“I’m new to Philadelphia and I am still discovering the arts scene: its spaces and venues, the community formed here. Tiger Strikes Asteroid (TSA) is one of the most compelling spaces I have ever encountered—and as an artist who has contributed to artist-run spaces, I have a particular fondness and respect for the unique possibilities they provide.”
Anne Schaefer: What You Couldn’t Plan For
May 4th– June 2nd, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, May 4th, 6pm-10pm
Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 2pm-6pm and by appointment
(484)-469-0319, tigerstrikesasteroid@gmail.com
Anne Schaefer: What you couldn’t plan for
May 4 - 27, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, May 4, 6pm-10pm
PHILADELPHIA- Tiger Strikes Asteroid is pleased to announce the opening of our May exhibition, What you couldnʼt plan for, featuring works by TSA member Anne Schaefer. This will be Schaeferʼs second solo exhibition with the gallery.
May seems perfect timing for Anne Schaeferʼs new prints and approach to object making. The works in this exhibition are a departure from her recent installations that are rooted in years of rigorous study that employ finely tuned, precise decisions concerning color and form. The new works breath fresh air into the remnants that mark her studio process. The works are like Spring cuttings, arranged in a vase that offer the viewer a glimpse into the artistʼs atelier.
A visit to Schaeferʼs workspace reveals ghost like prints on walls and a collection of textured tape clusters. In her hands, by-products are transformed into delicately bundled, layered images. Pedestal-like elements grow roots and break away from rectilinear confines and flirt with more complex rhizomatic geometry. They are reminders of past works that have been grafted to each other, creating new possibilities for growth and expansion.
Michael Macfeat: BAR SINISTER
April 6 – 29, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, March 2, 6pm-10pm
PHILADELPHIA- Tiger Strikes Asteroid is pleased to announce the opening of its April exhibition, Bar Sinister, featuring works by Michael Macfeat, curated by TSA member, Terri Saulin.
Michael Macfeat’s prints and sculptures in Bar Sinister concern themselves with the issue of color, one through artifice and the other through the natural process of patina and entropy. They bracket the temporal extremes of twenty years of Macfeat’s oeuvre. An ambiguity of meaning is apparent. Neither the sculptures nor the images are obvious but often stem from his life long love affair with reading. They rely on Macfeat’s history as a bibliophile, accumulating and cultivating a compendium of quotes both visual and verbal. They become color coded strategic military maps drawn from his interest in ‘Pataphysics, the Situationists and Psychogeography. Once codes are cracked and coordinates deciphered, the connection modulates between the Dialectical Materialism of the Arte Povera group and an intellectual stroll through the arcades with the flâneurs, leisurely walking lobsters at the end of the leash. Allow yourself ample time to savor and linger over beautifully turned words and ideas.
Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 2pm-6pm and by appointment
(484)-469-0319, tigerstrikesasteroid@gmail.com
promo: Bar Sinister from Timothy Buckwalter on Vimeo.
“If anything, Macfeat’s design intrigues are refreshing. The room is calming, and even when the words cause distress, there is neither immediacy nor urgency. While outside content is present, color and form are the pinnacles of this show. Macfeat very much succeeds in saying more by using less.”
[MICHAEL MACFEAT’S “BAR SINISTER” AT TIGER STRIKES ASTEROID, BY CHIP SCHWARTZ]
Tiger Strikes Asteroid will be CLOSED on Sunday, April 8th. If you’d like to see the show this weekend, please join us for the opening on Friday from 6pm-10pm or during our gallery hours on Saturday from 2pm-6pm.
Michael Macfeat: BAR SINISTER
April 6 – 29, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, March 2, 6pm-10pm
Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 2pm-6pm and by appointment
(484)-469-0319, tigerstrikesasteroid@gmail.com
Jaime Alvarez: Memento
March 2 - April 1, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, March 2, 6pm-10pm
PHILADELPHIA‐ Tiger Strikes Asteroid is pleased to announce its March 2012 exhibition, Memento, the first solo exhibition by TSA member Jaime Alvarez.
Alvarez’s work explores particular details of icons that function within a larger established structure or ideology. He examines and subverts the idea of memory encapsulated within objects, which share an established history of decorative use.
“In allegory, the vision of the reader is larger than the vision of the text; the reader dreams to an excess, to an overabundance. To read an allegorical narration is to see beyond the relations of narration, character, desire. To read allegory is to live in the future, the anticipation of closure, beyond the closure of narrative.” ‐ Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection
Memento is a collection of one hundred framed photographs of second hand souvenirs. The figurines have been painted black, lit, and photographed from the rear or three quarters view, denying the viewer the “familiar” frontal view of the objects. Alvarez’s manipulation liberates the figurines, freeing them of past associations. The once ubiquitous statuettes are transformed into a sublime tableau. The objects speak a completely new language. Imbued with emotion, they become powerful talismans, gazing into the void.
Jaime Alvarez received his MFA from Cranbrook University & his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. He has been a member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid since 2011.
Jaime Alvarez: Memento
March 2 - April 1, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, March 2, 6pm-10pm
Matthew Sepielli: Cathedral
February 3 - 26, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, February 3, 6pm-10pm
PHILADELPHIA- Tiger Strikes Asteroid is pleased to announce its February 2012 exhibition, Cathedral, a project by Matthew Sepielli.
Though conceived as a cohesive project, the exhibit will have two distinctive parts; ten carved white paintings made of plaster on linen in the main gallery and a film in the gallery’s closet space.
Cathedral draws its inspiration from many different sources. Thoughts of sitting in a quiet church in the evening, watching the sun set in the winter and memories of walking in the woods late at night are all moments that are a part of its creation.
In addition, two different writers and their works have played an enormous role in the conception of the exhibit: Raymond Carver and his short story, “Cathedral” and Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and his essay, “In Praise of Shadows”.
The paintings in the show will be hung high on the walls to reference cathedral windows. Along with this, the works in the show will only be lit by daylight, the indirect light of the building’s hallway and a small lamp on the gallery’s desk. Those who attend the gallery during daylight hours will see the works in more light; those who attend during evening hours or the opening will see the works in dimmer light.
In the gallery’s closet space will be a short film made by the artist.
Matthew Sepielli is an artist living in Philadelphia and a member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid.
“Sepielli’s main body of work over the past few years consists of paintings on canvas, carpets, and books, each with dozens of layers of paint cracking and blistering to an amazing textural effect. The works are abstract, even irregularly geometric, yet they seem to have more in common with Albert Pinkham Rider, the late 19th century American master of the pocked and fissured landscape painting, than they do with Paul Klee or contemporaries like Amy Sillman. The edges of Sepielli’s paintings are irregular gobs of paint clinging to a rectangle, and it is along these edges that viewers can unravel the history of each work’s making”
Matthew Sepielli: Cathedral
February 3 - 26, 2012
Opening reception: Friday, February 3, 6pm-10pm
“Unlike most artists who find out their exhibition date has been moved up five months, Philadelphia-based artist Matthew Sepielli was delighted: “I like the idea of it being a quiet show,” he says, referring to the exhibit’s tenure in the February drab. Like the winter months themselves, Sepielli’s exhibition of 10 paintings sculpted from white plaster will be dimly lit. Depending on the time of day or night, viewers will peer at these panels with little more than the aid of a single lamp. A looped video of a nighttime walk through a forest echoes the exquisite isolation evoked in the text from which Sepielli’s show takes its cue. Looking to Raymond Carver’s iconic short story, Cathedral (as well as Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows), Sepielli carved a single cathedral window into the plaster surface of each painting and hung the panels at a height and distance that suggests a cathedral’s nave. Contemplating these elliptical panels in the winter half-light, you may just notice a single orb making its slow ascent over the snowy surface of the plaster. Like Carver’s story, Sepielli’s Cathedral suggests that after all is said and done, there may be a glimmer of hope.”
“…one of the temple’s treasures, hanging in a large, deeply recessed alcove. So dark are these alcoves, even in bright daylight, that we can hardly discern the outlines of the work; all we can do is listen to the explanation of the guide.”
- Excerpt from Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s, “In Praise of Shadows”, 1933
“All right,” he said. “All right, let’s do her.”
He found my hand, the hand with the pen. He closed his hand over my hand. “Go ahead, bub, draw,” he said. “Draw. You’ll see. I’ll follow along with you. It’ll be okay. Just begin now like I’m telling you. You’ll see. Draw,” the blind man said.
So I began. First I drew a box that looked like a house. It could have been the house I lived in. Then I put a roof on it. At either end of the roof, I drew spires. Crazy.
“Swell,” he said. “Terrific. You’re doing fine,” he said. “Never thought anything like this could happen in your lifetime, did you, bub? Well, it’s a strange life, we all know that. Go on now. Keep it up.”
-Excerpt from Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral”, 1981
