Decor/Decorum @ CFEVA

The Center for Emerging Visual Arts keeps raising the bar on curating art shows in Philadelphia, the current exhibit, Décor/Decorum, of photography, sculpted plates and plaster vignettes is simply exquisite like being plunked down into a scene on a Wedgewood plate only it’s in your eccentric grandmother’s white lacquered cabinet. Photos of the interior of Joelle Jenson‘s grandmother’s Florida home are a temporal distortion, the mostly white spaces combine a mix of natural and artificial light, memory and architecture, austere, fresh and clean – when fresh and clean didn’t mean you were hip-hop but a time when everything had a place and was in it, sparkly and shiny. Joelle’s grandmother had glamour shots of herself stratigically displayed thoughout her immaculate home, even producing calendars with her beautiful image, her snow white hair perfectly coiffed, as gifts for family members. Now Grandma is a star in Joelle’s homage to an esthetic quickly disappearing from the American landscape; Joelle confided with DoN that the family used to ridicule their grandmother’s decorating style but when she died and Joelle’s parents moved in they didn’t change a thing. Jenson has completed photographing her husband’s parents home in Florida and is working on a series from her other grandmother’s abode. Jenson produces her work at The Camera Club of New York and exhibits at Wall Space Gallery in Seattle.

Joelle Jenson@ Décor/Decorum @ CFEVA

C-Print by Joelle Jenson @ CFEVA.

Jedediah Morfit’s carved plaster plates and vignette’s mounted on the wall compose a chilly counterpoint to Jenson’s photographs. Morfit “explores irresistible contemporary taboos including craft, religion and narrative” (CFEVA art card). The antechamber gallery features a wall of plates Jed told DoN was about “new temptations of Saint Anthony“, with the plates each featuring a modern tempting diversion. The opposite wall has a striking series of bas-relief sculptures with antebellum women pushing wheelbarrows filled with bones and heads running from a rain of arrows – very powerful. DoN overheard one patron say she felt she was in, “one of those blue plates”. DoN suspects she meant Wedgewood china. Morfit tells DoN these are the first in a series that will feature “tons of figures including flying monkeys”.