Booming Internet

 

Philip Kwame Apagya. Booming Internet. 2000

This image seems to be completely appropriate in light of the recent updates to the NAPOLEON website, as well as the current photography-infused exhibition by artist member Tamsen Wojtanowski.

Apagya constructs landscapes of entertainment centers, airports, and internet cafes on photo studio backdrops that visually oscillate between tongue-in-cheek stagesets and uncomfortably manufactured depictions of commodity culture.  To see more photographs, and a wonderful description of Philip Kwame Apagya's work, check out Apagya at Designboom.com

Philip Kwame Apagya. Portrait. 1996

Philip Kwame Apagya. At the Airport (Selfportrait) 1996

March @ Napoleon: New Works by Tamsen Wojtanowski

 

imprint, Lost/Found  -or- "To make a long story short, I love you."

New Works by Tamsen Wojtanowski; March 2012 @ Napoleon

Employing the photographic medium to explore an abstract narrative, I work in the studio to give my psyche form. Emotions become made of paper; dreams evolve as constructed landscapes made from found materials; disparate thoughts become one in the overlapping layers of collage. In this series "imprint, Lost/Found -or- 'To make a long story short, I love you.'", I work to find my way through a series of handmade "maps", which become cyanotype prints made from cliche verre, and document my destinations with a series of B&W photographs. 

First Friday Opening, March 2nd, 6-10pm

Gallery Hours, Saturdays & Sundays, 2-6pm

Napoleon

319 N. 11th Street, 2nd Flr.

Philadelphia, PA

www.tamsenwj.com

Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen directs Die Antwoord "I Fink U Freeky"

If you're not familiar with Roger Ballen, get familiar. 

He says this as way of introduction on his website:

"I have been shooting black and white film for nearly fifty years now. I believe I am part of the last generation that will grow up with this media. Black and White is a very minimalist art form and unlike color photographs does not pretend to mimic the world in a manner similar to the way the human eye might perceive. Black and White is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what one might refer to as reality. My purpose in taking photographs over the past forty years has ultimately been about defining myself. It has been fundamentally a psychological and existential journey."

Roger Ballen, I think I love you. 

Dorothea Tanning, 1910 - 2012

Birthday, 1942

A lot of buzz about artist Mike Kelley's passing earlier this week, but I wanted to take a moment to also acknowledge & celebrate the life of Dorothea Tanning, the last living member of the Surrealist movement, who passed last Tuesday. Tanning rose from her origins in Galesburg, Illinois - a small town with a soft spot in my own heart - to become an active member of an international circle of artists, working in a variety of media over the course of her lifetime - and yet hers is not a household name, nor often raised in Western Art survey courses.

Her self-portrait, Birthday, is one of my favorite works in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In her own words from her website:

At first there was only that one picture, a self-portrait. It was a modest canvas by present-day standards. But it filled my New York studio, the apartment’s back room, as if it had always been there. For one thing, it was the room; I had been struck, one day, by a fascinating array of doors—hall, kitchen, bathroom, studio—crowded together, soliciting my attention with their antic planes, light, shadows, imminent openings and shuttings. From there it was an easy leap to a dream of countless doors. Perhaps in a way it was a talisman for the things that were happening, an iteration of quiet event, line densities wrought in a crystal paperweight of time where nothing was expected to appear except the finished canvas and, later, a few snowflakes, for the season was Christmas, 1942, and Max was my Christmas present.

It was snowing hard when he rang the doorbell. Choosing pictures for a show to be called Thirty Women (later Thirty-One Women), he was a willing emissary to the studios of a bouquet of pretty young painters who, besides being pretty, which they couldn’t help, were also very serious about being artists.

“Please come in,” I smiled, trying to say it as if to just anyone. He hesitated, stamping his feet on the doormat. “Oh, don’t mind the wet,” I added. “There are no rugs here.” There wasn’t much furniture either, or anything to justify the six rooms, front to back. We moved to the studio, a livelier place in any case, and there on an easel was the portrait, not quite finished. He looked while I tried not to. At last, “What do you call it?” he asked. “I really haven’t a title.” “Then you can call it Birthday.” Just like that.

–from Birthday, Santa Monica: The Lapis Press, 1986, p. 14, and Between Lives: An Artist and Her World. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 62-63.

Read her obituary in the New York Times.

Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst, Sedona, Arizona, 1946

Photograph by Lee Miller

Saturday Afternoon Muse: Anthea Hamilton

 Anthea Hamilton - The Piano Lesson

 

Anthea Hamilton - Dance

Anthea Hamilton - Gate

Is it sunny and warm where you are?

Anthea Hamilton, see more, here.

Anthea Hamilton's website, here.

Jake Yeager & Edward Brady: January @ Napoleon!

Jake Yeager&

Eward Brady

January

@

NAPOLEON

Now through the end of January;

Saturday & Sundays: 2pm-6pm.

(or email for appointment: napleon.philadelphia@gmail.com)

Check it out!

 

Keeping it up...

Photographer Phillip Toledano's series A New Kind of Beauty went up at Gallery 339 this week through January 28, 2012. The work explores ideas of beauty and identity, and critiques our ever-evolving ability to manipulate our appearance - be it through art, surgery, or social media.

The images themselves are an amalgam of lighting and compositional conventions inspired by Renaissance and Dutch Golden Age portraiture that are, in fact, strangely beautiful, while nevertheless almost clinical in their typology of people who have undergone multiple cosmetic surgeries.

An interesting pursuit of sameness surfaces in these photographs - a manufactured appearance of overemphasis. Toledano questions, "Is beauty informed by contemporary culture? By history? Or is it defined by the surgeon’s hand? Can we identify physical trends that vary from decade to decade, or is beauty timeless?"

The photographs, at once both intimate and alienating, are exquisite - and best seen in person.

The Trekkie in me noted one seemingly common aspiration to emulate a Romulan aesthetic:

This was later vindicated, somewhat, by the discovery of an equally-geeky Trekkie translation of another element of contemporary culture that attempts to manipulate our ideals surrounding beauty and desirability - but which, unlike Toldeano's images, leaves little room for empathy. This spoof, however, is spot on: