And Friends, Let Me Tell You About My Hat, Please Leave The Lights On & Your Own Personal Trainer, & And Friends, Let Me Tell You About My Hat

Poems by Sasha Fletcher

And Friends, Let Me Tell You About My Hat

federal savings and loan walked outside to a very open space
and began, very slowly,
to build something,
on the sort of day when the rains come hard
for one solid unrelenting minute
and are forgotten like motel bibles.
as he hammered, he thought about the act of slowly borrowing
everything in his next door neighbor’s bedroom
item by item
and keeping them in a far smaller duplicate room
that he was making
for exactly that purpose.

she, the neighbor, stopped to ask him, federal, what he was building,
which was obviously not a part of the plan,
and so, visibly shaken, he said to her
“friend, let me tell you about my hat”
even though he was not wearing one,
and she asked to hear the story,
and federal savings and loan told her the story
but explained that in order to do so, he would need to borrow a pillow,
which, she felt, seemed like reasonable request.
she went to her room to get it,
while he attempted, very quickly,
to not get excited.
what the next door neighbor would do when everything was placed
in the far smaller room being built for just that purpose
had not been directly addressed yet.
if you had any thoughts on the matter it might be best
to keep them right where they are.

a house rested playfully
just beyond the trash can’s horizon
a vacuum cleaner was humming
the smell of sealant in the air
as she brought federal savings and loan a pitcher of lemonade
which, of course, he thanked her for.
she said to him “please tell me the story about your hat again.”

Please Leave the Lights On

i stayed down on the ground and let them all have my neck
and in the morning something had changed.

categorically, there is something about ghosts
that i cannot understand.

imagine death as a skeleton on a skeleton horse.
now picture that skeleton riding the skeleton of an automobile,
or some type of dirt bike.

i thought about that last night
and then i dreamed about a man with a peg leg
and a pea coat
standing on a pier and watching as the seas parted
in such a way that he could never cross them again.
and as a great big clipper ship carried something very important to him
very far away,
his eyes made me think of the way a lighthouse must look to a sailor
intent on synchronized shipwrecks
or, that is how things seemed
as he climbed into the dinghy.


Your Own Personal Trainer

today at work murph seemed to be struggling with something
that was very heavy.
at the end of the night
once the grills had been turned off
and the steamers cleaned with vinegar and water
i said "murph," i said, "what is it?"
he opened his chef's coat and i saw
he was wearing a weighted vest.
"murph," i said, “are you training for something?"
he said yes and so i asked him what he was training for.
after a beat or two, he said "guilt."
then a little later he said "no,
that's not what I meant."

[Sasha Fletcher is an artist and writer living and working in Philadelphia. He also runs a blog.]


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New Blood Draws on Old Themes; 'Taiwan New Cinema' Seeks an Identity of Fearlessness

A Review of Help Me Eros (2008)
As screened at the 2008 Philadelphia Film Festival

Anyone familiar with the Taiwan New Cinema movement of the past 20 years, or comparatively the films of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (TASTE OF CHERRY), or even select works of Michaelangelo Antonioni (L'AVVENTURA), will be better apprised of how to palate Lee Kang-Sheng's sophomore effort, HELP ME EROS (2008), with it's long uninterrupted shots (30sec-5min), navigation of peculiar but banal human experience, dire scarcity of dialogue, metered accumulation-based narrative arches, and social commentary mostly devoid of irony (reminiscent of Italian Neorealism). The addition of EROS's more abhorrent sexual leanings seats it on the mantle of recent permutations of the Taiwan filmic movement (THE WAYWARD CLOUD, I DONT WANT TO SLEEP ALONE) that delve into the mire of modernity, and makes it very much of the modern generational context; a new floating socio-political context that garners old wounds. Those new to such labored undistracted tenets of filmmaking may be affronted by the patience required, but their design is such that each moment is held extensively and deliberately so that every detail within it can become accessible to the viewer, burgeoning an experiential and dimensional understanding almost by force.

HELP ME EROS is an ambitious and unrelentingly beautiful film, that is also unfortunately at odds with itself, suspended somewhere between prose and grit but uncomfortable in such tonal ambiguity. EROS unfolds in a world of too little or too much gravity; a stagnant orbit of emotionally starved semi-dimensional characters, fluorescent light, sexual escapism, and commerce, suffering incongruity alongside boldness and brilliance. While writer/director Lee Kang-Sheng mostly overstates his existential meanings with non-diegetic songs that spell out woes like a bludgeon, and falls short in terms of blending his content and aesthetics as a whole, he does succeed marvelously within visual moments, of which there is no shortage. It is these moments of perfectly framed peculiarity, poignancy, comedy, and loneliness in collage, rather than blending, that buoy HELP ME EROS to success. Lee Kang-Sheng's visual language is his strongest asset, with notable thanks to Tsai Ming-Liang as production designer, and helps to enhance if not mask what is otherwise a rather conventional narrative arch.

Read this full review as it discusses the rich visual language of a bold and despairing film from one of Taiwan's rising talents at Blue Key Reviews (Click Here) long with many other titles from this past year including ATONEMENT, LUST CAUTION, 4 MONTHS 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, and THE ORPHANAGE.

[Aaron Mannino is a Philadelphia area artist seeking to share his distinctive views on film, which, according to Mannino, "is easily the most significant inspiration for my own artwork, and as I see it, an excellent device to supplement cultural immersion and transmission of diverse attitudes."]


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Pentimenti Preview/Early Review

by Matthew Parrish

Matthew Kucynski: You’re Apocalypse! and David Ambrose: The Braille Landscape
Pentimenti Gallery
April 21 - May 31, 2008

David Amborse (Image taken
from: http://localephemera.blogspot.com/2007/
07/real-bling-was-on-street.html)

The new show at the Pentimenti Gallery doesn't officially open until next Friday but I've taken a peak and here's what I saw: David Ambrose's daedal works are less than engaging from a distance, but look a little closer and you'll find a porous, wavy web of colors. Ambrose pierces relatively thick paper in precise or wandering lines to create a braille-like texture (one of the works is titled "Braillescape" or something similar) before releasing watercolors upon the bumpy terrain, creating a nice balance between "control and chance." Art historically, the work immediately brings to mind Lucio Fontana's holey canvases:

Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio,
oil on canvas, 1964. The Rachofsky Collection.
(Image used with the courtesy of http://www.panachemag.com/
Spring_07/TheBuzz/TheCollector/The_Collector.asp)

Fontana's work, however, has more of a modernist "shock of the new" feel about it whereas Ambrose acknowledges and encourages a connection with the inherently "feminine and anonymous" history of knitting and lacework rather than the "heroic and autographic" tendencies of painting and building (paraphrasing his own words). This aspect of his work makes it more inviting and warm than ambitious and exclusive (I'm aware that this argument can be made to support the mediocre over the great but that is not the case here--Ambrose's art is both average in appearance and superior in process and philosophy). Ambrose's work successfully commingles the trendy non-monumental world, the Yayoi Kusama school of repetition, and the increasingly prevalent "fine artist" fascination with craftwork.

On a Side Note: The works at Pentimenti are more painterly and less like classical patterns than the image above which is taken from a previous show.

Also showing at the Pentimenti Gallery is Matthew Kucynski's work:

Green Receptionist, Mixed Media, 36" x 36"
(Used with the courtesy of http://www.poolartfair.com/
pool_miami_05/exhibitors.html )

Kucynski's particular blend of blatant sexuality and surrealistic strangeness wasn't particularly intriguing and the "pop-up book" theme seemed gimmicky. Most relief-styled, protruding, or distinctly shaped paintings have this problem because the three-dimensional accentuation exhibits a lack of faith in the medium. However, his multi-colored Wizard of Oz tonality is charming and the obvious fun he had while envisioning these id-driven characterizations comes through in the work.

Thanks for reading!

Matthew Parrish

[Matthew Parrish is a grad student attending the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.]

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Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib

Ice Box project space at the Crane Arts building “The soft epic or: the savages of the pacific west.”
Review by Joseph DiGiuseppe

“The soft epic or: the savages of the pacific west”
by Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib

Friday night lights, mights, maybes and the possibilities for Artadelphia. You know the icebox project space, aka the space that typically no one uses well in Olde Kensington? Well, someone(s) did it.

Currently in the IceBox is Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib’s video installation.

one word: captivating
a few more: sensational, slightly politically subversive, utopian??

"The soft epic or: the savages of the pacific west," is a 100 foot long projection which appears to be seamless, aside from the 'weak' pixels on the edge of every projection. The video displays collapsed buildings on fire, cascading water fountains or geysers (I can’t tell), birds flying across the entire length of the image, animals, humans, human animal hybrids. I've also noticed the right side was more destroyed then the left: maybe some political bias?

Nadia and Matthew’s press release described the soft epic as a Hieronymus Bosch-esque collage and it may be reminiscent of his famous triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights." However, it disregards the utopian aspect of Bosch's painting and if you’ve ever stood in front of The Garden of Earthly Delights it's tiny in comparison and affects you differently in terms of experience. I also wouldn't compare my own work to someone who is huge style famous. That seems pretty gimmicky, why would I come see this show? Oh I like Hieronymus! I must like this! Artists aren’t bands. But rather brands! However the video did include a leopard fucking a person from behind, something I think Bosch would have enjoyed.

Regardless of the press release, I went because I heard how big it was. The video stands on its own and is by far the best use of the Crane Arts Ice Box Project space.

Nadia and Matthew’s video collage forces me to stir up Tin Kin’s “Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly people.” Tin Kin’s video collages and web based Internet art projects attack political topics by disregarding discussion and jumping immediately into argument. “BWIHFUP” is a series of fast moving, mesmerizing imagery coupled with poetry by MC Paul Barman delivering a hypnotic video forcing you the buy everything he is selling, thus brain-washing you.

Nadia and Matthew’s video isn’t selling anything, they are providing you with complicated metaphors to explore and digest. I’d suggest to go and digest the soft epic, if anything it’s a pretty marvelous sight to see.

I love you,
Joe

[Joseph DiGiuseppe is a founding member of Art Making Machine Studios and Fluxspace, as well as an artist recently featured in "Given Enough Eyeballs" at Esther Klein Gallery.]



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