Vox Populi Gallery. 319 North 11th Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107

OPENING IN SEPTEMBER AT VOX:

Exhibition dates: friday, September 5– Sunday, September 28

Opening reception: first friday, september 5 from 6-11 pm, hosted by Vox Populi’s board of directors with raffle, special refreshments, cake and pie (see below)

Pie eating contest: first friday, september 5 at 9pm (bring your pie to be judged)

Gallery talk sunday, sunday, september 28 at 3pm with Ica Curatorial Assistant Kate Kraczon

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Vox Populi is pleased to announce the kick-off of the gallery’s 21st Anniversary season, which runs from September 2008 through August 2009. We’ve had countless members, at least four homes, hundreds of exhibitions, thousands of visitors, music shows, films, and talks. This is a celebration of still being here, being relevant, taking risks and continuing to have fun. Check our website for up-todate information on things we have planned to celebrate this important milestone….But, for now:

On exhibition in September are Vox artists Jonathan Prull, Jamie Dillon, and Nick Paparone; guest artist, Janna Holmstedt and One Gray Grass in the Ball Field, with Vox alumni: Clint Takeda, David Wickland, Joy Feasley, Jen Macdonald, Kait Midgett, Nancy Lewis, Nick Muellner, Paul Swenbeck, Richard Harrod, Shannon Bowser, and Tristin Lowe.

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Jonathan Prull: We Carry What We Seek

We Carry What We Seek consists of a large sculptural installation. Athletic gestures outlined in steel contrast with Jonathan's fictional cardboard characters of last season. These playful pointed and leaning forms exude Jonathan's stylistic interests while maintaining an undertone of figurative influence.

Jonathan Prull is a multidisciplinary artist who received his BFA from the University of Rhode Island and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. His artwork integrates his interests in sculpture, film, and traditional storytelling.

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Nick Paparone: Bacchanal-Tootsie Roll Whip

Nick Paparone presents a new exhibition of work titled Bacchanal- Tootsie Roll Whip. The artist continues an ongoing survey of social conventions, values and rituals. Using a showcase like display, typical within institutions, convention centers and subculture events, notions of preservation, fantasy and memorial pervade. Bacchanal-Tootsie Roll Whip immerses bikini tops, shiny silver, event parking, and candy coated wheels into a pit of achievement and failure.

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Jamie Dillon: A Better Day is Coming

Jamie Dillon's first solo exhibition at Vox Populi, A Better Day Is Coming, brings materials together in a culmination of sound and sculpture to produce objects with great potential. In this euphoric moment of togetherness, singing sculptures unite in a ceremonial moment of display. Cultural trends and the notion of change slip into a candle-lit dialogue full of car stereo bass and melting brains.

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Vox Alumni Present: One Gray Grass in the Ball Field

For this September’s exhibition, Vox revives a great 90’s tradition: the group theme show. One Gray Grass in the Ball Field assigns artists with a simple mission: to create the feeling of a county fair art exhibition. The idea for One Gray Grass in the Ball Field was forged through the friendly bond between Shannon Bowser, Joy Feasley, Paul Swenbeck and Clint Takeda. An earlier Vox exhibition called Doohickey Lodge became the inspiration for this group to pitch in and buy a three-season cottage in Northport ME. 4-H clubs and country fairs like the Common Ground Fair in Liberty, Maine, serve as a model for the aesthetic view of the show. The artists involved are sampled from a group of artists that cut their teeth in the mid-nineties when John Cage was still around to be mortified by our tributes to his Yoda-like art practice. Invited artists include David Wickland, Jen Macdonald, Kait Midgett, Nick Muellner, Richard Harrod and Tristin Lowe. Following in the footsteps of past Vox exhibitions like Elf Portraits and New Nihilism Now, this show will be a chaotic melange of handicraft and poetry, “fine art” and pies.

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The opening will feature a most yummy pie competition at 9pm (please bring your most delicious contribution) and a judging of the artworks for merit in multiple categories. Please come, don’t make us say: YOU JUST MISSED PIES

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N THE VIDEO LOUNGE

Janna Holmstedt: The Construction of Landscapes

In the photographic diptych, The Construction of Landscapes, we see a park-like area, which is situated in the large residential district of LasnamŠe in Tallinn, Estonia. When the suburb was built, it was a former dumpsite from Soviet times – a big open space with no name – a culture-nature-culture takeover in the making. The diptych is accompanied by the video The Last Journey of the Wanderer. In this documented intervention, as well as in the photographs, the famous RŸkenfigur of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) is used.

Holmstedt lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. She graduated 2004 with an M.F.A from UmeΠAcademy of Fine Arts. Recent awards include Nordic Culture Point (2008), Artist-in-Residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, USA (2007), IASPIS International Exchange (2006), Swedish Visual Arts Fund, project grant (2005), NIFCA, Nordic Artist-in-Residence, Tallinn, Estonia (2005). She has exhibited internationally and writes articles for cultural magazines in Sweden and abroad.

Together with Po Hagstrom she is part of the artist duo Trial and Error (www.trialerror.org). They work with questions related to national identity, narrative monuments and the use of public space. The duo was formed in 2005 when the project ”Monument for the Masses” was first conceived, this in response to a huge monument which is going to be erected in Tallinn, Estonia. Holmstedt is also cofounder and project manager of SQUID (www.squidproject.net), a continuously growing, online archive of texts written by cultural producers. SQUID is represented in Collaborative Practice Archive hosted by Shedhalle, Zurich and Traveling Magazine Table, initiated by Nomads & Residents, and has been invited to Pro Arte Institute in St. Petersburg, Manifesta 6 in Nicosia, Cyprus and by the Russian work group Chto delat? to contribute to their newspaper as part of the Documenta Magazine Project.

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AT SCREENING

Michael Bell-Smith: On the Grid

Screening is proud to kick off its Fall exhibition schedule with Michael Bell-Smith’s On the Grid. Bell- Smith’s minimal computer animation presents an endless cityscape scrolling continuously across the screen like the backdrop of an early arcade game. Bringing to mind the expansive future-noir cityscapes of Blade Runner, the crisp, glowing and perfect geometries of Tron and the microarchitecture of circuit boards, On the Grid points towards a geography defined by technology. On the Grid is Michael Bell-Smith’s first gallery exhibition in Philadelphia.

Michael Bell-Smith's work-in animation, video, web sites, pictures, and audio-explores the ways in which technology mediates culture and personal experience. Recent exhibitions and screenings have taken place at the MusŽe d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; and Galeri F15, Moss, Norway. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Time Out New York, and Artnet and was included in the recent exhibition The Cinema Effect at The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C.