After the jump: Bambi Pig Irons it to the PEOPLE!

Come On Down… To Bambi’s Playhouse…

Mark Mothersbaugh’s got his fingers in too many sweet lil’ pies to count, and if you fit nicely into the approximate demographic readership of this blog chances are you already dig all of them. Devo, check. Pee-wee’s Playhouse, check(ed). Wes Anderson film soundtracks, check. Cereal commercial jingles with subliminal messaging that sugar is bad for you, check. But it turns out that the dude also has an incredible back catalog of visual art that he has been organizing into shows for years. Makes sense to us considering all those brilliantly bizarre Devo videos which pre-date MTV by a decade, and that were made because the Kent State musicians already totally got the connections between music, visual art and technology. Enter the artistically altered post card as diary and it’s easy to see how Mothersbaugh’s mail-art has been a de-evolution as well. Starting out as simple notes from the road home, when collected they serve as a personal assemblage of memoir and social commentary all filtered through the U.S. Postal system and now expertly curated for you in the comfort of your own Frankford Arts Corridor. Opening tonight Bambi invites you to bring your own Chairry!

Edna Andrade Gets Ready to Die?

The native Philadelphian Op art doyenne Edna Andrade celebrated her 90th birthday this year by basking in the much-deserved glow of a late-career resurgence. With a recent solo show at Locks Gallery, and a retrospective of her works on paper currently on view at the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill, her major Optical art paintings, which combine simple hard-edged geometric forms and lines into illusory, and sometimes hallucinatory, compositions are getting the recognition and finally commanding the prices they deserve. Andrade was quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer “I have been busy as a bird dog trying to get rid of my stuff, and trying to get ready to die,” she stated from her assisted living complex, “I made more money this year than I ever made. I think people are finally catching up with me.” Having referred to her work in the past as being a populist viewers experience, which has the same effect on everyone since it depends on geometry and the physiology of perception, we agree. Everyone, even the color blind, even Uncle Sam can get it. It‚Äôs true Edna, people are finally catching up to you, and they should be, but it‚Äôs tax time Baba so‚Ķ. shhhh, that‚Äôs good‚Ķ‚Ķ drink your juice.

Jenny Kanzler at Gallery 201: Dead Babies and Beauty

Dead baby jokes are always a gamble. Piles of dead baby paintings however, if executed well, are potentially less offensive. But Jenny Kanzler’s Creepy Sweet show, closing tonight, at Gallery 201 has much more depth than some dark quip. A dusty luster of hazy tumbling imagery and still portraiture, elapse in dream like sequence through each frame, many of which look like they take place in the cloudy basement of a house with a pretty pastel color scheme. The change purse full of cicadas lends itself to the same Mrs. Havisham style of vintage eerie allure that makes you want to know more about the narrative that brought these images together.

Pig Iron? Don’t Mind If I Do…

Now through April 15th, Pig Iron Theater Company invites you to their newest world premier by stating: If you’ve never seen four multitalented thirty-something male actors working through complex psychological material, careening between trancelike dances, perception experiments, and full-throttle hilarity all while still in their skivvies, now’s your chance. (Don‚Äôt they know we have? We ride Septa occasionally.) Part laboratory, part vaudeville theater, Chekhov Lizardbrain pulls inspiration from doctor/playwright Anton Chekhov and the “Three Brain” theory of Paul D. MacLean, to peel back the layers of the human mind. In long underwear, don‚Äôt forget. Seem like a dense bit to swallow? Don‚Äôt worry the massive bottles of Zelta at the bar in the basement are good for at least two acts, you‚Äôll have to get a second to quench that third brain of yours though.

The Much Needed Voice Of The People Returns

Without the fanfare of a grand re-opening in their new space, Vox Populi proves that they can continue to do what they do best: consistently provide an important venue (no matter where they are) for ambitious experimental new work, while keeping their profile on point and on radar. Works that flesh out and roll around in defining a new space, such as Roxana Perez-Mendez’s New Espacio, which addresses the idea of reverse colonization; while Stefan Abrams’s InSite presents a body of work where the activity of looking becomes the subject. Welcome back peoples voice, we missed seeing all you had to say.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2007 at 1:04 pm.