First Friday Focus

by Lori Hill

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Published: Oct 4, 2006

Artists are all storytellers. Some just have more interesting stories to tell than others. Take Falling Cow's new "Imagined Heritage" show. Truth, fiction, fairy tales and folklore collide so thoroughly it's hard to tell what's real and what's all in our heads, which makes for really great art. With its looming architecture and bold "statements," Alana Bograd's work nods to Russian Constructivism and its socio-political posturings, but her colors are all about the Fauves. Luminous and unapologetic, her colors nearly attack you before you see what she's representing. Many works evoke triumph and grandiosity, but with a sense of humor. Bograd works in everything — oil, acrylic, watercolor, spray paint — and always manages to achieve similar bursts of color and light. Inspired by her Jewish and Ukrainian background, the artist makes new stories from ancestral ones as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Fay Ku's works, meanwhile, are more than a little disturbing. Fooling you at first with their children's-book-like illustrative quality, the images are actually quite powerful. Children wielding heads on sticks, bird skeletons in flight and little girls with tiger heads keep you guessing about Ku's inspiration. Her skillful use of alternating color with monochrome is effective in its bare simplicity. Somehow, all these strange scenes of near-violence and maternal (dis)affection don't make you want to look away — quite the opposite. The delicate work of Caroline Falby is dreamy, filled with fluffy cloudlike forms and ethereal layers of color. Resembling the clean lines and illustrative qualities of Japanese block prints — her Tsunami is like Hokusai's The Great Wave refiltered — Falby takes old things, like Robin Hood and Joan of Arc, and makes them new again.

"As an architect, I represent the sorts of changes — golf courses, resorts on the Bay of Tonkin, rooftop swimming pools — that will ultimately corrupt them," says John James Pron of the people of Hue, Vietnam, "and I have no idea how this process can be stopped, nor how they can be warned." Pron, an architect and Temple professor, traveled to Vietnam with his wife (who was on a volunteer medical mission) and was clearly transformed by what he saw. Moved by Hue's Buddhist principles and bucolic setting, despite its extreme poverty, he came back to do the inevitable — compare it to his own home. The result is "Phorbidden City: East West Buddhist Quaker" an exhibit of collages that fuse visions of Hue and Philadelphia that are futuristic and imaginary. Pron will also show beautiful charcoal drawings of some of the people he met in Hue. He says, though, that because he spent some time in Hong Kong as well, these images are more reflective of Asian culture in general than Vietnamese. "While Philadelphia is a wonderful city, rich in its cultural opportunities and beautifully scaled to its people, the big Asian cities are totally fearless — they will boldly build anything, pushing the urban envelope in ways that leave me and my traditional Philadelphia sensibility totally amazed and breathless. Yes, they do some unwise things, but also discover some wonderful new expressions, functions and relationships. We treat our Philadelphia very, very carefully; they have no fear of broadly experimenting. We really need this, I think." In these collages, ribbons of winding steel jut out of the Kimmel Center, row houses are stacked and arranged in an even more gridlike fashion (Pron uses the container terminal as a jumping-off point) and masses of people gather in front of City Hall. As for the slightly claustrophobic (or more gently, communal) aesthetic seen throughout the work? "Public congestion — modulated by opportunities for Buddhist inner serenity — is a good way of coming to know a great many people who can be your friends in the big city."

Duane Hanson did reality like TV only wishes it could. He captured the mundane, the banal, the sad, the funny and the moving with stunningly lifelike sculptures of ordinary people until his death in 1996. The Michener Museum has snagged a nice show of his family's personal collection. Through Jan. 14, 138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, 215-340-9800. ... AIRSPACE honors the artistic collaboration of storyteller Linda Goss and artist/textile designer Gretchen Shannon with "Drawing from the Well," an exhibition of their work. Together, they've made quilts, paintings, songs and stories and led community workshops. Opening reception and storytelling presentation, Fri., Oct. 13, 5-8 p.m., runs Mon., Oct. 9-Nov. 5, 4013 Chestnut St., 215-694-8719. ... Jennifer Bartlett's newest works fuse concept, text and the simple beauty of good painting; don't miss Locks Gallery 's exhibition this month, where Bartlett's funny, enigmatic and often monumental work will transport you to otherworldly lands. Opening reception, Fri., Oct. 6, through Nov. 11, 600 Washington Square S., 215-629-1000. ... InLiquid hosts its annual auction tonight in its new home, the Crane Arts Building, benefiting both its programming and the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Foundation; choose how to hang: a champagne preview reception, a silent auction, a live auction, an after-party, or all of the above. Thu., Oct. 5, 5-10-30 p.m., Crane Arts Building, 1400 N. American St., 215-235-3405.

(lori@citypaper.net)

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