Review of Unsolicited in the Philadelphia Inquirer

Galleries: 'Outside of Time,' beautifully and mysteriously

November 25, 2012|By Edith Newhall, For The Inquirer

Not that Artforum magazine ever needed help with its design, but Francesca Pastine, a San Francisco artist who is having her first solo exhibition here, has made it even more visually absorbing by cutting shapes into issues of the famously thick and square glossy with an X-acto blade - an act she considers a kind of unsolicited collaboration with the magazine and the cover artists (Bridget Riley, Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, and others). Pastine cuts at an angle, leaving the edges of pages, and any number of fleeting art-world trends, temptingly exposed. 

Francesca Pastine, Artforum 45, Pour Series, 2012

  

Pentimenti Gallery, 145 N. 2d St., 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays. www.pentimenti.com. or 215-625-9990. Through Dec. 15.

REVIEW OF UNSOLICITED AT PENTIMENTI GALLERY

Here is another review in City Paper of my show Unsolicited:

Re-View

We check out the opulent “This is Elsewhere” at Pentimenti Gallery.

Allison Dell

...[w]hile not exactly landscape, Tileston’s work undeniably has a spatial, topographic element, and Christine Pfister, who runs Pentimenti, has cleverly paired it with a sister show — “Unsolicited,” Francesca Pastine’s X-Acto dissections of contemporary-art periodical Artforum. 

Artforum, if you’re not familiar, is kind of like the art-world Vogue, in that its editorial pages of writing and photo spreads are at least matched in number by tons of gorgeous, luxe-y advertisements in brilliant colors. Pastine’s “excavations” take advantage of the magazine’s square format and high-production-value colors: She fans out pages beyond the glossy’s border and razors away some colored layers of pages to reveal others underneath. The thick, cut-paper layers, stacked into topographic masses, are a clear complement to Tileston’s paintings. 

Pastine’s cutaways interact with the magazines’ cover images, which the artist considers a “unsolicited collaboration” between herself, the magazine and the artist featured on the cover. Unlike the found-book interventions of Ishmael Randall Weeks, these works don’t feel like a meditation on geography, architecture, colonization or political space. Rather, Pastine’s altered magazines feel like a fun diorama/valentine to the art world — an externally localized topographic fun-fair that pairs well with Tileston’s introverted universes. 

PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER REVIEW OF MY EXHIBIT

Posted: Thu, Nov. 1, 2012, 4:40 PM

First Friday focus

City Paper's First Friday Hitlist

Holly Otterbein

City Paper

PENTIMENTI

Francesca Pastine destroys icons beautifully.

Since 2008, she’s been slicing and dicing her friends’ ARTFORUM magazines with an X-Acto knife.

“I was intrigued by their square format, particularly when the bloated art market was reflected in their one-inch thickness,” she says in an artist’s statement. “Starting with the covers, I cut, bend, manipulate, pull and dig my way through them, revealing a visceral topography of art trends.”

Her exhibit “Unsolicited” features seven ARTFORUM dissections, made of screws, wood and Plexiglas. 

Like any good provocateur, Pastine seems to respect her subject even as she pokes fun at it. She even talks about her artwork like it’s a partnership of sorts — an “unsolicited collaboration with the magazine and the cover artist.” Through Dec. 15, opening Fri., Nov. 2, 6 p.m., 145 N. Second St., 215-625-9990, pentimenti.com.

KNIGHTS ART REVIEW OF UNSOLICITED AT PENTIMENTI GALLERY

Francesca Pastine and Jackie Tileston at Pentimenti

Published on November 8, 2012 by Chip Schwartz in Philadelphia

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Pentimenti Gallery in Old City has double the visual intensity throughout the month of November. On display right now is a two-person show by artists Francesca Pastine and Jackie Tileston that plays with colorful, fluid forms in both abstract painted manifestations and appropriated constructions made from physical art publications themselves.

Francesca Pastine, “Unsolicited Collaboration with Kara Walker, Artforum Excavation Series.”

Works by Pastine are immediately intriguing in that they are all (dis)assembled from used magazines. The artist utilizes X-acto knives to slice and reshape the recognizable objects of print publication from boxy pages to organic, dripping swaths of patterns. At a time when print is quickly fading into the background in favor of web-based publishing, these melting magazines make for an apt metaphor surrounding their own obsolescence. Furthermore, these books are not just any discarded Newsweek that Pastine found in her local dentist’s waiting room, they are her friend’s unwanted copies of Artforum. Morphing the very stuff of contemporary art and placing it squarely in a gallery is not just a nudge at paper production, but at the art world itself.

Francesca Pastine, “Artforum 45.”

Cut paper allows for the inclusion of actual depth into these montages. The structures are more relief sculpture than collage, but they tug at the coattails of two-dimensional art as well, seeing as they are literally composed of flat images. Pastine plays with this element quite a bit, digging warped, rectangular pits into the cover of Artforum or layering the pages into bookmark-like blobs that peek out from inside the books. Particularly stunning is Pastine’s “Artforum 45,” which shows a group of white-clad bodies seemingly falling onto one of her contoured pools of color. The key word here is onto, and not into. The fact that the people rest atop the form instead of sink into it references its existence as a solid object and not just an amorphous puddle.

NEW WORK

These are some of my new Artforum, Pour Series, work that will be featured at Pentimenti Gallery this November

 

Artforum 44, Unsolicited Collaboration with Michael Clark, Pour Series 2012

 

Artforum 43, Unsolicited Collaboration with Bridget Riley, Pour Series 2012 

 

Artforum 44, Unsolicited Collaboration with Trisha Brown, Pour Series 2012 

Artforum 46, Best of 2006, Pour Series 2012

solo exhibition at Pentimenti Gallery

november 2 > december 15 | 2012

francesca pastine

u n s o l i c i t e d

works on paper

reception: november 2 | 5 > 8:30 pm

pentimenti 145 north second street | philadelphia pa 19106

wpentimenti.com