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

NOVEMBER AT VOX POPULI

Vox Populi is pleased to announce November’s exhibitions. Featured in the galleries are Vox artists Kara Crombie, Micah Danges, and Andrew Suggs. The Video Lounge features William Lamson’s Hunt and Gather, and in the 4th room, Magic Magic, with Vox alumni Justin Witte and Olivia Schreiner.

Kara Crombie
Born In The Grave

If you had been born
Right in the grave
Think of all the time
You would have saved
All the people you wouldn’t have to know
All of the places you wouldn’t have to go
-Matt Osborne, “Born in the Grave”

The aesthetics of Kara Crombie's video are often inspired by art outside the medium - contemporary German photography, or the paintings of Francis Bacon, for example. Meanwhile her narrative interests, inspired by mainstream film and popular music, lean toward dark comedy and human relationships. As a musician who produces her own soundtracks, her work is also particularly invested in sound design and music as a narrative strategy. In her most recent work, Born in the Grave, actors and real couples face off in psychedelic Baconian rooms floating in an urban outer space inhabited by party ghosts and late night loners. All struggle just to feel not alone in being alone.

Kara Crombie received her BA in Photography and Art History from the University of Pittsburgh while competing on Pitt's NCAA Division I Women's Swim Team. Her event was the 200 backstroke. After school she pursued a rock and roll career for a couple of years before returning to school to earn her MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her instrument was the guitar. Since then she has focused on video art and has screened her work nationally in galleries and film festivals. She lives in Philadelphia.

Micah Danges
Lands End

For his November Show at Vox Populi, Micah Danges presents Lands End.

Micah creates a collage of imaginary worlds, whose origins are inspired from everyday objects and spaces both found in natural and man-made environments. He examines concerns of desolation, mysticism, communication and psychedelia. These inspirations are based on both formal ideas and curiosity that define these fantasy narratives. Danges received his BFA from Kutztown University and has been a member of the artist collective Vox Populi since 2005. His work has been exhibited widely in Philadelphia, Chicago, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Washington D.C. and can be found in collections in New York City and Singapore. The artist lives and works in Philadelphia.

Andrew Suggs
MEME

In MEME, Suggs presents a series of new sculptural/installation works in which he creates framed mise-en-scenes that serve as metaphors for understanding past events and the ideas, behaviors, gestures, fashions, and practices associated with their reception. He continues to draw on imagery, sound, and moving images from the recent past and investigates how future generations draw on these cultural artifacts through snippets, quotes and scenes – continually reframing and creating new understandings of our historical and contemporary cultural fabric.

Suggs received his BA from Harvard University in 2005. He lives and works in Philadelphia, where is the Executive Director of Vox Populi. Recent exhibition venues include Repetti Gallery (Long Island City, New York), ThreeWalls (Chicago, Illinois), The Galleries at Moore (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), and Publico (Cincinnati, Ohio).

IN THE FOURTH ROOM
Vox Alumni Present:
Magic Magic

Magic Magic is a collaboration between the artists Justin Witte and Olivia Schreiner. Taking its name from the illusion and mystery of paint, Magic Magic contains paintings that highlight the infinite possibilities for “magic” within a repeated structure. Magic is here defined as the moments within painting that defy an immediate understanding and create wonder and questioning in the viewer and maker alike.

In an attempt to find these points of magic within painting Witte and Schreiner have created a number of paintings and works on paper based on their interpretations of several snapshots taken during shared travels. The images have been altered and simplified according to the interests of each artist thus creating a platform to explore the painted space where there is a fluctuation between imagery and abstraction, focus and expansion, illusion and material.

Additional upcoming Vox alumni exhibitions:
January 9 - March 1: Merrilee Challiss, Anne Schaefer and John Lange
May 1- June 28: Joseph Hu and Mauro Zamora

IN THE VIDEO LOUNGE
William Lamson
Hunt and Gather

Over the last year Lamson has been working on a series of photographs and videos that engage with the urban landscape by making temporary sculptures in the street with found objects and inexpensive materials.

William Lamson is a Brooklyn based artist who works in video, photography, performance and sculpture. His work addresses issues of masculinity, amateurism, science, play and the quixotic quest for personal heroism that accompanies these subjects. He received his MFA from Bard in 2006 and his BA from Dartmouth in 2000. His work has been shown at P.S.1, The Brooklyn Museum, Pierogi Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe among others.

SCREENING
Mark Lewis

Screening is proud to present the work of London-based filmmaker Mark Lewis. With technical dexterity and formal clarity more common to commercial cinema and television, Lewis positions cinematic narrative as a function of the mechanics of cinematic production. Working with 35mm film (later transferred to video), professional camera crews and lighting, Lewis employs the devices of mainstream movie-making to reveal their roles in creating the very meaning conveyed by moving-images. For Lewis, formal context is a powerful force—our understanding of the moving images is guided not solely by narrative structures, but is shaped quite deftly by a careful move of the camera that reframes our view of the world.

Now based in London, Lewis has exhibited his work extensively at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, The Vancouver Art Gallery, Tate Britain (London), The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Gwangju Biennale (Korea), Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva.