In With the New

Mark Blavat, Syd Carpenter, Quentin Morris and David Stephens at Art Around Gallery

by Robin Rice

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Published: Feb 20, 2007

Max Maddox and Theresa Rose make an outstanding curatorial debut with a four-artist show at Art Around Gallery. Ordinarily showing African-American artists linked to the Harlem Renaissance and WPA era, such as Sam Brown, Humbert Howard and Dox Thrash, gallery owner William Dodd is adding occasional contemporary shows.

Within the modest space, each artist's individuality is clearly stated through two or three significant works. In David Stephens' wall-based sculpture, layered sections of wood spiral outward, each bearing a message in Braille on its concluding segment. Eda's Witness Crown thrusts forward an iron-black cross. Weighty and implacable, it suggests the 19th-century hymn: "Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war/ With the cross of Jesus going on before."

Braille orients Stephens' floor-based, hive-shaped Cenotaph: T.O.B.A. to the cardinal directions. Stephens, blind as the result of a progressive condition, manipulates space and silhouette boldly. The iteration of angled, serrated textures — resulting from his use of stacked cut-out boards — suggests both organic and mechanical processes.

The wall-mounted Blood Ties is typical Syd Carpenter. Clay tubes unite organic and mechanical. A network of vessels links to a large twisting tube and concludes in a black ring. The reddish surface crackles beautifully, revealing a waxy (plaquelike) under-layer. Geological and elemental, Carpenter's freestanding Seb I appears to defy gravity as it balances on many driplike points.

Mark Blavat paints so slowly that he has not shown his work for 10 years. The layered pigment in the two pieces at Art Around suggests the limitless skies of Baroque ceilings and the glimmering depths of Monet's water-lily ponds. Finally, we know we are looking into time itself: ineffable but palpable.

A perfect foil to Stephens', Carpenter's and Blavat's surface-dissolving painting, Quentin Morris' exclusive commitment to circles and blackness has been attributed to a Buddhist practice and to an exploration of the social or human implications of Blackness. Both thoughts can be valid, just as these works can equally occupy the three dimensions of object-ness and the two dimensions of painting.

Morris has done the same thing for decades, yet his work seems fresh — as does this entire show of four senior Philadelphia artists organized by two younger ones.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Mark Blavat, Syd Carpenter, Quentin Morris, David Stephens

Extended through March 3, Art Around Gallery, 2011 Chestnut St., 215-972-1644

 

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