CURATOR: A million little dies at Fleisher-Ollman

POSTED: Friday, June 15, 2012, 9:46 AM

Filed Under: Arts | The Curator Visual Art

The glint of 23-karat gold immediately catches my eye.

Lining one of the first walls of the Fleisher Ollman Gallery (1616 Walnut Street, suite 100) is Kate Abercrombie's 20 Great American Films, a series of small canvases hinting at figures, some familiar and others more esoteric. Is that E.T.? Marilyn Monroe? Someone from some DVD cover lost in the folds of my memory?

A segment of Justin Mitchell's dice collection.

This sense of almost-certainty pervades "A Complete Die, etc.," on view through August 14. The focal point, or "vortex," as curator Anthony Campuzano describes it, is the dice collection of Justin Mitchell. Several large cases in the center of the room contain seemingly infinite dies of all shapes, sizes and colors with symbols ranging from numbers to astrological signs to unfamiliar, rune-like marks.

Eight artists here respond to the "multiple components, fractured surfaces and formal elements" of Mitchell's dice collection, Campuzano explains. Mitchell also has a series of lambda prints, with colorful shapes that hover somewhere between the digital and the architectural. They seem at first to be buildings, or walls perhaps, but the more I look the uneasier I feel. What are they?

Moving through the gallery, the paintings, installations and mixed media pieces by John Finneran, Mark Mahosky, Zach Harris, Jessica Mein, Anissa Mack and Karen Kilimnik instill a similar feeling. These works combine mediums of ink, gouache, wood, sheet metal, birch plywood and even arrowheads, in the case of Mack's stark juxapositions of rock and bright acrylic.

Each artist considers color, symmetry and the collection in a manner that is disorienting but also quite enchanting. Like the thrill of anticipation in the moments just after releasing a die, before it is clear where it will settle.

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