10 WEEKLYPRESS.COM · UCREVIEW.COM · OCTOBER 17• 2012


Art: Deceiving Te Eyes W


by Phebe Shinn, Art Observer


hoever rhapso- dized about “Oc- tober’s bright blue


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weather”? (Probably some 19th Century poet with a long white beard.) We’ve been having a welcome spell of it, and combined with the reds and yellows


of fall flowers, the jugs of apple cider offered at the farmers’ markets around town, and the nippy air calling for sweaters and scarves, we are definitely


into an autumnal ambiance. The Fringe shows have come and gone, the stores are full of Hallowe’en deco- rations, some Thanksgiving chocolate turkeys and even - believe it! - Christmas cards!


But the world of art, and the need of artists to create and galleries to exhibit, is really not seasonal. Phila- delphia’s art sites through- out the city, whether in Old City, Fishtown, Center City or elsewhere, are, as always, engaged in dis- playing the varied art of various artists, local and out of town.


University City boasts (and often, more realisti- cally, puts up with) three educational institutions, three major hospitals, an amazing number of “ethnic” restaurants and a surging population. But as of now the number of art galleries doesn’t seem to be increasing. In fact the University City Arts League is still the most ac- tive and noticeable show- case in the area. This month the Arts League has an intriguing


and rewarding two-person show called “Falling Off”. It features Phila- delphia painter Daniel Gerwin and New Yorker Jennifer Williams . Gerwin is represented by two large compositions, lozenge-shaped, about nine feet high, both acrylic on wood. His approach is to fill the surface of his compositions with an amazing variety of large and small shapes painted in a variety of approaches - wood grains, chunks of metal, of fabrics, bits of paper. Gerwin says he uses the trompe l’oeil technique to create a language of the imagination.


His “Things I’ll Never Know” is dark, dark, dark, containing a multitude of forms which combine to make a strange composi- tion, one which is constant- ly transforming and mov- ing under your eyes. The palette is dusky, the colors subdued except for a central area of startlingly bright, metallic-looking blocks and arcs, suggested buildings under an inky sky. But the surrounding shapes seem to


Thursday, October 25, at 5:30 p.m. Penn Professor


Salamishah Tillet Presenting:


Sites of Slavery:


Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination


Almost fiſty years aſter the major victories of the civil rights movement, African Americans continue to have a vexed relationship to American citizenship and the civic myth of the United States as the land of equal opportunity and justice for all. In “Sites of Slavery ,” Tillet examines how contemporary African American artists and writers such as Mary Francis Berry, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Bill T. Jones, and Kara Walker reconstruct “sites of slavery” — the allegations of a sexual relationship between Tomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the characters Uncle Tom and Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” African American tourism to West African slave forts, and the legal challenges posed by the modern reparations movements — in order to challenge our national amnesia about slavery and model a racially democratic future.


Tillet is assistant professor of English and Africana Studies at Penn. Tillet has written for the Chicago Tribune, Te Guardian, Te Nation, NPR, and Te Root. She is also co-founder of A Long Walk Home, Inc., a non-profit organization that uses art therapy and the visual and per- forming arts to end violence against girls and women.


Tis event is being held in conjunction with the Penn Center for Afri- cana Studies. Light refreshments will be provided.


form a dark window; a se- ries of forms at the top look like loops of ragged, black- ened curtains. Look again and you imagine through the window a dilapidated dock with pilings rising out of black water. Perhaps a scene of abandoned quays, shacks. Or perhaps nothing of the sort, but an example of Abstract Expressionism. Gerwin’s approach is very painterly, infused with emo- tion.


His second piece is called “Portrait of the Art- ist’s Mother”, and is as bright as the first is dark. It’s filled with bright yel- low, rich browns.The big lozenge is covered with a multitude of tightly- painted, sharply-defined shapes - wood-grained strips, blocks, wedges, chunks - which surround a central vertical section of yellow. As the composi- tion progresses from bot- tom to top, a subtle impli- cation of a convex surface gives one the feeling of looking at an enormous curved mirror, reflecting a jigsaw of wooden pieces.


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