Contemporary Art Forum

This Thursday, June 5th, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Jenny Jaskey Gallery, 969 N. Second Street, there's going to be a discussion about contemporary art featuring NYC artist Matthew Fisher, Becky Kerlin, the Director of Gallery Joe, and Robert Cozzolino, the Curator of Modern Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. It should be fun and informative, so, make it if you can.

I've crafted the following write-up about the current exhibition at the gallery formerly known as Tower:

Graphite is finally the bride in "The Drawing Narrative" at the Jenny Jaskey Gallery where milky smooth shades of grey glide you through tiny windows into unusual worlds of stilted beasts, shameful nudes, and endless oceans. If you don't think pictures can tell stories, you'll be hard-pressed to resume after encountering Rob Matthews' tender compositions that capture what Adam and Eve must've felt like the moment God said, "Hey, you're naked!"

Also in this garden of eccentric delights are the awkward and spatially eminent animals in Matthew Fisher's lightly drawn but extensively detailed works and the soul-slurping gaze of a boar's head hat in Charlotta Westergren's "Self-Portrait." The highlights are Rubens Ghenov's offbeat personal episodes dominated by dramatic silhouettes made with sumi ink and Robyn O'Neil's center-less, swirling bodies. You'll have to find spectacle elsewhere but intricacy and intimacy have a cozy home here.

Drawing by Rubens Ghenov
charcoal, sumi ink and pencil on paper
2008

The gallery's website is www.jennyjaskey.com

Thanks for reading!