Seeing Double

Two local artists are showcased in one show at the ICA this month.

By Roberta Fallon
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Mar. 10, 2009

Share this Story:

March madness: This month brings Anthony Campuzano’s word art and Joshua Mosley’s sculptures.

Joshua Mosley’s “dread” and Anthony Campuzano’s “Touch Sensitive,” currently showing upstairs at the Institute of Contemporary Art, are both sophisticated narrative disquisitions on the world and mankind’s place in it. But otherwise, they’re very different.

“dread” is a multipart installation with a display of five small bronze sculptural figures and a six-minute black and white computer and stop-motion animation.

The animation—projected in a dark gallery—marries gorgeous landscape photographs, a lyrical soundtrack and animated figures based on clay sculptures the artist made of a dog, a cow and the philosophers Rousseau and Pascal.

In the video, the philosophers take a walk in the woods, talk about God and encounter death. The piece suggests that man may write philosophy about God’s existence and nature’s goodness, but truth lies elsewhere: Nature is beautiful but ultimately unknowable and God has better things to do than take care of two philosophers in the woods.

The small catalog for the show documents the film and sculptures and includes a pithy essay by historian Harvey Mitchell.

Campuzano’s word art in framed poster-sized pieces and pinned to two freestanding corkboards is based on anecdotes from news sources ranging from pop culture magazines to obituaries. Everything is filtered through the artist’s wry philosophy, a combination of belief in Murphy’s Law and praise of the common man.

The hand-lettered works tell stories in streams of urgent uppercase letters that grow bigger toward the bottom and rush down the page without punctuation to stop them.

Campuzano loves the obituaries for their ability to distill a life down to a few labels: “exceptional woman; historian, had green thumb; volunteer fundraiser; educator; Texas judge; Hee Haw performer, real estate agent; lawyer and activist” are a few examples from Various Titles, Various Times #1 and #2.

Joshua Mosley: “dread” and Anthony Campuzano: “Touch Sensitive.”
Through March 29.
Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 S. 36th St.
215.898.7108.
www.icaphila.org

The words are graphic design tools, and many of the pieces have raking diagonals or two-column newspaper-like formats that imbue them with a modernist look. They’re also highly self-referential and post-postmodern. In fact, they’re like handmade blog posts waiting for comments.

Campuzano and Mosley recently participated in a group show at the University of the Arts, and Campuzano was also featured in “Rich Text” at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery last month.

 

For more on the Philadelphia art scene go to theartblog.org.

Add to favoritesAdd to Favorites PrintPrint Send to friendSend to Friend

COMMENTS

ADD COMMENT

Rate:
(HTML and URLs prohibited)
User Guidelines