Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates: The "Best" Phlower Power Window
February–April 2007

Virgil Marti: Bullies
January–April 2007

Tristin Lowe: Dumbo
January–April 2007

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to present new installations by contemporary artists in the storefront windows at 1222 Arch Street. These artist windows give FWM its first-ever street presence in Philadelphia. Currently on view, Virgil Marti's Bullies, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates' "Best" Phlower Power Window, and Tristin Lowe's Dumbo, as well as an installation of red objects from the FWM Shop, in conjunction with Simply Red, and a video about FWM.

Marti's Bullies wallpaper (1992/2007), mounted under black light, repeats yearbook photos of leering adolescent boys across a garish toile pattern. Bullies evokes both the proverbial high school "boy's room" and the ubiquitous black-lit night-club toilet facility, anonymous zones of male aggression and anxiety. Against the background of fluorescent garlands, the threat is gradually defused, and the stares seem to become melancholic, even precious: bullies turned wallflowers.

The stylized flowers in Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates' (VSBA's) "Best" Phlower Power Window were developed by Michael Wommack from Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's facade design for the Best Products building in Oxford Valley, Pennsylvania. The window won the Philadelphia Flower Show's "Most Innovative" award, and is part of VSBA's and FWM's long history of collaboration, which also includes several fabric designs, such as the flowered Grandmother (1983) fabric, as well as the 1998 Best Products flower installation in the stairway connecting FWM's 5th and 6th floors at 1315 Cherry Street.

Lowe's giant pink elephant, Dumbo (2001), visible through the glass door past the "jungle" of Venturi flowers, subtly breathes, inflating and deflating, calling to mind the concept of an "elephant in the room" and, the euphemism "seeing pink elephants." A driving impulse in Lowe's work is a desire to experiment with "non-art" materials (balloons, motors, kickballs filled with concrete) in part to unburden himself from the weight of art history, but also to intrigue, surprise, and challenge the viewer with the spectacle of these often awkward materials and ideas.

About the Artists
Born in Missouri in 1962, Virgil Marti currently lives and works in Philadelphia. He attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he completed a BFA in 1984, prior to earning an MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1990. Marti attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1990), and his awards include Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships (2005 and 2003), The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1997), and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (1995). An emerging talent of increasing national reputation, Marti has had solo exhibitions at Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC (2007); Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York (2006 and 2004); Memphis College of Art (2005); Santa Monica Museum of Art (2003); the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (2001); Thread Waxing Space, New York (1998); and White Columns, New York (1996), and his work has been acquired by major museums such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Based in Philadelphia, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown have been practicing architecture, writing critical architectural theory, and teaching together since the mid-1960s. Their award-winning work has influenced new generations of architects and designers, and includes building projects such as the Seattle Art Museum, a new wing for the National Gallery, London, Gordon Wu Hall at Princeton University. Their theoretical writing has been critical to the development and understanding of postmodern theory in architecture, and includes Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, and Learning from Las Vegas, which was written with their colleague Steve Izenour. Their four decades of architecture and design work was the subject of a 2001 exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with additional travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

Born in 1966, Tristin Lowe currently lives and works in Philadelphia. Lowe studied art at the Parsons School of Design in New York from 1984 until 1986, before moving to Boston to complete his BFA in sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art. Lowe's choice of materials has always been low-tech and low-brow; he has intentionally focused on crude materials and often crass ideas–a bed that continually wets itself or a foam figure that throws up on itself, as examples. Identifying with the clown, Lowe sees the archetype as having license to make a fool of himself, an association that, in turn, allowed Lowe as an artist to explore unorthodox new directions and materials in his work. It also relates to his interest in the risk-taking of authors allied with the Theater of the Absurd. Exhibitions of Lowe's work have been organized by Fleisher Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia (2006); Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2006); Vox Populi, Philadelphia (2004); the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia (1999); New Langton Arts in San Francisco (1998); and the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia (1996). He was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts Award in 1994.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum is the only contemporary art museum in the United States devoted to creating new work in fabric and other materials in collaboration with emerging and established artists from around the world. Founded in 1977, The Fabric Workshop and Museum has developed from an ambitious experiment to a renowned institution with a widely recognized residency program, an extensive collection of work by resident artists, in-house and touring exhibitions, and comprehensive educational programming that includes lectures, tours, in-school presentations, and student apprenticeships.

All FWM exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public.
Hours: Mon. - Fri. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sat., 12 noon to 4 p.m.

The programs of The Fabric Workshop and Museum are supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts; The Judith Rothschild Foundation; Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency; National Endowment for the Arts; Miller-Plummer Foundation; LLWW Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; U. S. Institute of Museum and Library Services; Nimoy Foundation; The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission; Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro; Independence Foundation; PNC Foundation; The Philadelphia Cultural Fund; E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; Claneil Foundation; Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation; Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation; The Henry Luce Foundation matching gifts program; The Barra Foundation; LEF Foundation; Louis N. Cassett Foundation; Quaker Chemical Foundation; and the Board of Directors and members of The Fabric Workshop and Museum.

For more information, please contact Alex Sadvari, Communications Coordinator, at 215-568-1111 ext. 15, alex@fabricworkshopandmuseum.org. For general information, call 215-568-1111.

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