Gabriel Martinez (Senior Lecturer) & Chad States artist discussion at the Print Center 2/23/2012

Thursday, February 23, 6:00pm, free
The Print Center, 1614 Latimer Street, Philadelphia

Gabriel Martinez, Untitled (Abstractions) #5, 2011, Archival pigment print, 30"x30"


Chad States, Untitled from the series Cruising, 2010, Archival pigment print, 24"x30"

Gabriel Martinez and Chad States are both Philadelphia-based artists that have recently completed extensive photographic bodies of work that are receiving national and international attention. Both bodies of work look at unique facets of male homosexual culture and desire. Martinez, in his recent body of work exhibited in Boston, photographed groups of gay men who come together for safe sex encounters. States, meanwhile, has traveled nationally documenting men that "cruise" for anonymous sex in the woods. This body of work was recently released in a beautiful book entitled Cruising.

The event at the Print Center in Philadelphia (6PM on the 23rd, free to the public) will be a discussion between the two artists and the public, examining the complex issues that bring together and also differentiate the sexual cultures depicted in these fabulous bodies of work.

First year MFA show Safeword up through 2/16/12

Featuring work by: Caroline Claflin, Orlando De La Garza, Mark Dilks, Tara Fadenrecht, Elisa Gabor, Laine Godsey, Zenas Hutcheson, Christina Kerns, Yuxue Li, Alex Nguyen, Daniel Oliva, Jacob Rivkin, Scout Segotta, Minmin Shi, Ceaphas Stubbs, Sarah Tortora, Toisha Tucker, Tara White

Of the Ordinary Opening at PPAC 2/9/12

Charlie’s Bloody Ear, Christian Patterson

Of the Ordinary

February 9th- April 15th at Philadelphia Photo Arts Center
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 9th 7-9pm
Gallery walkthrough with the artists: 6-7pm*
Book signings with Ron Jude, Christian Patterson & Ofer Wolberger: 7-7:30pm*

The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center is pleased to announce Of the Ordinary, a group exhibition including the work of Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Alyse Emdur, Ron Jude, Jason Lazarus, Christian Patterson and Ofer Wolberger.

At a time when photography itself is undergoing a tremendous transformation within popular culture and the art world alike, the act of appropriation has become imbued with a new kind of energy. With a galaxy of images circulating without boundaries, moving from one place to another, we can only speculate on what their final resting place(s), if any, may be. Each time the context of a photograph changes, whether it be a digital file or a physical print, the ways in which it is experienced, understood and reinterpreted will also adapt. The act of working with other people’s photographs, whether they are new, old, prints, digital files or otherwise, has been given a new relevance by the mitigating circumstances of contemporary life and image-making. This extends the mutability of meaning embedded within the medium itself and grants more permission to the viewer and author to generate new contexts and interpretations.

Of the Ordinary is comprised of imagery that was never intended to be experienced in the context of a gallery or museum. The focus of this exhibition is an interest in the political implications of portraiture, highlighting the various ways in which images are created, distributed and experienced in a contemporary setting. Many of the projects highlighted in this exhibition employ the method of editing an existing body of images to further investigate their meaning.

Project Basho's Onward Summit and Compe opening 2/11/12

ONWARD Summit is an annual photography conference and networking event for those who are inspired by unique imagery and perspectives. The event is hosted by Project Basho and the daily programming will take place at the Crane Old School space in the Old Kensington section of Philadelphia.

Coinciding with the opening reception of the ONWARD Compé exhibition, this one-night event will bring engaging presentations by established and emerging artists and an intimate party to share current projects and portfolios with the fellow members of the photography community. This format will actively promote the intersection of visual influences and dialogue, which is the foundation of this distinctive event. Photographers Todd Hido and Hiroh Kikai will give keynote addresses and other discussions include a talk between photographer Zoe Strauss and curator Peter Barberie about the mid-career retrospective Zoe Strauss: Ten Years at the Philadelphia Art Museum. 57 photographs from 50 photographers will be on exhibit as part of Compé at the Project Basho gallery. Tickets are still available for the summit at Crane Old School on Project Basho's site.

Charlie White lecture at the ICA 2/9/12 at noon

Charlie White

Artist Lecture

Thursday February 9, 2012, 12:00 PM
ICA Tuttleman Auditorium
36th and Sansom Streets

Please join PennDesign for this lecture by Photographer and Filmmaker Charlie White. White is an internationally exhibited artist whose 2008 film "American Minor" was selected to screen at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, as well as the Cannes Film Festival.

White’s work has been discussed and reviewed in periodicals and journals such as The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, Modern Painters, The New Yorker, Wired, lacanian ink, and EXIT Image and Culture. In addition, his works have been included in two Thames and Hudson surveys,The Photograph as Contemporary Art, by Charlotte Cotton, and The Body in Contemporary Art, by Sally O’Reilly.

Jamie Diamond (Lecturer) interviewed in Dummy Magazine

Jamie Diamond, a Lecturer in the UPenn Undergraduate Fine Arts Department has an interview by Olver Gehrs examining her work as it relates to the theme "Family" in the German publication, Dummy. The magazine is a monothematic publication curated by an art director. This issue's theme was "Familie" and in it she discusses her work "Created family" where Diamond posts personal ads on the internet looking for different family members in order to create family portraits.

An excerpt from the interview:
Dummy: How would your perfect family look like? In which of your pictures would you fit, do you think?
JD: The starting point for all of the portraits were my own memories and experiences, I have folders of our own family portraits that inspired me. It's strange, I feel each family portrait I created is a representation of my own family and I could fit into any of them. Each shoot was such a personal experience and I was part of all of the families for as long as they existed, from when they met to when they parted. The family only existed in that space and I was the creator of it all.

Click below for a full sized scan of the interview in press (in German):

Tetsugo Hyakutake (MFA 2009) in show at ICA Singapore

"Videologue” is a neologised term from the words ‘video’ and ‘dialogue’ – suggesting the form of communication through video art. Conceptualised by visual artists Urich Lau from Singapore and Cheng Guangfeng from Beijing, the first exhibition was held in Beijing on March 2011, hosted by Sunshine International Art Museum. In the upcoming exhibition, Videologue - Video Art Exhibition / Exchange: Beijing – Singapore – Tokyo, it explores issues and situations of the human dilemma and dissociation produced by geological, territorial and cultural shifts in contemporary life, as interpreted by the participating artists.

Artists: Urich Lau, Lim Shengen and Teow Yue Han (Singapore), Cheng Guangfeng, Han Tao, Li Ning and Shen Shaomin (China) and Tetsugo Hyakutake (Japan).

Nate Wilson (MFA '10) and Micah Danges (UPenn Photo Technician) in show at Bunker Hull opening 12/3

Micah Danges (Photography Technician @ UPenn), Nate Wilson (MFA '10), HMS Dooley Hayes, Dan Murphy and Marc Zazack will exhibit work in a show "Simulacra & Simulation" at Bunker Hull 2021 Memphis St in Philadelphia opening this Saturday on 12/3 from 7-10pm.

Bunker Hull's new Tumblr here.

Undergrad Thesis Preview Exhibition opening tonight 12/1 in Addams Gallery

Fine Arts Senior Thesis Preview Exhibition

December 1 – 8, 2011

The Charles Addams Fine Arts Gallery

Alex Remnick, Allison Zuckerman, Weiren Liu, Connie Ko, Amanda Murphy, Rebecca Bailey, Alexander Hovnanian, Jillian Blackwell, Tenaya Anue, Lynda Brody, Elise Wrabetz, Sarah Shults, Quintin Marcus, Sayra Lopez, Jesse Rappaport, Alexandria Goree, Claire Niebergall

University of Pennsylvania School of Design

Undergraduate Program in Fine Arts

200 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

215.573.5134

www.thesis2012.upennfinearts.com

Alec Soth "Somewhere to disappear" screening at PPAC tonight

The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center is pleased to host a film screening of Somewhere to Disappear, a film by Laure Flammarion and Arnaud Uyttenhove starring American photographer Alec Soth.Somewhere to Disappear is a film about the desire to run away.

For his most recent project Broken Manual, Soth investigates the places in which people retreat to escape civilization. Soth photographs monks, survivalists, hermits and runaways, but this isn't a conventional documentary project on life "off the grid." Why do people run and hide? The young European filmmakers followed Soth over the course of two years for answers. The film is about men, America, Alec Soth and the dream to disappear.

Alec Soth (b. 1969) is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney and São Paulo Biennials. In 2008, a large survey exhibition of Soth's work was exhibited at Jeu de Paume in Paris and Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. In 2010, the Walker Art produced a large survey exhibition of Soth's work entitled From Here To There. Alec Soth's first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published by Steidl in 2004 to critical acclaim. Since then Soth has publishedNIAGARA (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007) Dog Days, Bogotá (2007) The Last Days of W (2008) andBroken Manual (2010). In 2008, Soth started his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom. Soth is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis, and is a member of Magnum Photos.

Screening at 7:30 PM tonight (12/1) at the Philadelphia Photo Art Center, $5 admission