About the Exhibition
Opening reception: First Friday, May 1, 6 - 8 pm
The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) and The New Temporary Contemporary proudly present a new exhibition of four artists living in Philadelphia, highlighting the inventiveness and independence unique to artists working in the city today. Philadelphia has gained national attention as a destination and adoptive home for ever-growing numbers of artists seeking refuge from metropolises such as New York City and Los Angeles. As a showcase and celebration of this lively homegrown contemporary art scene, The Fabric Workshop and Museum has collaborated with Tristin Lowe, Virgil Marti, Peter Rose and Ryan Trecartin on a new project for this exhibition. Each of the four artists have shown their work across the United States and internationally, but they have chosen to make Philadelphia their home and base of operation.
Tristin Lowe’s Mocha Dick is a 52-foot-long recreation of the real-life albino sperm whale that in the nineteenth century terrorized whaling vessels near Mocha Island in the South Pacific. Mocha Dick, described in appearance as “white as wool” in an 1839 magazine article from The Knickerbocker, engaged in battle with numerous whaling expeditions, often sinking smaller boats, and was a source of inspiration for Herman Melville’s epic Moby Dick. In order to realize the whale, Tristin Lowe designed a large-scale vinyl inflatable to serve as the supportive understructure, which was then sheathed in white industrial felt. Lowe worked with FWM studio and construction staff on all aspects of the pattern design, sewing, and assembly of this white felt exterior to design it with the authentic look and feel of a wrinkled and barnacle-encrusted whale. On first view, the result is nothing short of awe-inspiring and mythic in scale, but the work induces viewers to closer inspection in with the artist’s intimate attention to subtle detail.
Virgil Marti first exhibited the installation Ah! Sunflower at the Visual Arts Center in Richmond, Virginia, drawing inspiration for its title from a William Blake poem of the same name. For its site-specific incarnation at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Marti has designed new wallpaper, which was silk screened in FWM’s print studio. The new wallpaper repeats an image of luxurious white on white fabric swag, creating a trompl’oeil effect of the entire gallery appearing to be draped with fabric. FWM’s Video Lounge displays another Virgil Marti wallpaper, with a visual motif based upon of a digitally manipulated photograph of Elvis Presley’s gravesite memorial at Graceland, and which employs the textured flocking often present in his designs. The installation also features examples of his well-known furniture “poufs”, ottomans and circular settees stretched with irreverently patterned fabric, and his series of sculptures made with fiberglass castings of human bones.
Peter Rose’s Journey to Q’xtlan, a new video triptych, makes its debut at The Fabric Workshop and Museum’s Philadelphia artists exhibition. Rose experimented extensively with lighting, searching for ways to reveal extraordinary forms concealed in an everyday world. The piece comprises a central video narrative of dramatic images with a bold soundtrack, flanked by two angled screens which are meant to lead the viewer on interrelated visual side trips. Rose employs lighting “transfaluminations”, an invented term used to describe his gyroscopic illuminations of settings, in order to evoke a dreamlike atmosphere and treat ordinary objects with
totemistic reverence. Pneumenon, Rose’s 2003 collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, will also be exhibited. This two-channel video installation projects one video image on to hanging fabric which is regularly blown up into the air by a hidden vent to unmask a separate video image behind it.
Ryan Trecartin has collaborated with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, along with his regular circle of partners, on the untitled “Trilogy Project”, his most ambitious work of video to date. After being unveiled at the New Museum’s “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus,” the work will have its Philadelphia debut at FWM. Filmed over the course of several months at a rented house in Miami, Trecartin’s new film possesses the same manic energy, garish imagery, and over-the-top characters that have become his calling card. Its subject is appropriately topical, taking on the global economic crisis, with a particular commentary on credit markets and
charge cards. Set in a future where capitalist markets and social structure have disintegrated, Trecartin continues to explore themes of interpersonal relationships when life is lived vicariously immersed in the World Wide Web. The video installation will be on view in The New Temporary Contemporary at 1222 Arch Street.
About the Gallery
The Fabric Workshop and Museum is the only contemporary art museum in the United States devoted to creating new work in fabric and other materials in collaboration with emerging and established artists from around the world. Founded in 1977, The Fabric Workshop and Museum has developed from an ambitious experiment to a renowned institution with a widely recognized residency program, an extensive collection of work by resident artists, in-house and touring exhibitions, and comprehensive educational programming that includes lectures, tours, in-school presentations, and student apprenticeships.
The exhibition program of The Fabric Workshop and Museum is supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, LLWW Foundation, Nimoy Foundation, AG Foundation, Arcadia Foundation, The Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Independence Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, The Claneil Foundation, The Miller-Plummer Foundation, Samuel S. Fels Fund, The Barra Foundation, and the Board of Directors and members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.
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