May 2- 8, 2002

art

Space Invasion

from scratch: A poster for ìScratch off the Serial,î featuring work by several Space 1026ers.

The artists of Space 1026 get their due with shows at ICA and the Free Library this month.

Space 1026, a gallery and artists’ collective at 1026 Arch St. in Chinatown, is the kind of place where you never have to worry about getting paint or sawdust all over. The collective thrives on diversity and a communal, familylike, unpretentious attitude, where there’s a natural crossbreeding of different artistic styles like printmaking, graphic design, painting, music recording and video editing. In 1997, four friends launched Space 1026 as a hazy idea. Currently, 18 Philadelphians, ranging from 23-31 years of age, equally share the expenses of running their own studio, where, together and individually, the crew creates a radical and innovative hodgepodge of work inspired by folk art, fantasy and adolescent notebook art, graffiti, cartoons, skateboarding, bicycling and media-generated imagery. Not only is this a place for them to work (and, of course, gather for The Simpsons every night at 6:30), but a place to exhibit. Yet, 1026ers tend to exhibit work by outsiders more than themselves.

"We like to keep the place fresh and the ideas new," says Jeff Wiesner, one of the founders of Space 1026 who, from the space, runs both Abacus Studios, a graphic design company, and an independent arts zine called Double Negative. "By bringing in outside artists we're able to keep from being stuck in our own worlds. It's also a way to include a larger community in the stuff we are doing here, either the artists involved in the shows or the public who comes out to our First Friday openings. It helps to keep the energy and activity level high."

Climb the old, decrepit stairs of the three-story 1026, and you'll find the current gallery show, a wood shop/work area (typically bombarded with wood scraps, lumber, workbench tools and bike parts), a screenprinting area congested with jars of paint, squeegees and scrap paper and the nine studios where 1026ers work. There's also a computer room, and the third-floor houses the Tone Arm recording studio where producers Julian Grefe and Max Lawrence, also a painter who has been at 1026 since the near-beginning, record everything from hip-hop to indie-rock by a variety of local talent. The space is like a big, cluttered living room, and the 1026ers find themselves spending more time there than anywhere else in the city.

"It reminds me a lot of my [art] high school," says Courtney Dailey, a printmaker who, along with Ginger Brooks Takahashi, also a printmaker and graphic designer, runs the Mobilvre-Bookmobile, a touring exhibit of artist books, zines and independent publications in a vintage Airstream trailer. "We had studios and made work every day, painting stuff on the walls and listening to the Pixies. The vibe is pretty much the same -- low-key chats and help or opinions when you want them, and lots of communal paint."

Starting next week, the Space 1026 crew will be leaving their homebase for an exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, taking over ICA's Project Space and the Edna Shanis Tuttleman Gallery. The site-specific installation is titled "Scratch off the Serial" (and has been referred to by the 1026ers as a "visual mosh pit").

"When you walk into the room at the ICA," promises Jesse Goldstein, a 1026 printmaker, "it won't look like anything any of us as individuals did. It'll just look like something from Space 1026."

At the ICA, Goldstein will display screenprints on wood depicting an army of wooden cut-out Wall Street guys, a poster of George W. Bush riding a show pony with the caption: "In our Crusade against evil, good will win" and a video loop (in collaboration with Chris Keener) featuring the responses of over 40 locals to the question, "What would you do if you happened to walk by Osama Bin Laden on the street?"

Claudia Gould, director at the ICA, was first turned on to Space 1026 after seeing some of the posters by Ben Woodward, another founder, hanging in the office of a former co-worker. "I liked the freeness, the woodblock aspect of it, and the very crudeness of it," Gould says. Similar to the posters of 1026 co-founder Andrew Jeffrey Wright (a.k.a. A.J. Ready Wright), Woodward's "poster graffiti" usually consists of cartoonish, humanlike animals, and can be found plastered all around town.

Gould says that she was initially interested only in Woodward. After requesting to view more of his work, she was then informed about Space 1026, and she understood that Woodward's interests, like the rest of the 1026ers, were not so much about himself, but about something larger. "I was intrigued by the idea of this community working together in one unit, yet all separate," recalls Gould. "It's a really interesting and beneficial model for young artists coming out of art school."

Concurrent with the ICA exhibition, work from 1026ers Woodward, Goldstein, Isaac Lin, Ed Brogna and Erin Anderson will be on display at the Print and Picture Collection in the Free Library of Philadelphia's main branch (also known as PIX). "I meet with artists all the time and encourage them to bring in their portfolios for review," says Joe Benford, head of the PIX. "Erin Anderson made an appointment to show me some of the work of the Space 1026 collaborative, and I was extremely pleased by the overall quality of the work as well as the individual artists' inventiveness.... It's fresh, thought-provoking, and in some cases, unfathomable."

While the ICA and Library shows are up, musical events will be held at the ICA every Wednesday at 5 p.m. featuring the local talents of Need New Body, Mossyrock, the Zenapolae posse and others. "You get all the great art, and you get all these cutting edge groups," says John McInerney, manager of marketing and communications at ICA. "And the fact that it takes place inside the gallery, you get a nice mix of these two cultures which are so closely aligned."

The Mobilvre-Bookmobile will be parked outside of ICA during the opening weekend of Space 1026's exhibition, and the 1026ers will be selling 200 books with pages that are all hand-painted by the artists for $20 a pop.

Wiesner will be premiering issue #18 of Double Negative during the opening. His part of the installation will consist of a painted newsstand displaying his screenprints and drawings on brown craft paper.

"I'm really excited about how far we've come with 1026 since moving into this empty, dirty shell of a space," Wiesner says. "It's great to get the recognition we've received -- which led to having the show at the ICA....It would be great if it became an institution of some kind, a fixture in Philadelphia that continues to offer more facilities and services, and gives back to the community."

“Space 1026: Scratch off the Serial,” May 10 - July 14, Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St., 215-898-5911; 1026ers on display at the Print and Picture Collection, Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5405.