3 Artists, Many Stories – The 39th Annual Wind Challenge Art Exhibition
By A.M. Weaver
September 28, 2016
Now in its 39th year, Fleisher Art Memorial's Wind Challenge exhibition series is still going strong. A.M. Weaver reviews this year's offerings. – Artblog Editor
The works of emerging/mid career artists Amber Johnston, Brian Richmond, and Michelle Marcuse in the current Wind Challenge Exhibition at the Fleisher Art Memorial represent a small sampling by these notable Philadelphia artists. But a sense of their chosen direction is evident. This may not be the strongest Challenge show ever, taking into consideration it is the 39th year, but there is much fodder for discussion and at the opening the air was buzzing with questions and commentary about these three distinct personal narratives.
Found objects, childhood memories
Having found her voice as a sculptor–after many years of working in encaustic painting–Michelle Marcuse builds on a modernist paradigm of the found object, while hedging on global issues of repurposing and recycling materials. In her case, she makes use of discarded cardboard.
The artist revealed during her artist talk at the exhibit’s opening reception that her early childhood memories were source material for the drawings and three sculptures on display. The structures, seen in the round and suspended on the wall made exclusively of cardboard, are crudely constructed, alluding to the source of her inspiration–Johannesburg shantytowns. The artist intimated that as a child she felt like a voyeur into a world she did not completely understand. Now, the images of these towns loom large in Marcuse’s psyche and represent the inequity of existence in apartheid South Africa that separated whites, blacks, and coloreds. After a gestation period of decades, Marcuse in her past and current work traverses psychoanalytic landscapes of dreams and memories.
As a mature artist, Marcuse plays with formal elements of composition; however, she seems to invite close scrutiny of the rough-hewn quality of the construction, even emphasizing that aspect. On viewing Marcuse’s “Signs of Compromise” (2016), these two art world masterworks come to mind: Duchamp’s “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even” (1915-1923) and Vladimir Tatlin’s tower, “Monument to the Third International” (1920). To say Marcuse’s work hearkens back to another era is not a bad thing–after all, these are titans in the annals of art history. She has found a material that transcends its humble origin in an attempt to create works that are substantial and nuanced and that move toward the monumental. Marcuse is definitely onto something that greatly expands her visual vocabulary!
A great experiment, the Samuel Fleisher Art Memorial has for 118 years promoted making art accessible for all regardless of class, economic means, or artistic acumen. The Wind Challenge Exhibition, in its 39th year, is off to a grand start with the current iteration of the administration under the leadership of Elizabeth Grimaldi. However, let’s not forget the innumerable artists who have graced the walls of the Fleisher Art Memorial, from Bo Bartlett to Virgil Marti, who have continued to make exceptional art. Johnston, Richmond, and Marcuse join an illustrious group of artists who have contributed to Philadelphia’s cultural history.