Category Archives: Prints

Art prints by Philadeelphia area artists

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin Tan explained to DoN the concept behind Primitive Level Signals, the spectacular multi-media exhibit at Dalet Gallery in Old City, “It’s an animation installation, it all uses 3D animation software to create the animations and we also have animation stills. Printed directly on the wood the prints use technology that is new, a new way to print on different materials, ridged materials, normally it must be much softer. Now you can use hard wood or metal, aluminum…”

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

LiQin Tan explained, “Now I can print on all kinds of materials, not just paper. Also, the concept behind this is Chinese Taoism, what this means is that the Chinese have always dealt with five elements: fire, water, metal, earth and wood. All of the elements consistent with Nature is where the idea came from. Also my idea combines the ideas of the North American Indian people with ideas like the dream-catcher.”

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

The gallery is filled with fascinating creations from the mind of LiQin Tan, there are prints on animal skin stretched in frames with industrial clamps paired with an abstract video on a glossy monitor mounted on the wall above the dream-catcher. “Using spirit levels as a signal to describe a natural phenomenon in humans, where human brain development is an equalized procedure. The competing concepts of the brain, whether the battle of the brain’s size versus it’s intellectual capacity , or of it’s technological versus spiritual side, are always kept in equalibrium” – Dalet Gallery art card.

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

The gallery displays five pairings of prints on wood with accompanying video like these three above to represent the five Taoist elements: fire, water, metal, earth and wood. The animation stills printed on the panels of wood are ethereal, with Max Ernst-like abstract images that evoking dreams, mind storms, underwater mysteries and the being lost in the deep forest. The animations are mind-blowing in complexity and creativity. In the front gallery is a series of monitors, tangles all in wires and cables, with an animated lava flow ebbing back and forth using video game technology realness to the point that the piece looks hot from melted stone.

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

“In this dream-catcher you see here, the animal skins, I made them by myself, is from the North American Indian people as well, they’re used in a way to represent their culture. I stole it from them. In the animation is the biggest stone, the spiritual stone.” said LiQin Tan. In the picture above is a shot, a still if you will, of a large dream-catcher, the animal hide stretched taut in the primitive circular frame using the same cruel clamps, the installation has two of them. From both sides of the darkened gallery four video projectors shined animations onto the stretched skins, the light shining through like when you hold a flashlight to the web on your hand. The animation includes dancing figures, “The Miao people, a small group of people in China, are represented by the dressed dancers…I mixed the cultures, I call it digital primitivism, using digital technology to make it primitive.” The effect is deeply spiritual, connecting with memories, archetypes, cultural resonance and internally rooted thoughts and ideals.

“You can see that in the animation, but I also used the American Indian skills because I made the animal skins by myself. Using primitive skills, using calf skin, this kind of skin the procedure is called primitive, so I used the primitive skills to make them digital. And I used digital skills to make primitive art.”

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery

“It’s a two-way work, digital art with old society and modern society, it’s multi-faceted. I like the North American Indian culture a lot. I did a lot of research in Canada and I made a lot of multimedia pieces about North American Indian culture, so it’s about how during the day I teach digital animation but I have North American Indian culture in my brain. So the idea came very easy, very natural especially when it connected with Chinese Taoism, I did a lot of research, I’m not a religious person but I read a lot of philosophy and a lot of the research is organized in this idea.”

LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery through June 23rd.

Written and photographed by DoN

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Johanna Inman

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Johanna Inman, CFEVA Introduction 2012, The Galleries at Moore

“I’m so excited about this group!”, said Amie Potsic, Director of Career Development at CFEVA, to DoN at the V.I.P. reception 2/1/12 for Introduction 2012 in The Galleries at Moore. “I think they’re fantastic and they’re all really go getter, hard working artists. Which you have to be these days.”

“We are absolutely thrilled, we have six new artists who begin this month and they’re beginning the two year fellowship with us and we have a really talented group. A great variety of mediums, styles and backgrounds but everything really makes sense together. I think quality somehow makes everything hang beautifully together. That’s a defining quality of CFEVA artists is the level of craft is always really high, the level of intention in their work is really strong.”

“Johanna Inman has wonderful photographic work that she actually creates without a camera. These are all created from flatbed scanners. Her father has an antique book collection he’s had for years and years (which she scans) and that’s why you have this level of detail and why it’s so flat at the same time. It’s just incredible how much detail she gets out of the image, the same with the book on the other side with a full page spread, those are all made on a flatbed scanners. She has a number of bodies of work, where she takes real objects rather than photographing them she uses scanning technology.”

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), in cooperation with Moore College of Art & Design, presents an exhibition by the new Career Development Program Fellows. A highly selective fellowship with only a 2% acceptance rate, these six artists represent some of the most promising talent among emerging artists in the region: Leslie Friedman, Daniel Gerwin, Rebecca Gilbert, Kay Healy, Heechan Kim, and Johanna Inman.

Introduction 2012

February 1 February 25, 2012

Widener Memorial Foundation Gallery

Circumstantial Assembly / CFEVA at Moore

DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog

Introduction 2011

Photographs by DoN

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Leslie Friedman

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Leslie Friedman, CFEVA Introduction 2012, Galleries at Moore, Cargo for Port Derby, 2010, serigraph on paper, 10 color print, edition of ten, Nasty Button, 2010, serigraph on paper, 9 color print, edition of eight, 3-2-1 Blast Off!, 2010, serigraph on paper, 7 color print, edition of twenty-eight.

DoN asked Leslie Friedman how she felt about being in the CFEVA Introduction 2012 exhibition in the Galleries at Moore? “I feel really great! I was really honored to get the fellowship. When I was sitting in the room at the orientation they were saying that three hundred and fifty people applied. And a lot of the people that applied, some of them are here tonight, have applied multiple times. And, I just feel really great to be here. The work looks amazing, especially Kay‘s piece, I don’t know, it’s really exciting. I had seen her work at the To Scale show and I’ve been a fan but I never met her.”

Dada? DoN asked. “I think it does, I mean, there’s definitely any kind of work that’s on paper with the ephemera of paper is definitely going to make you think of Dada-ism. Also, the fact that it’s collage. The way that I collage is a 21st Century way of collage-ing. It’s using the internet to get all my imagery, finding things and altering them. So, I’m not cutting up magazines or photographs, my collage is all done on line…I feel like this young generation, whatever you want to call it, uses the internet so fluidly. I think art is about the interchange of ideas, so none of what I’m doing with this is never making fun of, or debasing any of anyone else’s work. I take something that may be forgotten and turn it into something memorable.”

Introduction 2012

February 1 February 25, 2012

Widener Memorial Foundation Gallery

Circumstantial Assembly / CFEVA at Moore

DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog

Introduction 2011

Photographs by DoN
Blick Art Materials

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Rebecca Gilbert

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Rebecca Gilbert, CFEVA Introduction 2012, The Galleries at Moore

Lucky, reduction and multiple block woodcut and gold leaf, Rock Pile Fortune Vessel, reduction and multiple block woodcut Rebecca Gilbert.

Rebecca Gilbert, Building the Perfect Worm House, CFEVA Introduction 2012, The Galleries at Moore

Amie Potsic, Director of Career Development at The Center for Emerging Visual Artists says, “I love openings, it’s the only time artists get any feedback. Because you’re never there except for receptions, usually. Some people are shy and find it a little bit hard but I think that they’re really so key for not only exposing work but having artists get good at talking about their work and building relationships. Most of the time we have artist’s talks at CFEVA and part of that is that if the artist has the experience of doing them more often they get better every time they do them. If your not a teacher, there’s very few instances where you actually have the opportunity to have an artist talk.”

DoN listened in while artist Rebecca Gilbert talked to a mom and her young daughter about her print, Safe Keeping Place, “Well, there’s one story. I have this bracelet that had a family heirloom heart locket on it and I had this opening in Old City years ago, and I was having this conversation and this little charm fell off of my bracelet and it was this freakish thing because it fell off and instead of just rolling, it fell, I swear, in a hole in the corner of the room that was just that big. Exactly the size. I went back the next day and the gallery owner said the hole led to the street and so my charm was unattainable. It was like, oh no, my family heirloom! It’s gone forever. And my best friend said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s safe in that hole. It’ll be there forever.”

DoN introduced himself. Is that a Jackalope? “That is a Jackalope…I’m trying to bring a positive energy to my work and to keep a positive outlook in life. And I’m also very superstitious. Some superstitions I I follow and some I make up on my own. I included a lot of symbolism from that so I can add that positive energy. Lucky, is the name of the Jackalope, but it’s up to the viewer to decide if he is actually lucky or not. So you have all these good luck charms but for them, it’s subtle, but there’s extra feet and of course they chop off rabbit’s feet. So, it you have extra, you’re lucky. Another thing is I knew I wanted to do a Jackalope because I did an artist’s residency in Wyoming and I started researching Jackalopes and I knew that to me in my head that they’re mythical creatures who like to drink whiskey and sing songs.”

“But, in my research I saw that there actually have been rabbits found as early as the 17th Century, I found illustrations of rabbits with these knobs coming out of the top of their heads. Not horns but knobs. But, it’s actually a cancer. In my research there are all of these rabbits with these things hanging off of them. And, you know, one hypothesis is that that’s where it came from. They were interpreted as horns, so, that questions ‘what is lucky?’. ‘Oh, you’re lucky you’re an imagined creature with horns on your head?’. So, the whole reason I made the print was not to compare myself to other people because you never know the whole story.”