May 5-11, 2005

art

Domestic Arts

resident artists : James Johnson, package (2005), mixed media photo installation

Sixteen artists give a curator's pad an extreme makeover.

by Susan Hagen

Sean Stoops had been thinking about the popular do-it-yourself art exhibitions of the '80s and '90s for a while. He was intrigued when his Tyler classmate Dean Daderko staged the experimental exhibit "Summer Camping" in his apartment in Center City Philadelphia in 1998 and by "Parlour Projects," an ongoing series of exhibitions in Daderko's Brooklyn apartment. Now, after much deliberation and more than a year of curatorial work, Stoops has sacrificed his own privacy and opened up his West Philadelphia apartment for the public display of art — presenting a show of work by 16 local artists based on the theme of domesticity.

"I started thinking about organizing the show after noticing a new trend in domestic-themed work in Philadelphia, by artists like Candy Depew, Kate Stewart, James Johnson, some of Nadia Hironaka's videos, and someone not in the show, Stuart Netsky," says Stoops, who also works as a gallery coordinator at the Asian Arts Initiative. He adds, "Also, I've had a long fascination with This Old House and other DIY television shows. This genre has morphed recently with the Queer Eye and other lifestyle makeover shows. The exhibit is like a visual artist's home intervention and visitors voyeuristically get a glimpse into my life and the artists' minds."

Nadia Hironaka, Lightswitch Daydream (2005), color video on DVD, LCD screen.

Most of Stoops' belongings are still in their own places within the apartment (he put just a few things in storage), and art by the participating artists has been placed among his things. Some pieces are hung on the walls while others are substituted for functional items; some are completely evident while others are hard to find. Beginning in the living room, a large installation by Adam Parker Smith includes 12 ink-and-mixed-media drawings combining images and text. The phrases, which are absurdly reminiscent of Lichtenstein, range from "Run baby — I will defend you from these ferocious penguins" to "I wonder if she took my pictures off her wall yet." The television plays Table, an interactive DVD by Anita Schillhorn Van Veen, which allows viewers to select from five different stories for a kind of armchair time travel. On a shelf with other ordinary things, Clint Takeda's Peko-Chan Magic, a black four-legged monster with a dangling flesh-colored baby, evokes a hipster tchotchke. Nadia Hironaka's witty Lightswitch Daydream, installed in place of a real light switch, is a 52-second color video loop displayed on a tiny LCD screen. She turns the DIY decoration of a light switch with painted flourishes into a domestic task worthy of Sisyphus.

Around the corner, James Johnson has installed package, a miniature mixed-media tableau, in a cardboard box in the open hall closet. It's visible through a small hole in the box and shows a pristine kitchen with a view of fields and tree-covered hills: a bright, superreal moment in a dark, ordinary setting. In the bedroom, Money Maker by Candy Depew lays right on the floor. It's a thong made of hot pink transparent fabric and gaudily decorated with feathers, crystal and sequins, and it looks so natural there that it was almost stepped on by several visitors during my visit. On the bed, Courtney Hager's small quilt titled Cold Feet has a mass of wiggly cone-shaped protrusions made of brown velvet that both repel and attract. Also in the bedroom you can see Cellphone Miniature: Mount Fuji, one of Hiro Sakaguchi's lovely miniatures paintings on ivory that are framed by fake cell phones and based on images sent from real cell phones.

discomforts of home: Candy Depew's curtain Wisteria and Courtney Hager's quilt Cold Feet.

Tying the whole show together in a totally hilarious way, Eric McDade's installation of a dozen or more pithy notes handwritten on yellow paper is dotted throughout the apartment. In the bathroom a note points to the mirror and declares: "This is you. You are right here in the mirror." Another states: "This is the computer. You send email to friends and family from here. Then you use the telephone to find out if they've received your email yet." McDade uses a low-tech form of everyday communication and turns it into a commentary on appliances and the strangeness of quotidian life in America. Other works, by Elysa Voshell, Matt Suib, Joseph Hu, Kate Norton, James Rosenthal, Kate Stewart and Joonhyun Kim, add more perspectives on domestic life everywhere you go in the apartment.

The beauty of an alternative exhibition like this is that it can connect the public with exciting new art. There's also the added benefit of seeing the art in a real life context rather than a sterile white gallery space — especially fitting in this case, considering the theme of the show. Stoops remarked with amusement that another unexpected effect of the project is that he's had to do a lot of cleaning and reorganizing. He plans to use the newfound extra space to work on his own art: painting, drawing and video installations. Then, after a few months of private life, he'll start bringing in artists again and gearing up for his next apartment exhibition, which will probably take place in the fall.

Inhabit: An Apartment Installation Through May 15, 806 S. 48th St., #2R (Near Baltimore Avenue), 215-724-5343

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