The first Friday of every month, Philadelphia comes alive with gallery openings, performances, talks and copious free booze. Check out Street’s picks for some shows to check out this Friday and beyond.
Art in the Age
116 N. 3rd St.
artintheage.com
6:00 — 8:00 p.m.
Traditional galleries aren’t the only ones getting in on the fun — Old City boutique-cum-storefront art space Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction hosts exhibitions throughout the year. Browse through their selection of handprinted shirts, homemade soaps and high-end apparel and accessories while getting your visual art fix.
The store, which is committed to a local and DIY mentality has even gone as far as to acquire a farm. The 72-acre outpost in rural Tamworth, New Hampshire is manned by Penn grad Robin McDowell (C ‘08) who, before moving to the snowy wilds of the northeast, had no experience driving a tractor, cutting down trees or refurbishing a 200-year-old farmhouse. Instead, she was more familiar with the inside of an artist’s studio. McDowell combines her newfound skills with her old through this documentation of her work in this new exhibition of photographs, found objects and letterpress prints. If you’re lucky, AITA will be serving up cocktails made with their new ROOT liquor, which is only available in small batches and exclusively in the Philadelphia area.
The exhibition opens tomorrow, February 5 and runs through March 21.
Space 1026
629 N. 2nd St.
space1026.com
7:00 — 10:00 p.m.
Font geeks and bicoastal hipsters, unite! This First Friday, Street favorite Space 1026 presents It Was Good While It Lasted, a joint exhibition by graphic design darlings Blake E. Marquis and Justin Van Hoy. Marquis and Van Hoy met six years ago at the Los Angeles-based design firm Studio Number-One, became besties, and after leaving the firm, individually established themselves as some of the hottest names in printmaking and design. Now a Brooklyn expat, Marquis has designed everything from illustrations for the Wall Street Journal (a surprising move for the perennially stuffy business rag) to posters of Margaret Cho for MySpace’s Secret Show comedy series. When he is not busy organizing This, an L.A. based artist collective, Van Hoy has published and produced books on print, designed campaigns for Mini Cooper, Obey Clothing and Atari, and acted as art director for America’s least favorite hipster photographer, the Cobrasnake.
Showing together for the first time, Marquis and Van Hoy utilize screenprinting techniques to create unpredictable and one-of-a-kind graphic images with different results. While Marquis uses screenprinting with more of a painterly approach, applying many layers to cover large areas often on handmade paper, Van Hoy incorporates distressing techniques to rapidly age pieces that feature everything from ubiquitous sports logos to organic shapes and pattern designs. It's great while it lasts - but only until February 26.
Vox Populi
319 N. 11th St., Third Floor
voxpopuligallery.org
6:00 —11:00 p.m.
For twenty years, "Vox" has been championing underrepresented and emerging artists through its collective, membership-based organization. Many of you may have seen Micah Danges around the halls of Charles Addams — now you can see his work in Wake Up Sharp, which mixes photography and sculpture in order to create memoryscapes that challenge our understanding of the real and imagined. Fellow Vox member Roxana Perez-Mendez presents Siempre Hace Frio which examines the emotional and psychological impacts of immigration on the lives of women born both in the United States and abroad.
Vox isn’t a members only club, though. The organization strives to include the work of artists outside of both the collective and Philadelphia, much like in this month’s group showcase featuring Steven Baldi, Lucas Knipscher and Piper Marshall. Each of the artists is interested in exploring the power of images: Baldi incorporates representations of modernity in his investigation of the power of different media, while Knipscher reappropriates structures of images in order to question their use. Writings by the curator Marshall are included alongside the works.
The Video Lounge contrasts the work of two budding animators, Emily O’Keefe and Matthew Osbourne, who utilize various animation techniques in darkly hilarious ways. Check out each of these exhibitions, now through February 25.
Projects Gallery
629 N. 2nd St.
projectsgallery.com
6:00 — 9:00 p.m.
It seems that the entire city has been bitten by the Philagrafika bug, and Projects Gallery is no exception. Tomorrow, the Old City mainstay opens Gone Printin’, a group show consisting entirely of printed works by Projects' Brooke Holloway, Frank Hyder, Itsuki Ogihara, Florence Putterman, and others. Excitingly, Gone Printin’ introduces a collaboration between the gallery and the Philadelphia Salon, an edgy and energetic group of young artists that meets monthly in a bygone baron mansion on North Broad Street.
Over the past two years, Philadelphia Salon director and show co-curator Caryn Kunkle and her group have created an artistic community and consciousness of aesthetic by forging relationships between many of Philly’s brightest young artists and some of the city’s top art connoisseurs. With Bruce Wilhelm’s surreal interpretations of historic imagery and a surprisingly fresh series of images rendered in the antiquated woodcut process by Peter Gourfain as headliners, we expect Gone Printin’ to be packed until its closing on February 27.
