Also this issue: Think Cubic -Paul Burress Adventures in the Memory Hole: George W. Bush Pre and Post-9/11 -Brian Howard Philadelphia College Festival Concert and Expo -Maura Johnston

September 19-25, 2002

list cap

Fifty Years of Assemblage

Ever wonder what to do with those beaten down Birkenstocks you have enough fashion sense not wear publicly, but not the heart to discard? Do you ponder their potential? Everyday throwaways are the raw materials of assemblage art, which takes hold of the ordinary and transforms it into something extraordinary. Starting in the late ’50s, assemblage art grew into a new kind of artistic expression that began to captivate the Beat Generation. While the movement was overshadowed by the lyrical tongues of writers such as Ginsberg and Kerouac, it did make an impact on the pop school culture, making way for such icons as Andy Warhol’s famous soup can. Today, George Herms, artist, Beatnik survivor and original pioneer who helped to establish the California assemblage school of sculpture and objects, is on a crusade to reintroduce the movement that finds poetry in normality.

Herms’ talent is for metamorphosing mundane materials into medium. “What George Herms is to assemblage art is what Andy Warhol is to the pop culture,” says Anthony Seraphin, owner of the Seraphin Gallery, where Herms’ work is now being exhibited; the show includes reinventions ranging from license plates to rusted wrenches. Herms’ earliest works date back to 1957, but it is his current works, from installations and sculptures to wall pieces, which will earn him a well-deserved position as one of the living greats of assemblage art history.

“Fifty Years of Assemblage,” through Oct. 22, Seraphin Gallery, 1108 Pine St., 215-923-7000.

—Kristina Weise