First Friday openings

Via Kathleen Greco:

First Friday Gallery Openings

Every first Friday of the month art galleries are open to the public in Philadelphia. It’s a free must-see cultural art experience for students to engage with the contemporary art scene. Here’s a listing of some  recommendations for current First Friday galleries for Friday, September 5^th. 


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Pentimenti Gallery145 North Second Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:30 - 8:30 PM 

Logical Thinking; Illogical Thoughts 
Simeen Farhat - Sculptures & Installation 

Words borrowed from poetry in English, expressing logic and philosophy, and about life, Farhat’s sculptures are constructed with urethane cast-resin, which are intertwined into forms with undeniable rhythmic and directional force. In her own words, Farhat explains, “My objective in choosing those words is to show the essence of their message through abstraction;  by using overlapping shapes and lines which create tension and movement and stir up emotions”. 

Transferable Views 
Franco Mueller - Paintings, Works on Paper & Installation 

There is a dialogue that exists within the works of Franco Mueller. It is a quiet conversation between shape and space. These paintings and works on paper depict how space holds a shape and how shape holds the space. A partially illuminated background is silent. Mueller builds his paintings with layer upon layer of thin acrylic paint and his works on paper with layers of charcoal and acrylic paint. As each layer permeates on another, a “disturbed surface structure” begins to evolve.  

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Vox Populi319 North 11th Street
3^rd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:00 – 11:00 PM 

Vox Populi is an artist collective that works to support the challenging and experimental work of under-represented artists with monthly exhibitions, gallery talks, performances, lectures, and related programming.  

Room for the Whole Wide World Elisa Gabor, Sanaz Mazinani, Anna Neighbor, Sarah Palmer, Elisabeth Tonnard 

Room for the Whole Wide World offers five artists’ findings from the field of abstraction, using ideas rooted in photography as a starting point. Within these artworks abstraction is a viable method for discovering larger truths and mapping our desires.

Still Wearing Each Other When AloneJordan Artim, Anthony Cudahy, Aimee Goguen, Matt Morris, Mathew Parkin

Be my Jordan, and I’ll be your Pippen. Be my Mulder, and I’ll be your Scully. Be my Jenko, and I’ll be your Schmidt. Be my Bill, and I’ll be your Ted. Be my residue, and I’ll be your mirror.

“…we shall find out when the light returns what the new season means / when others’ interpretations have gotten back up onto the pedestals we gave them / so long as we are still wearing each other when alone”
                                                                                                                                      

-Frank O’Hara

Between a rock and a hard place.
Laura Bernstein, Lydia Hardwick, Rachel Rotenberg

Between a rock and a hard place. offers a sculptural conversation between three female artists. Their works operate as the remnants from an otherworldly archaeological dig, marked with the indelible imprint and purposeful grace of their three makers. At their core, these are non-functional yet social objects: acknowledging or denying the body, embodying complex human relationships, and birthed through intuition and memory.

Errata
Micah Danges, Luke Stettner

Errata is a two-person show. Stettner’s work for this exhibition includes small photographs, fruit pits, drawings on blackboard surfaces, graphite-rubbed wood frames, and paintings that reference an enigmatic and nearly recognizable grammatical language. Each is a study in essentialism. Danges’ work for this exhibition includes several photo-based collages that explore surface, texture and placement, and are each derived from one of two single images of a greenhouse.

Fourth WallFourth Wall at Vox Populi presents new works chosen by a group of professionals from various locations and backgrounds. Each month, one of these curators will present the work of an experimental artist working in video, film, animation, or new media in the Vox Populi Project Space.

Harvest

Chaja Hertog, Nir Nadler - Video

An abnormal phenomenon occurs in an olive grove as one of the trees evokes an uprising. Inspired by the ancient olive harvesting methods in which aggression and cultivation come together, the film portrays the absurdity of enforced ideologies and the impossibility of taming the wild.

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NAPOLEON 
319 North 11th Street
2^nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:00 – 10:00 PM  

devynn emory’s Personal Public: On Gender Variance in Performance Art

September’s exhibition examines the importance of asserting gender identification in art, particularly in performance art where the body is a fundamental part of the work and the artist invites the viewer into this personal, physical space. In conversation with and through investigation of the work of devynn emory, a dancer and choreographer based in New York, the exhibition considers queer performance and its influence on social structures.

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Marginal Utility



319 North 11th Street
2^nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:00 – 10:00 PM 

Le Horla

Wenxing Ding, Virginia Fleming, Mariel Herring, Adam Lovitz, Scott Schultheis and C.J. Stahl

The title of the exhibition references Guy de Maupassant’s short story in which the protagonist witnesses the passing of a strange ship along a familiar waterway, and begins to experience haunting hallucinations. Written in diary form, Le Horla chronicles the anxiety of an individual whose perception of reality has become ungrounded. With an inability to control his most intimate settings, familiar objects and spaces become actors in discorporate narratives.

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Practice319 North 11th Street
2^nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:30 – 8:30 PM 

HominineAndrew Brehm

Hominine takes viewers cave-deep into a prehistoric lovers-stalemate through sculptures and live audio works.Hominine is installation as a sitcom of objects, each part humorously lampooning the eternal struggle of long-term relationships, investment strategies, and modernization. Join the artist for two live-reading performances on opening night or enjoy the sculpture as a recording throughout the month of August.    

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Grizzly Grizzly319 North 11th Street
2^nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:00 – 10:00 PM 

‘Cut & Paste’Jenny McGee Dougherty, Selena Kimball, Tyler Starr 

McGee Dougherty's subtle works transcend the parameters of both fiber and paper by collecting marks, scruffs and textures.  She then translates these impressions into a visual narrative of her surroundings. “I read the paper every morning but never finish it.” admits Selena Kimball.  Instead she reworks the pages’ images, texts, crinkles and stains to fashion new histories from the recent past. Tyler Starr's mixed media works investigate the history of geographical sites where an unsolved tragedy has occurred. Basing his collages in research gathered from sensationalized journalism.

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Locks Gallery
600 Washington Square South

Philadelphia, PA 19106  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 5:30 – 7:30 PM 

Locks gallery exhibition program presents new works by mid-career artists while introducing the work of emerging artists to a national audience. Survey and thematic exhibitions of work by essential artists of the 20th-century including Louise Bourgeois, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson and George Segal, are regular highlights of the gallery exhibition program.

Forest Park Virgil Marti 

Marti will bring together new works with other recontextualized projects, highlighting his own investigation of the sublime and romanticism throughout history. Marti’s art merges his passion for Americana with his distinctive explorations of the world of domestic interiors.