January 4–11, 1996
critic pick|art
If you’re planning to make the rounds during the first First Friday of 1996, here are a few shows to watch out for.
Pierre Baston’s photographs at October Gallery (217 Church St.) and Other Bloods at the Painted Bride (230 Vine St.) both address the lives of African-American men today — Baston through photos of the Million Man March, and OtherBloods through the work of six artists from NYC, Washington and New Jersey who came of age in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
The winners of the third annual Phila. International Contemporary Art Competition of Old City, or PICACOC III, will show their work at six participating galleries in the 2nd/ 3rd/ Arch area: Feduluv, Medici, Gallery Alexi, Pentimenti, Rodger LaPelleand Silicon, and at Cafe Einstein (208-10 Race). The estimable art critic and curator Judith Stein was this year’s juror.
Psychedelia, New Orleans, food packaging and a “Stuffed Elephant Lamp” figure in the show of new members’ works at Vox Populi (17-19 N. 3rd), while the member artists of another co-op, Zone One (Second Street Art Building, 139 N. 2nd), havegiven their January show the seasonally correct title of Resolutions. Also in the Second Street complex: Skirting the Issue: The Dress as Sculpture at Nexus, Standard Deviation at High Wire, and solo shows at the Clay Studio byMatthew Courtney and Yun Dong Nam.
Eileen Goodman’s large-scale watercolors will be displayed to good advantage in the wide open spaces of Locks Gallery (600 Washington Square South), in the first of two major shows this season by artists named Goodman (the other, a Sidney Goodmanretrospective, opens in February at the Art Museum).
And try to catch two shows that opened last year but continue through January: Stuart Rome’s photographs of Indonesia at Snyderman (303 Cherry St.) and the fascinatingly unclassifiable mixed-media works of Jim Hinz at Larry Becker (43 N. 2nd St.),nicely teamed with Michael Scheiner’s glass constructions and David Wickland’s paintings.