Last Friday, the ICA had its grand opening reception to celebrate the fall exhibitions of Nicole Eisenman, Moyra Davey, Alex Da Corte, Jayson Musson and Ridykeulous, attracting a distinctive crowd of wanderers in all its patterns, plaids and dark materials. But whether the crowd consisted of artists or just people who wanted to SABS as part of the Philadelphia art world, a clear history of the human beings’ whereabouts was portrayed before each and every one of them. The ICA presents itself not only as free but also for all, and it’s rightful in this context. Inside, the ICA composes a full spectrum of work, with a terrace aligned with beanies smoking, long coats dangling and people wondering if they could dance to the beats played in the background—battling for the last cup of wine or bottle of beer.
The species of Woody Allen wannabes, striped–shirts setters and plaid–shirts settlers who roll their cigarettes on the terrace, as well as those who are more sincere, settle for Nicole Eisenman and her vision of the human being. It’s abstract. It’s absurd. It adds animal forms to facial features and distorts body parts. She spins her view on social dinners and gatherings, bringing an anthropological ensemble of the modern times we live in. It reveals the joy, embarrassment and pain we can feel as inhabitants of this world. It reveals things we’d like to keep quiet about—our desire, our feeling of being stuck. Some might appreciate her edited version of figures such as Hamlet, standing against a white wall with one other painting—her own personal tribute to social realism, baroque painting and artists educated in German schools.
The Woody Allen type will find comfort in the Ridykeulous series, a collection of emotionally–charged correspondences criticizing the art world. Feminists will appreciate its stance on what it is to be a woman artist. The collection includes a painting of a Juliette Lewis–looking woman with a male sex emanating from the picture, perhaps hinting at the idea that it requires “balls” to be a woman in this world.
Other artists recognize the power of modern digital media in their art. Morya Davey defies the influence of media in our lives in order to teach us how to focus on the fragments in our lives. The passenger next to us in the subway. The cigarette butts sitting on the floor from Smoke’s we shared earlier. The unfinished books we leave on our bed in the morning. She reminds us to slow down.
Have you ever kept a diary? It makes you appreciate certain aspects of your day more and appreciate others as well. They don’t call it therapeutic for nothing. Davey reminds us of that beauty of looking around us, of imagining someone’s life walking on the streets, of discovering someone’s perks, interests and beliefs.
On the same floor, the type of buttoned–down shirts tucked in high–waisted pants, transparent–trimmed glasses people, whose extravagant style is a piece of art in itself, is drawn to Easternsports, a four–channel soap opera supposedly representing the visual aspect of a depthless Tumblr and a surface–level Twitter conversation. The channels showcase the absurdity we may find on both forms of media with an account named “Sex With Grapefruit” occasionally tweeting me “Say Yes” to mentions of grapefruit and splashed juice. We, as people of the world, take on these platforms to transport our wildest imagination.
We are humans, drinking, captivated, complaining, daydreaming, learning, dancing, desiring. They’re beautiful qualities that we possess. Any opening is truly an opportunity to observe and find comfort in the overwhelming movement of it all, both in the works and the people present, presenting an incomparable analysis case before us. Last Friday was about ecstasy and entertainment, individualism and contemplation, introspection and overlooking, no matter what stereotypical category we belonged to, put all in one place for the same purpose linking us all. It took me two hours to depart, for I was enthralled with it all and leaving would mean its vanishment from my microcosm. That is, until the next event.
