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Mount
Airy Contemporary Artists Space
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| Lone hours in the studio crafting and packaging your zeitgeist is not enough these days. In fact, even if you have your finger on the pulse and produce firm ideas that encapsulate engaging images and objects, that ain’t enough either. Art is expected to somehow transcend history and also speak in the jargon of Contemporary Art. It is a refined and complex language as well as a contextual message from the gut. How do know if you are accomplishing this? Well, it is only through some interaction with the “white cube.” The experience gives young artists a taste of responsibility involved in embarking on serious art making. Mount Airy Contemporary has helped serve the cause efficiently on a local level. The gallery, run by Colin and Andrea Wohl Keefe, has set a great standard in their first show. Owning the building helps ensure autonomy so there is less pressure to be merely commercial -- an aesthetic kiss of death. The gallery is housed in the late carriage house associated with the Mount Airy Hotel, we think, that was demolished in the 1920s, we think. A rough hewn space constructed of durable Wissahickon schist with enough white wall to let it breathe, the maiden show, and so on and so forth, is a tasteful grouping that almost defines the gamut of what is youthful contemporary. The work was chosen via a chain of acquaintance between the artists, a natural social process. This explains some of the commonality of techniques and conceptual strategies. Keep it minimal, keep it detached. Not to say it is aloof, but this ain’t skateboard art – thank goodness! Nothing is in your face here, though there are tons of ideas to suck you in and a clever offsetting of different approaches. The work is small and has a singular detachment throughout, everything coming from a similar contemporary paradigm (or shall I say, age bracket). Patty Cateura’s paintings, cousins of color field, co-mingle their historical awareness with delicate installations. Althea Murphy-Price offers a delicately made piece of filtered hair passed through cut-out doily material (don’t sneeze or blow on it!) The gallery sink is cleverly utilized for a creepy little piece by Ana B. Hernandez -- lovely site-specificity and a connection between fabric and the use of line in art! Formal yet discomforting. The other work is grouped tightly by artist. Wendy Wolf’s witty pieces are unassuming (en masse) at first then begin to show edges. Could be in the manic and simultaneously cool craft; let’s call it post-slacker. Robert Landsen’s work also shares the careful, clean, and Zen-like approach. Robert Walden, a Brooklyn artist, labors with scissors and maps imaginary topography. They are called ontological road maps and he knows what he is doing! They remind me that everything in the room requires quiet contemplation and study. We have always needed a “white cube” in Mount Airy! Every neighborhood should have one. Back to InLiquid's
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section index © 2009 James Rosenthal and InLiquid.com; images copyright ©Wendy Wolf |
(top)
Gallery interior; (bottom) Ana B. Hernandez, Antibodies, installation
detail. Photographs: Wendy Wolf.