southern perspective
with her video installation featuring subtle aftereffects
of Hurricane Katrina. Puerto Rican artist Miguel Luciano taps
the vein of nostalgia, adding some twists. His “Piragua
Cart” (the piragua is the Caribbean water ice) is now
solar-powered and the tiny coquí, (indigenous Puerto
Rican tree frog) has come to new life as a mechanical children’s
ride. New York artist Ben Pinder travels even further south,
to the bottom of the earth. In his hilarious video installation
"Return to Symzonia," he becomes the persona of
a “visionary, entrepreneur and patriot” who proposes
colonizing Antarctica as a solution to global warming.
For anyone worried about increases in the insect populations,
Irish artist James Hayes takes care of that – with buzzing
and chirping bronze flyswatters. Viewers might want to bring
umbrellas to experience Taiwanese artist Yi-Chuan Chen’s
“Shower.” Her acid rain is of a sharp metallic
variety that falls intermittently from her hanging polyester
clouds. Israeli artist Shai Zakai gets more serious with her
ambitious “library” of threatened species.
Philadelphia
Sculptors, an artist-run organization with a mission to
promote and support the exhibition of sculpture, is sponsoring
the exhibition. Leslie Kaufman, a sculptor, art critic, and
educator, is president of the organization and is co-director
of the project. Philadelphia Sculptors, with its membership
of over 250 sculptors, collectors, and arts professionals,
initiated this ambitious exhibition in order to engage the
public in a dialog about the pressing dilemma of global warming.
About the Gallery
The Ice Box Project
Space has changed the dynamic of the arts in Philadelphia,
its 5,000+ square foot gallery is unlike any other space in
the region in terms of its size. The gallery is part of the
Crane Arts Building, a hybrid organization, home to brand
new artist studio spaces and creativity-based commercial suites.
Crane Arts and the Ice Box are breathing new life into an
overlooked area of Philadelphia and creating opportunities
for artists to create and exhibit their work.
The Crane Arts Building is located two blocks north of Girard
Avenue. Traveling east on Girard Avenue, turn left onto American
Street just before the Second Street stop light.
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