Jayson Musson (MFA '11 candidate) in Solo Exhibition at the Marginal Utility Gallery, Philadelphia, Opening February 4th, 6pm

Jayson Musson (MFA '11 candidate) will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Marginal Utility Gallery, Philadelphia. "Neoteny | The Hard Sell" is an exhibition of art stuffs by Musson. Whether or not you attend is of small consequence to the “artist” (the term is employed loosely here), because, as the artist puts it: “I stays paid anyway!” However, the veracity of this claim is highly questionable, as it is widely known that even though the artist is in his early 30’s, he still rents an apartment, not even an apartment by himself mind you, but rather he shares a two-bedroom apartment with a roommate (who is a much better artist than he). Also, the artist still rides a bicycle because he doesn’t have the least bit of self-control when it comes to the management of his personal finances so he is unable to save for even the most austere of auto vehicles. In fact, one time I was at his house, pardon me, I mean one time I was at his two-bedroom apartment he shares with a roommate, and the artist, a bit drunk, spent a surprising amount of time looking at lycra superhero costumes on ebay which he claimed he was going to use for a “sculpture”. Well, whatever sculpture you could make by purchasing a costume off of ebay is no sculpture I want to partake of. Not at all. Not. At. All. But perhaps you do. You strike me as someone who consumes art only in jpeg format (while I have laid beneath Olafur Eliasson’s sun at the Tate!), someone who doesn’t possess a single inkling as to what comprises a true work of art. If this is the case, and I know it is, then you would most likely find some kind of satisfaction in attending.

Oh, as per the artist’s request: please keep your children at home. Because children, unlike the divinely crafted snowflake, are not unique nor are they special, and children speak at a volume which is simply unacceptable within a gallery, and even though Marginal Utility is a non-profit gallery, the etiquette of a commercial, for-profit gallery must be adhered to lest our entire society fall apart at its most sacrosanct seams. (Nathanial Snerpus)

Opening Reception: Friday, February 4th, 6:00 - 11:00pm
Exhibition Dates: Friday, February 4th - Sunday, March 27th

Marginal Utility Gallery
319 North 11th Street, 2nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Gallery Hours: Friday 5:00-8:00pm / Saturday + Sunday 12:00-5:00pm
http://www.marginalutility.org/

Jayson Musson (MFA '11 candidate) in Group Exhibition presented by Bodega and Extra Extra Galleries, Opening February 5th, 6pm

Jayson Musson (MFA '11 candidate) will be featured in a group exhibition titled, "The Island Beautiful / Mortal Mirror". The exhibition is presented by Bodega and Extra Extra Galleries, Philadelphia and hosts the work of thirteen artists translated by Alex Da Corte in two mirrored spaces, one with color and the other without. It will also be accompanied by the release of a limited edition artist book. Featured artists include Anna Rosen, Alexander May, Rory Mulligan, Brendan Lynch, Jayson Musson, Nick Van Woert, Andy Maas, Kate Greene, Alexi Kukuljevic, Edward Carey, Christian Holstad, Strauss Borque-LaFrance and David Muenzer.

Throughout The Island Beautiful / Mortal Mirror Da Corte absorbs work from each artist into his own. In the way one may appear in another’s dream, the artists appear as extensions of themselves; the original structure and meaning co-opted by Da Corte and reinterpreted in a dissociated imagination. The history of each artist, the past meanings given to the work, the cultural significance they exude, the singular experience assumed, are all collapsed in favor of a connected weightless whole. The work of others and consumer waste are equally available as raw material. Da Corte uses the exhibition to expose our use of language and identity as problematic. Thought, meaning and interpretation are presented as unfixed and we are given a new logic shaped by multiplicity and parallel understandings. The Island Beautiful / Mortal Mirror invites you to enter an island of thought only made whole through one’s incomplete memory. One space, a vivid fever dream, the other a skeletal hand pointing to illusion.

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 5th, 6:00 - 10:00pm
Exhibition Dates: Friday, February 5th - Saturday, March 19th

Bodega Gallery
253 North Third Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

Extra Extra
1524 Frankford Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19125

Jane Irish (Graduate Program Coordinator) in Solo Exhibition at Locks Gallery, Opening February 4th, 5:30pm

Jane Irish (Graduate Program Coordinator) will be featured in a solo exhibition titled, "The Home Front: Jane Irish's Art of War" at Locks Gallery, Philadelphia. Locks Gallery is pleased to present this exhibition of new paintings and ceramics by Irish. Irish’s work addresses the representation of the physical and emotional landscapes of Vietnam, both before and after the Vietnam War. The artist’s large scale paintings and decorative vases honor the anti-war legacy, without being consumed in bloody imagery. Irish juxtaposes the writing of a Vietnamese poet with images of American war protesters; poetry of a Vietnam War veteran with lavish rococo interiors that represent a suggested oligarchy. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with an essay by Glenn Adamson, Head of Graduate Studies, Research Department, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Jane Irish received her MFA from Queens College, CUNY, and has exhibited in New York and Philadelphia since 1983. Her work has been featured recently in exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE. She is a 2009 recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation, Painters and Sculptors Grant. This will be Irish’s third exhibition at Locks Gallery.

Opening Reception: Friday, February 4th, 5:30 – 7:30pm
Exhibition Dates: Friday, February 4th – Saturday, March 12th

Locks Gallery
600 Washington Square South
Philadelphia, PA
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–6pm

To see more of Irish's work, visit http://www.locksgallery.com/exhibits_works.php?eid=120

Cristina Tufiño (MFA '12 candidate) in Group Exhibition at the Green Gallery, Wisconsin, Opening January 21st, 6pm

Cristina Tufiño (MFA '12 candidate) will be featured in a group exhibition at the Green Gallery, Wisconsin titled, "A PERSON OF COLOR / a mostly orange exhibition". The exhibition has been curated by José Lerma of Andrea Rosen Gallery, NY. Tufiño will present her most recent work, a Roman Orange Fragment Figure Banner for the exhibition.

To see more of Tufiño's work, visit http://www.cristinatufino.net/

Opening Reception: Friday, January 21st, 6:00 - 9:00pm
Exhibition Dates: January 21st - February 27th, 2011

The Green Gallery East
1500 N Farwell Ave
Milwaukee, WI 53202
http://www.thegreengallery.biz/

Jessica Vaughn (MFA '11 candidate) in Group Exhibition at AirSpace Gallery, Philadelphia, Opening, January 14th, 5:30pm

Jessica Vaughn (MFA '11 candidate) will be featured in a group exhibition at AirSpace Gallery, Philadelphia. In addition to her exhibition, Vaughn was recently nominated by Penn Design for the Dedlhaus Foundation and Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Fellowship Awards. This past fall, Vaughn was also awarded an AIGA Scholarship (http://www.aiga.org/) for the 2010-2011 academic year.

To view more of Vaughn's work, visit http://jessvaughn.com/home.html

Opening Reception: Friday, January 14th, 5:30pm
Exhibition Dates: Friday, January 14th - Friday, February 11th

AirSpace Gallery
4013 Chestnut Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19104
http://www.inliquid.com/features/40street/gallery.php

Kelsey Halliday Johnson (MFA '12 candidate) awarded the Lugo Land Residency; will lecture at the University of Fine Arts Ravenna, January 10th

Kelsey Halliday Johnson (MFA '12 candidate) was recently awarded the Lugo Land Residency from the University of Pennsylvania's, Penn Design. Before arriving at Penn Design, Kelsey received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University in Art and Archaeology where she concentrated in fine art photography and European cultural studies. She is the first MFA recipient of the Lugo Land Residency in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania. Past residents have included such esteemed photographers as Tim Davis, Graciela Iturbide and Guido Guidi.

Johnson will be giving a lecture at the University of Fine Arts in Ravenna (Accademia di Belle Arti di Ravenna) that will include a discussion with Luca Nostri, curator of Lugo Land. In the lecture she plans to talk about her photographic experience studying at Princeton under Emmet Gowin and topics such as the MFA Program, Zen and the art of Pentax 6x7 Maintenance as well as Reevaluating images.

Lecture Date and Time: Monday, January 10th, 2:30 pm

Accademia di Belle Arti di Ravenna
via delle Industrie, 76
48122 Ravenna
tel. +39 – 0544.453125 o 455784
fax. +39 - 0544.451104

To view more work by Kelsey, visit http://www.kelseyhalliday.com/

More information may be viewed on Princeton's site, http://www.princeton.edu/arts/news/archive/lugo-land-residency/

Tia Simone-Gardner (MFA '09) in Group Exhibition at the Woodstock Center for Photography, Opening January 15th, 4pm

Tia Simone-Gardner (MFA '09) will be featured in a group exhibition at the Woodstock Center for Photography titled, "Made In Woodstock V". The exhibition features the work by CPW's artists-in-residence from 2007-2009. "Made In Woodstock V (MIW V)" is the fifth installment of the Center for Photography at Woodstock's series featuring work created by recent partipants of WOODSTOCK A-I-R, CPW's residency program for artists of color working in the photographic arts.

Established in 1999, WOODSTOCK A-I-R is a workspace residency program which provides participants with time, facilities, space, and the critical & technical support necessary to move forward. The program encourages the pursuit of creative risk-taking in the inspiring environment of Woodstock, where, working without distraction, photographic artists can focus intensely on their new work, continue works in progress, layout their goals for the future, and break new creative ground. Representing the broad range of photographic practices and interests that WOODSTOCK A-I-R helps realize, the 18 artists featured in MIW V engage in an inspired and deeply self-aware dialogue on history, politics, representational concerns, and more. As no two residencies are the same, the exhibition reveals the intensely diverse, dynamic interests of the artists as a group, and addresses each image-makers own particular story and voice. Artists featured include WILLIAM CORDOVA, LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER, TIA-SIMONE GARDNER, LAWRENCE GETUBIG, DANIEL HANDAL, WAYNE HODGE, JEANNETTE LOUIE, HEE JIN KANG, TARRAH KRAJNAK & WILKA ROIG, EMILY HANAKO MOMOHARA, RICARDO MORALES-HERNÁNDEZ, DAWIT L. PETROS, TIM PORTLOCK, JUSTINE REYES, KANAKO SASAKI, LUPITA MURILLO TINNEN, and DONNA J. WAN.

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 15th, 4:00 - 6:00pm
Exhibition Dates: Saturday, January 15th - Sunday, March 27th, 2011

The Center for Photography at Woodstock
59 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
845.679.9957
http://www.cpw.org/index.html
Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Sunday, 12:00 - 5:00pm or by appointment

Demetrius Oliver (MFA '04) featured in the Village Voice's "Best Art of 2010", December 29th

Demetrius Oliver (MFA '04) has been featured in the Village Voice's "Best Art of 2010" review. The Village Voice's intrepid art critics have been at it all year, striding from gallery to gallery, museum to museum and several other locations. After 12 months of gazing and pondering, and a fair amount of debate, three Voice writers selected their top five exhibits of 2010. R.C. Baker chose Oliver's "Jupiter" (The Highline project). Baker notes that, "With the city's most magical public space as a backdrop, this young multimedia artist combined a billboard depicting such mysterious tableaux as empty violin cases wedged into open windows with stargazing sessions and musicians jamming on Coltrane's 'Jupiter'."

To view the "Best Art of 2010" review, visit http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-12-29/art/the-best-art-of-2010/

To see more of Oliver's work, visit http://demetriusoliver.blogspot.com/

Joseph Erb (MFA '02) featured in New York Times for work with Apple, December 23rd, 2010

Joseph Erb (MFA '02) has been noted by the recent New York Times article on December 23rd, "Cherokee, Apple Partner to Put Language on iPhones". Joseph Erb had worked in sculpture and animation during his years at Penn and has recently been working with Apple so that they would include Cherokee on iPhone, iPad and iPod. This project started at Penn in 2001 when Erb produced a thesis animation in Cherokee, subtitled; towards saving the language.

The article can be accessed on the New York Times official site, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/12/23/us/AP-US-iPhone-Cherokee-Language.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&emc=eta1

It is also available on NPR's official site, http://www.npr.org/tablet/#story/?storyId=132277962

Jackie Tileston (Graduate/Undergraduate Faculty) & David Humphrey (Graduate Critic) in Exhibition at Regina Rex, NY, Opening January 8th, 6pm

Jackie Tileston (Graduate/Undergraduate Faculty) and David Humphrey's (Graduate Critic) will be featured in a group exhibition titled "Texture.txt" at Regina Rex, Queens, NY. "Texture.txt" features paintings, drawings, installation, and sculptures from Tileston and Humphrey among additional artists including Sarah Butler, Josh Faught, Kristen Kee, Mary Reid Kelley, Lucy Kim, Leeza Meksin, Dona Nelson, Gilbert Rocha and Rebecca Shore. "Texture.txt" is curated by Yevgeniya Baras (Penn BA '02 and MS '03).

Texture is the arrangement, pattern, or feel of constituent parts: a rough surface comprised of granules, thread woven into fabric, musical notes swirling in densities of sounds. Text is letters shuffled into words shuffled into meaningful passages - visual communication representing speech, our guttural utterances in the form of perceptible marks on a surface. Speech is formed by syllables that are constructed in the body and emitted through the mouth, where hard and soft sounds with wavering intonation are filtered through the acoustic mechanism of the throat, and are shaped by the tongue and lips. Texture and text originate from the Indo-European word "teks" meaning to weave, to fabricate. It is a word for a craftsperson, one who builds, one who manipulates an accumulation of small units into something useful, something to trade, something symbolic.

Artists often play with these ideas. They jiggle symbols into alternately meaningful and confusing relationships, build patterns from distinct marks, and create objects that are meant to have special value. Artworks, like writing, are graphic and reference both words and images. And the evolution of writing is linked to pictures, as the earliest forms of written communication are depictions of animals in caves, pigmented rubbings and scratches on dark stone walls that say "I was here, I saw this, I have feelings about this thing I saw."

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 8th, 6:00 - 9:00pm
Exhibition Dates: Saturday, January 8th – Sunday, February 6th

* Immediately following the opening at 10pm, there will be a performance by Mira Stroika at Tandem Bar, 236 Troutman Street New York, NY 11237.

Regina Rex
17-17 Troutman, #329
Queens, NY 11385
www.reginarex.org

To view more work of Tileston and Humphrey, visit http://www.jackietileston.info/ and http://davidhumphreynyc.com/art/

Julia Barbosa Landois (MFA '07) in Group Exhibition at Vox Populi, Opening January 7th, 7pm

Julia Barbosa Landois (MFA '07) will be featured in a Group Exhibition titled "Voxelvision 1.0", at Vox Populi, Philadelphia. Landois' featured piece, Indelible, is inspired by a notorious sex show in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The video is part of a new body of work exploring the relationship between folklore and landscape, masculine rites of passage, and sexual politics on the Texas/Mexico border. "Voxelvision 1.0" along with the opening of Patricia Baga's "Rectangle with the Sound of Its Own Making" at Fourth Wall, and the continuation of "Quadruple-Consciousness" is curated by Malik Gaines. It was juried by Rachel Cook.

This Friday, January 7th, join Vox at 7pm for their first annual video festival, a screening juried by Rachel Cook. The videos will be looped through the month of January and will feature the following artists; Karen Ostrom's "The End", Julia Sherman's "The Audience Reacts", David Politzer's "A Rousing View of Nature's Magnificence", Kara Dunne's "Ag dul sios an Straighre", Katie Cercone's "Queen Candy Bile", Justin Lincoln's "09/22/2010 blogmix", Skote's "Dump", Justin Lincoln's "Color Grid I", Jillian Mayer's "How My Best Friend Died", Julia Landois' "Indelible", Esfandyar Poozesh's "...to Eden", Skote's "Treasure Island", Tara Kelton's "Time Travel", Jessica Mallios' "1:1", Skote's "Catalogue" and David Politzer's "You Are Listening to Metallica Because...".

Opening Reception & Video Screening: Friday, January 7th, 7:00pm
Exhibition Dates: Friday January 7th - Sunday, January 30th

Vox Populi
319 North 11th Street
Third Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215.238.1236
http://www.voxpopuligallery.org/index.php

To see more work of Julia's, visit http://www.julialandois.com/