Here is an amazing collection of openings are happening for this coming First Friday, October 3rd, 2014. Don't stay home...go out and live in the art scene!

CRUXspace
700 W. Master Street Philadelphia, PA


Opening Reception: Friday, October 3 @ 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm

CRUX space, Philadelphia’s only New Media Art gallery will open its doors on October 3rd. Founded by Andrew Cameron Zahn (UArts MFA '13), CRUX space is not only a gallery space with work influenced by and created with technology, but a space for experimental projects to be born. Philadelphia’s only space dedicated to the vast field of technological art and design opens its doors. Featuring monthly shows, CRUX will have an ongoing lineup of the best in New Media art and design. This exhibition investigates the good and the troublesome, with suggestions towards how we can design our technologies for a better future.

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NAPOLEON



319 N 11th Street, 2L
Philadelphia, PA

Holding Our Own - H. John Thompson
Opening Reception: Friday, October 3 @ 6 pm - 10 pm
Exhibition: October 3 - October 30, 2014

Linking the enigmatic accounts of an airline hijacker known under the alias “D.B. Cooper” and the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, Holding Our Own cites incidents of evasion and distress while contemplating a manhunt and a rescue search from unverifiable points-of-view.

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Practice319 N 11th Street, 2 fl.
Philadelphia, PA

Long Hidden Friend - Nick Lenker 
Opening Reception: Friday, October 3 @ 6 pm - 10 pm
Exhibition: October 3 - November 1, 2014

Nick Lenker and PRACTICE invite you to interpret a video installation best seen after a long, cold winter, in which 3 people died, 2 by their own hand, 1 by yours, 2 were friends, the other a stranger.  Nick Lenker’s new work borrows its title from the 1820 book The Long-Lost Friend, a collection of herbal formulas and magical prayers gathered by John George Hohman, a Pennsylvania Dutch healer. . Shrouded in mystery, Lenker’s work never tells all the answers but provides a tantalizing puzzle for viewers to interpret.

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Vox Populi Gallery
319 N 11th Street, 3L

Philadelphia, PA

Opening Reception: Friday, October 3 @ 6 pm - 10 pm

Beat Your Alter - Mark Stockton 

Beat Your Altar is a drawing-based installation that continues to build on my interest in individualism. Stockton creates a visually inverted space in which preliminary sketches have been scaled to the size of the gallery walls, and the final rendered drawings are small enough to collapse within a pedestal in the center of the gallery. Subjectively, this group of work is random and non-contiguous. It absorbs a myriad of subjects that have randomly entered my sphere of interest and influence. Personal connections are embedded but not important. The work defies genre; it spans portraiture, still life, abstraction and landscape.

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Axon Ladder - Catherine Pancake
In Axon Ladder, the dancer’s cinematic body is both conceptual and experiential. The piece changes the relational framework of Foley’s choreography by dividing up the perceived and idiosyncratic ends of a given movement. In so doing, it changes how the movement is read as material and its incremental parts and overall “shape.” One might ask how choreographic shape and definition function in this “outer” space where the body is weighted and weightless. The dance piece becomes a functional visual motion study as well as aesthetic material.

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Dream House - Erin Murray, Edward Murray
This exhibition, Dream House, is a way to bring limited realization to this alternate timeline
for our family. In a way, it is a gift to the architect. A way to engage and remember, to heal
and maintain. An excuse to trespass together. In another way, a man’s soul is revealed;
the unrealized plans themselves evidence of a life gone off track. The naive romanticism
and naked symbolism, both embarrasses and endears. In fact, the show reveals more than
a little of myself; my interest in the embodied information of the built environment, a
tendency toward anthropomorphization and melodrama in my work, and my own home’s
outsized status in my life.


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Hyperpyrexic - Alexander Rosenberg
Alexander Rosenberg is a Philadelphia-based artist and educator. He received a BFA in glass from Rhode Island School of Design and Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT. His artistic practice is rooted in the study of glass as a material, in conjunction with broad interdisciplinary investigation crossing over into many other media and areas of research.

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Pentimenti Gallery
145 N. Second Street
Philadelphia, PA215.625.9990

Complementary Colors  - Peter Combe, Alexis Grantwell, Clint Jukkala, Donald Martiny
Opening Reception: Friday, October 3 @ 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Complementary Colors make a strange pair. They are opposite, yet they require each other. They incite each other to maximum vividness when together; and annihilate each other when mixed.  Complementary Colors  will display the works of four artists exploring their own individual interpretation of complementary colors and what the phrase means to them.

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PAFA Presents Eiko: A Body in Places
30th Street Station / Main Waiting Room
Philadelphia, PA

Eiko: A Body in Places
Performance: Friday, October 3 @ 12:00 am - 3:00 pm - Free

A four-part series of three-hour performances conceived and performed by Eiko, A Body in a Station will take place in two waiting terminals of Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, on October 3, 10, 17, and 24, 2014. “I am scared but excited about performing alone for as many as twelve hours at a train station. I have never dreamt of being a soloist before,” says Eiko. “I saw that people at 30th Street Station are alone, going somewhere or waiting to go somewhere. Many are busy with cell phones. Sitting in the train station, I had an epiphany. I want to perform here alone. I want to exchange a gaze with viewers. A simple set. An odd, but beautiful costume. A body and mind very exposed…I want to embody the sense of nakedness, feebleness of a human and the solitude of an artist.”

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Muse Gallery
52 North Second Street
Old City, Philadelphia 19106
215. 627. 5310

In Reverse - Terri Fridkin
Opening Reception: Friday, October 3 @ 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Muse Gallery will feature “In Reverse”, an exhibit of works by Terri Fridkin.  The foundation of Terri’s  hand-pulled prints are structure, pattern, line and color.  They are simple yet complex, bold yet subtle and resist a specific meaning. Terri Fridkin is a printmker/mixed media artist who lives and works in the philadelphia area. This fueled her lifelong passion for art.
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Locks Gallery
600 Washington Square South
Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-629-1000

Allusion - John Moore  
Opening Reception: Friday, October 3 @ 5:  - 7:30 pm
Exhibition: October 3 - Nov 8, 2014

Moore’s masterful paintings edge on acute realism but seldom reveal what is actually there. Collecting fleeting moments of ephemeral lighting, or taking disparate elements of different views to make one place, Moore weaves his observed perspectives into psychologically charged scenes. Through the work, he both examines and elevates his historic and post-industrial surroundings where his studio is located in Frankford, Philadelphia. Here, Moore offers a contemporary perspective in dialogue with the legacy of early 20th century American precisionist painting. Now a city deeply in flux, Moore embodies the current transformation of Philadelphia in his reimagined scenes that depict both urban ruin and a transcendent beauty.

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First Friday

First Friday Gallery Openings

Every first Friday of the month art galleries are open to the public in Philadelphia. It’s a free must-see cultural art experience for students to engage with the contemporary art scene. Here’s a listing of some
recommendations for current First Friday galleries for Friday, September 5^th.


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Pentimenti Gallery
145 North Second Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:30 - 8:30 PM 

Logical Thinking; Illogical Thoughts 
Simeen Farhat - Sculptures & Installation 

Words borrowed from poetry in English, expressing logic and philosophy, and about life, Farhat’s sculptures are constructed with urethane cast-resin, which are intertwined into forms with undeniable rhythmic and directional force. In her own words, Farhat explains, “My objective in choosing those words is to show the essence of their message through abstraction;  by using overlapping shapes and lines which create tension and movement and stir up emotions”.

Transferable Views 
Franco Mueller - Paintings, Works on Paper & Installation 

There is a dialogue that exists within the works of Franco Mueller. It is a quiet conversation between shape and space. These paintings and works on paper depict how space holds a shape and how shape holds the space. A partially illuminated background is silent. Mueller builds his paintings with layer upon layer of thin acrylic paint and his works on paper with layers of charcoal and acrylic paint. As each layer permeates on another, a “disturbed surface structure” begins to evolve. 

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

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:00 – 11:00 PM 

Vox Populi is an artist collective that works to support the challenging and experimental work of under-represented artists with monthly exhibitions, gallery talks, performances, lectures, and related programming. 

Room for the Whole Wide World
Elisa Gabor, Sanaz Mazinani, Anna Neighbor, Sarah Palmer, Elisabeth Tonnard

Room for the Whole Wide World offers five artists’ findings from the field of abstraction, using ideas rooted in photography as a starting point. Within these artworks abstraction is a viable method for discovering larger truths and mapping our desires.

Still Wearing Each Other When Alone
Jordan Artim, Anthony Cudahy, Aimee Goguen, Matt Morris, Mathew Parkin

Be my Jordan, and I’ll be your Pippen. Be my Mulder, and I’ll be your Scully. Be my Jenko, and I’ll be your Schmidt. Be my Bill, and I’ll be your Ted. Be my residue, and I’ll be your mirror.

“…we shall find out when the light returns what the new season means / when others’ interpretations have gotten back up onto the pedestals we gave them / so long as we are still wearing each other when alone”
                                                                                                                                      

-Frank O’Hara

Between a rock and a hard place.
Laura Bernstein, Lydia Hardwick, Rachel Rotenberg

Between a rock and a hard place. offers a sculptural conversation between three female artists. Their works operate as the remnants from an otherworldly archaeological dig, marked with the indelible imprint and purposeful grace of their three makers. At their core, these are non-functional yet social objects: acknowledging or denying the body, embodying complex human relationships, and birthed through intuition and memory.

Errata
Micah Danges, Luke Stettner

Errata is a two-person show. Stettner’s work for this exhibition includes small photographs, fruit pits, drawings on blackboard surfaces, graphite-rubbed wood frames, and paintings that reference an enigmatic and nearly recognizable grammatical language. Each is a study in essentialism. Danges’ work for this exhibition includes several photo-based collages that explore surface, texture and placement, and are each derived from one of two single images of a greenhouse.

Fourth Wall
Fourth Wall at Vox Populi presents new works chosen by a group of professionals from various locations and backgrounds. Each month, one of these curators will present the work of an experimental artist working in video, film, animation, or new media in the Vox Populi Project Space.

Harvest

Chaja Hertog, Nir Nadler - Video

An abnormal phenomenon occurs in an olive grove as one of the trees evokes an uprising. Inspired by the ancient olive harvesting methods in which aggression and cultivation come together, the film portrays the absurdity of enforced ideologies and the impossibility of taming the wild.

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NAPOLEON 
319 North 11th Street
2^nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:00 – 10:00 PM 

devynn emory’s Personal Public: On Gender Variance in Performance Art

September’s exhibition examines the importance of asserting gender identification in art, particularly in performance art where the body is a fundamental part of the work and the artist invites the viewer into this personal, physical space. In conversation with and through investigation of the work of devynn emory, a dancer and choreographer based in New York, the exhibition considers queer performance and its influence on social structures.

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Marginal Utility



319 North 11th Street
2^nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:00 – 10:00 PM 

Le Horla

Wenxing Ding, Virginia Fleming, Mariel Herring, Adam Lovitz, Scott Schultheis and C.J. Stahl

The title of the exhibition references Guy de Maupassant’s short story in which the protagonist witnesses the passing of a strange ship along a familiar waterway, and begins to experience haunting hallucinations. Written in diary form, Le Horla chronicles the anxiety of an individual whose perception of reality has become ungrounded. With an inability to control his most intimate settings, familiar objects and spaces become actors in discorporate narratives.

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Practice
319 North 11th Street
2^nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:30 – 8:30 PM 

Hominine
Andrew Brehm

Hominine takes viewers cave-deep into a prehistoric lovers-stalemate through sculptures and live audio works. Hominine is installation as a sitcom of objects, each part humorously lampooning the eternal struggle of long-term relationships, investment strategies, and modernization. Join the artist for two live-reading performances on opening night or enjoy the sculpture as a recording throughout the month of August.    

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Grizzly Grizzly
319 North 11th Street
2^nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 6:00 – 10:00 PM 

‘Cut & Paste’
Jenny McGee Dougherty, Selena Kimball, Tyler Starr

McGee Dougherty's subtle works transcend the parameters of both fiber and paper by collecting marks, scruffs and textures.  She then translates these impressions into a visual narrative of her surroundings. “I read the paper every morning but never finish it.” admits Selena Kimball.  Instead she reworks the pages’ images, texts, crinkles and stains to fashion new histories from the recent past. Tyler Starr's mixed media works investigate the history of geographical sites where an unsolved tragedy has occurred. Basing his collages in research gathered from sensationalized journalism.

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Locks Gallery
600 Washington Square South

Philadelphia, PA 19106  

ARTIST RECEPTION: Friday, September 5, 5:30 – 7:30 PM 

Locks gallery exhibition program presents new works by mid-career artists while introducing the work of emerging artists to a national audience. Survey and thematic exhibitions of work by essential artists of the 20th-century including Louise Bourgeois, Robert Motherwell, Louise Nevelson and George Segal, are regular highlights of the gallery exhibition program.

Forest Park
Virgil Marti

Marti will bring together new works with other recontextualized projects, highlighting his own investigation of the sublime and romanticism throughout history. Marti’s art merges his passion for Americana with his distinctive explorations of the world of domestic interiors.