Jim Houser

Through May 19, free, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St.

by Rachel Frankford

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Published: Apr 10, 2007

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This month the geese return to Fairmount Park, and Jim Houser, one of Philadelphia's best-known and most interesting artists, returns from down under — his last show was in Australia — with a two-floor installation at the Painted Bride, "This Beating Heart Acts as a Timer." Painted directly on the walls, his familiar iconography of ghosts, smiling octopi and cryptic sentence fragments create a tour de force that is sometimes creepy, sometimes funny and always mesmerizing. Prone figures exhale phantoms like comic book bubbles, or are pecked? eaten? mourned? by little birds. Unsettlingly truncated phrases snake around the figures and parts of buildings. Much is always made of Houser's "street culture" inspirations, but coherence, complexity and sly humor separate him from the pack of pop art and skate culture devotees. What is it like in Houser's brain?

Through May 19, free, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914, www.paintedbride.org.

Previously on Citypaper.net: Into Words | Shoe In  

 

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