Philadelphia has spawned its share of mysterious artists, certainly, but none has captured the imagination as the Philadelphia Wireman continues to do. Who was this anonymous artist, and why were nearly a thousand of his (or her) idiosyncratic bent-wire assemblages left spilling out of damp cardboard boxes on Juniper Street in South Philly?
Those questions are raised again in Fleisher/Ollman Gallery's "Things That Do," which pairs anonymous West African power objects with works by the Wireman and by self-taught artist Emery Blagdon, who died in 1986 and also worked in wire.
The man who found the Wireman's works one night in 1978 or '79 eventually took his finds to the Janet Fleisher Gallery in 1982 to show them to its director, John Ollman, an expert in American self-taught art and African art history. Ollman suggested that the anonymous artist who came to be known as the Philadelphia Wireman was black, because the neighborhood in which the objects were discovered was historically African American, and that he was most likely male because the heavy wires in his works appeared to have been bent largely by hand.
He also ventured that the artist had died or was uprooted by urban gentrification. But how to explain the colorful, calligraphic abstract ink marker drawings that were also retrieved from those boxes? Was the Wireman a trained artist after all, a casualty of some unknown force?
Seeing the Wireman's small, fetishistic assemblages (containing bottle caps, matchbooks, earrings, nails, and the like) in close proximity to the exhibition's carved-wood figures from Benin, some of which appear to be shackled and tied like slaves, the former speak of a similar, if abstracted, bondage, as if born of memories of oppression passed down over generations.
But the Wireman's works also hint at a knowledge of art (Joseph Cornell's magical boxes? John Chamberlain's crushed cars writ miniature?), as do the wire-and-found-object sculptures of Blagdon, a reclusive Nebraskan whose hanging constructions of wire immediately recall Alexander Calder's mobiles. One of this show's more tantalizing connections is the similarity of form shared by the West African Fon staffs and Blagdon and the Wireman's more attenuated pieces.
Is it any coincidence that Harry's Occult Shop on South Street, which opened for business in 1917 and still offers its white-magic cures, was within shouting distance of the Wireman's castoffs? I think not.
Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, 1616 Walnut St., 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays. 215-545-7562 or www.fleisher-ollmangallery.com. Through Dec. 10.
Trio
At least three galleries in Old City are currently home to solo shows of young artists whose works they have not previously exhibited in one-person exhibitions.
The front room at LGTripp Gallery, which is showing two newcomers, is dominated by Matthew Stemler's monumental, handsome painted wood construction Flotsam, which suggests a pier and bulwarks and indestructability more than the destruction and chaos its title would seem to imply. Stemler's small abstract drawings are more evocative of the overwhelming power of nature.
In the rear gallery, "John Doe Puzzles," Raphael Fenton-Spaid's series of candy-colored, multipanel portraits based on photographs of victims of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, suggests the prettifying of war for public consumption. By mounting his panels with spaces between them, Spaid has abstracted his images almost beyond recognition, though a nose or a mouth can suddenly, and disturbingly, come into focus.
Anna Bogatin's presentation at Larry Becker Contemporary Art demonstrates this artist's flexibility within her meditative practice of repeated forms. Among the 36 small paintings are Bogatin's luminous oil paintings of stacked horizontal strokes, her vertical acrylic-drip "Rain Paintings," and her delicate "Dot" paintings, whose overlapping networks of dots appear to oscillate. Though I always argue for succinctness, this show's extreme number of works suits their infinite markings.
110 Church Gallery has turned its space over to Jessica Hoffman, whose clever conceptual meditations on time and memory include a "slideshow" of images from found slides whose emulsion she has selectively scratched off; a split-screen video piece showing footage of school talent shows juxtaposed with Hoffman's imitations of them; and a wall installation of envelopes containing strands of Hoffman's hair, inspired by a box of love letters she found on the street.
LGTripp Gallery, 47 N. 2d St., 12 to 5 p.m. Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 215-923-3110 or www.lgtrippgallery.com. Through Nov. 26.
Larry Becker Contemporary Art, 43 N. 2d St., 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. www.artnet.com/lbecker.html or 215-925-5389. Through Nov. 26 (Bogatin will speak at the gallery on Nov. 14 at 4 p.m.).
110 Church Gallery, 110 Church St., 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays. www.heavybubble.com or 215-545-7531. Through Nov. 25.
