DESTINATION: Philadelphia's Far-Flung Venues

Exteriors of: Blah Blah Gallery, commonweal, Big Ramp, and Information Space, Philadelphia

By EDWARD WAISNIS May 14, 2025

PREFACE
With the exorbitant cost of living in the international center of the art world, New York, migration to nearby Philadelphia has been an inevitable (somewhat slow drip) development. Over the course of the last couple of decades, the (re)discovery of the enormous resources–relatively affordable real estate; a well-established food destination; a deep well of history and culture–has been building. The results of which can be observed in several distinct pockets: Fishtown; South Philly; Kensington/Tioga, amongst others–that has afforded the burgeoning of several notable, mostly artist-run, spaces exhibiting their contemporaries.

Generational shift is reflected by these activities, proliferating in major centers–and some not so major; case in point under consideration–from coast to coast, evident from Berlin to London; Shanghai to Seoul. Philadelphia is at the moment of receiving what might be referred to as the Bushwick/Ridgewood effect, thus joining the ranks of favored destinations for creatives. Aided by the immense cache of little-to-not-used retail and industrial space affords the major draw that contributes bastions for the pioneering and the hip, side-by-side.

Sermonizing aside, the following are my dispatches, travelogue style, from the current scene:

“False Alarm”: Lee Maxey and Libby Rosa, Blah Blah Gallery, Philadelphia, installation view

BLAH BLAH
Found at the axis of Queen Village and South Philly–adjacent to that little bit of Naples in America, the Italian Market–in a neat minimalist storefront, reminiscent of the 80s East Village scene, Blah Blah Galleries’ current two-person exhibition, False Alarm, balances work by Lee Maxey and Libby Rosa; a painter and an artist who works on the edges of sculpture and installation, respectively. Besides high finish the overarching theme, embraced by these two, is captivation with an ardor for depicting danger as a satisfying artistic impulse. Flame is  a recurring protagonist, as form and threat to be headed.

Lee Maxey, “Sound On”, 2025, egg tempera on panel, 10 x 5 inches

Maxey’s high finish diminutive paintings, executed in the notoriously finicky medium of egg tempera, are fine examples of mastery of and craftsmanship. Sound On, 2025, with it’s extreme close-up details of electronic equipment (a jack plug; indicator lights), is the exception to the obliqueness found in Maxey’s two other works.

Lee Maxey, “Brace”, 2025, egg tempera on panel, 8.5 x 6.25 inches

Brace, 2025 and Keep Still, 2024, are not as easily decipherable, for the better. Upon closer look, Keep Still reveals the capping elements of an iron fence. Brace, essentially abstract presents a high design emblematic form, in eye-holding vermillion, plastered against a graded pewter field.* A harking to early Ross Bleckner may, or may not, be a yearning nod, either way it is a powerful image.

Libby Rosa has augmented the adjoining chambers–a larger front space, resonant of it’s former commercial self, with a boxy one behind–, as is her practice’s want, by building out the dividing wall with the whimsy of a cartoon cloud (thought balloon?) of a crown.

Libby Rosa, “unexpected shape (Tofani Door and Flame)”, 2025, flash, pastel, canvas and wood, 80 x 31 inches

 
unexpected shape (Tofani Door and Flame), 2025, a life-size rendition of a front door, meticulously researched and completed in the style of mid-twentieth century South Philadelphia indigenous Tofani Lumber & Millwork †, has been installed to be the dead-on, greeting one dead-on upon entry. For all it’s similitude, this portal is the ground for a faux painting. Where one might expect to find a sidelight is a stylized cut-away that reveals the heart of a raging flame. Her attention to detailing includes a smaller iteration of her signature lick of flame visible in a discreetly placed contoured ‘window’, placed high up on the verso of the wall that supports the door. The entire affair, in Rosa’s storybook adaptive style, together with the piercing Flashe and pastel pigments, singe away immediate comparison to Rene Magritte. But, it is surely there. Rosa’s saving grace is that her autopoietic impulse is strong.

 
Libby Rosa, “Poppies for Spring (Table)” and several copies of “Poppies for Spring”, all 2025, flashe and pastel on wood, 26 x 39 x 16 and 7.5 x 4 x 2 (each) inches, respectively

Two wall-bound outline works Flame with Spark and Blue Match, Blue Flame, both 2025, play alternately with fire, hot and cold. Rosa’s sole fully three-dimensional work–actually several components, composed of Poppies for Spring and Poppies for Spring (Table), all 2025, jigsawed from wood and painted with the same vibrating medium combination as the wall works, arranged as a unit with an accumulation of multiple Poppies for Spring residing atop the table, reeks of domesticity. A scroll through Rosa’s IG feed reveals photos of her neighbor’s suburban planting bed replete with poppies. Then one is struck that we are now inside the domicile at we were watching burn from the other side of the wall. The delicately elegant tweeness establishes an overall effect that dispels any worry, attributable to the humbly proficient straightforwardness of her construction.

Frequently on the move to a wide array of locations, in her own life, Rosa has translated an actuality of circumstance, and the particular anxiety associated with it, that isn’t the least bit caustic. Similarly, but from the experience of a religiously doctrinaire upbringing, Maxey has transposed a harsh realities into images that bear an air of warning.

Note: Additional work by Libby Rosa, that explore another natural subject, the leaf, are on view at the Yowie Hotel, to be found across town at 226 South Street.

COMMONWEAL
Situated around three-and-a-half miles due northwest, at the edge of uber-trendy Fishtown (technically Kensington) in what was previously a derelict working-class neighborhood now the enclave of the Millennial, Gen Z and X generations) and namesake to British publisher William Morris’ socially conscious publication, located up a narrow set of stairs above a welding shop commonweal, like it’s attribute, programs with an eye to community fostering. The crumbling state (demolition chic) that principal Alex Conner has left the lofty space(s) in exudes a soothingly comforting atmosphere.

Drafting off deep memories of the 1963 March on Washington and subsequent immersion in Mahayana Buddhism, forged by military service between the two, G. Farrel Kellum exhibition, Dark Energy, showcases  recent painted work that uses folded and draped canvas, wooden sticks and vinyl records as supports.

G. Farrel Kellum, “Dark Energy Disc”, 2024, vinyl record, acrylic paint and acrylic marker, ed. 6, 12 x 12 inches

Like Gregor Hildebrandt and Christian Marclay, albeit imbued with individualistic focus, Kellum turn with a recording medium as ground for his expressive bursts, seeks to enlighten the conveyance as they betray it’s pedestrian place within culture. The multiple Dark Energy Disc, 2024 is a standout, emitting a nostalgic graffiti-inspired vibe.

G Farrel Kellum: “Dark Energy”, commonweal, Philadelphia, installation view

Strange Fruit #1–#5 and Transcending Q-Bit, all 2024, riff on the movement trapped within the combinations of gnarly twists provided by the branches they are built from. Finished in a range of color bases over which Kellum has applied insistent patterns of white strokes that are as obsessive as Kusama patterns. Sculptural comparison to Benglis’ wall-mounted plaster knots and Chamberlain’ Foil works, currently installed in Rockefeller Center, are not far off while Kellum’s incarnations are humbler of slant.

Additionally, two works untethered from mounting occupy the install in the round. The Ladder of Ascension from a Journey in Chains, 2025 pits a slim painted canvas column against the titular ladder as an aspirational duo. My Balancing Wall for Discursive Thinking, 2025 consists of painted canvases shrouds draped over a wheel endowed commercial clothing rack–the type used to transport merchandise through the fashion district street of Manhattan. As the titles indicate, momentum lies in the push for intellect, reason and justice to triumph over utilitarian systems.

G. Farrel Kellum, “Eunoia”, 2024, acrylic paint, canvas, tubing and wood, 39 x 29 x 5.5 inches, installation view, commonweal, Philadelphia

The accumulation of folded canvas, rope, tubing, wood and other items that are 11th Born, Dual Nature, Ereku, Existence/Non-Existence and Eunoia, all 2024, use a consistent darkly brooding palette that may be attributable to Kellum’s striving desire to incorporate historical resonance from the African diaspora to the contributions of Black American culture. The strain is evident in similitude with the profile of the work of Theaster Gates.

Holding court in a second space there is a display of richly tailored garments hanging from the rafters, attributable to the shop Approved Textiles designed and manufactured by Matthew Addonizio.

BIG RAMP
Traveling in a northwesterly direction for another two-and-a-half miles brings one to our next venue. Tucked into an unassuming industrial courtyard located in the spottily emerging Harrowgate (bordering on Port Richmond) corridor, running between Frankford and Kensington Avenues, that is beginning to be being taken up by the overflow of pioneers seeking less trampled (and less costly) environs away from the adjoining Kensington/Fishtown quarters presently approaching peak saturation, the gallery is exactly what it’s name professes with entry gained down a prominent concrete incline.
 

“Air Alone (from my dream)”: Kim Altomare and Melina Ausikaitis, Big Ramp, Philadelphia, installation view,  photo: Constance Mensch

 

Kim Altomare and Melina Ausikaitis have been paired, showing under the banner label: Air Alone (from my dream). Given their shared savior faire with casual arrangements of disparaged, decried and cast aside materials molded and contorted into delicate accretions, volumes and surfaces, they make a harmonious pairing for this exhibition curated by Michelle Anne Harris with the assistance of Will Schwaller.  

Altomare accents their dangling three dimensional molded paper pieces with aquatic shades of bleeding color accents, redolent of dye dropped into water, that enhance the undersea quality of their structures.

This attribute is most alive (pun intended) in Squid’s Habit, 2025, the limp cephalopod mollusk summoning skin of abaca paper and pulp paint inflections stretched over, and around, the woven reed skeleton. In addition to drawing inspiration from the fauna of sea and air, Altomare takes cues from the trans body. The pigments–from jewel to crepuscular–in Altomare’s works, completes the picture, so to speak.

Kim Altomare, “Mosquito of Plenty”, 2025, woven reed, handmade abaca paper, pulp paint, 53 x 36 x 24 inches -with- (in b.g.) Melina Ausikaitis, “Swamp Thing’s Hair Shirt”, 2024, abaca lamination, steel wire, yarn, pulp paint on handmade cotton rag paper, 14.75 x 11.75 inches Big Ramp, installation view, photo: Constance Mensch

Throughout the quality brought by their reliance on descent (talk about descending, just check out the testiculate Mosquito of Plenty, 2025) in the articulation and displaying of their work, contributes to recollection ranging from hanging gardens, underwater lairs and, or course, consciousness of the mobiles of Philadelphia born great Alexander Calder, sans the balancing act.

Kim Altomare, “Flounce”, 2025, woven reed, milk paint, gouache, handmade abaca paper, pulp paint, yarn (detail), 46 x 72 x 48 inches, photo: Constance Mensch

Flounce, 2025, is something of a showstopper due to airy festive composition and joyous hues. Despite the skimpy lightness of it’s basket weave construct whiffs of Frank Stella’s near-late work are afoot.

Chicagoan Ausikaitis’ activities span performance/music ‡, couture and visual art. Her polymathic activities coalesce in the chunky reliefs on view.

Melina Ausikaitis, work installed at Big Ramp, Philadelphia (detail)

Evoking slabs from an archeological excavation–in fact, derived from the shapes of the tools employed in clothing production–these rough-edged accumulations of accrued layers of upholstery-grade fabrics, discarded paintings, pulped books, et. al. stacked and cut using garment patterns (a signaling to her apparel project). Blanketed between are cassette tapes (The Cure) secreted away within the accretions, akin to valuables secreted away in nooks of an adolescent bedding.

Ausikaitis’s previous work, while reliant on consistent ethos, were prone to character depiction whilst these slabs shy away from literal reads. Nevertheless, the cross-pollination from her utilitarian pursuits is a constant.

Melina Ausikaitis, “Shirt Block #2. Country Corners: Mom probably worked there”, 2025, unwanted paintings, mosaic quilt piece and fabric, 27 x 13 x 2 inches, photo: Constance Mensch

Shirt Block#2. Country Corners: Mom probably worked there, 2025 summons the fruits of the labour of seamstress’ of lore enshrined as an object of curiosity and low-key alluring charm.

INFORMATION SPACE
Immediately next door, housed in a separate garage cum storage bay, a part of the larger hosting former manufacturing/warehouse facility, Kyle Joseph Kogut has installed a chapel (an apt analogy given credence by the artist-produced booklet mimicing a church missal) of sorts to the caustic sweetness of iconography to be found in the mythos of American folklore, horror and religious fervor. In his mash-up Kogut taps the gothic nature descendant from fables with his installation heavy exhibition Iconomacy. Enveloping the viewer in an hermetic reprieve from the rough streets of of the surrounding area with a signature wall bathed in bright canary yellow.

Kyle Kogut, “Sconces (Reagan, Mel, Rosemary, Kirk, Damien, UFO, Charlton, Thief)”, 2024, vas tapes and paper covers, wood aluminum, candles, d.v.

Sconces, fabricated from VHS copies of horror films (from the masterpieces The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, to cult favorites of lesser repute warranting the tag of infamy), jut from the walls to support burning candles that fill the space with the aroma of sacred incantation, exactingly positioned bracketing the three wall-hung works.

Kyle Kogut, “Lost Signal”, 2025, stained glass, holographic lenses, stained wood, house paint, spot light, bluetooth speaker, power cord, braided rug, 48 x 48 x 15 inches

Lost Signal, 2025, sitting at floor level on the type of braided rug found in the home environments of Kogut’s upbringing, an errant hearth in the guise of an illuminated box–approximately the size of a archaic tube TV set–broadcasting the image of a demonic statuette from antiquity, through a stained glass panel worthy of that hometown master of the medium Judith Schecter. The ode in the title’s source made evident by an unplugged electrical cord emanating from the unit bestowing an aura of mystery and/or magic as the origin of persistent radiance while lacking an obvious power source.

Kyle Kogut, “Promised Land Diptych (Fantasy and Horror):, 2024, graphite and colored pencil on paper, spray painted foam, stained wood, faux candles, found stickers, 19.5 x 26 x 8.75 and 19.5 x 24 x 8.75 inches

The boxiness of Lost Signal is echoed in the mounted Promised Land Diptych (Fantasy and Horror), 2024, another multi-media box work, this one playing off of a jack-o’-lantern with the iconic cut-outs for eyes and a mouth traditionally applied to a pumpkin applied to the luan front panel that is plastered over with an academically executed landscape drawing of a blasted landscape. Supplanting where a most would be is a sticker of the upside head of Beelzebub, appropriated from a window in Kogut’s childhood parish church that he hadn’t encountered in a decade. Capped with a meticulously carved wood depiction rendering of the gourds stem. The parenthetical key fusing fancy with terror appropriately summarizes the emanation.

Kyle Kogut, “Effigy (IRNINOTH)”, 2025, colored pencil on paper and giclee print mounted on painted foam, ink on paper, plastic pins, 25 x 36 x 2 inches

Effigy (IRNINOTH), 2025, is an augmented–with colored pencil, ink and plastic pins, in Playskool shades–giclee print in which a scarecrow twists, to the extent of seeming to come out of the the two dimensions that binds it, to come off the cross on which it is impaled. A line of horsemen are silhouetted along the horizon ridge, backed by a milky sky, that put me in mind of the cinematography in Charles Laughton’s masterwork The Night of the Hunter as well as the films of Tim Burton with their mix of glee and gothic scares.

Taking aim at the pompous cottage industry preacher Jerry Fallwell, Tramp Lust, 2024, keying from album cover of his, enshrined by a tramp art inspired frame built from Lincoln Logs, conveys Kogut’s abhorrence for the Christian Nationalism’s enamor for the end times promoted via their platforms that are becoming more powerful with the ascension of social media.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
 Others worth searching out include:
    •    The Crane building located at 1400 North American Street, at the junction of Fishtown and Kensington, hosts a number of spaces, including Tiger Strikes Asteroid; Icebox Project Space; Box Spring Gallery and PEEP.
    •    Ulises, up  the street from the Crane, at 1525 North American, maintains a calendar of performance, reading exhibitions and talks, while hosting a fantastic art book shop.
    •    Bertrand Productions can be found in the Globe Dye Works building, 4500 Worth Street, in the East Frankford neighborhood. home to artists, artisans and artisanal food production facilities
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* With its open flame connotation, my best guess is that it is culled from hot rod detailing or, alternately, a warning label, or even a brand logo, I am unfamiliar with.

† These doors, which can be found throughout the area surrounding the gallery, are now prized for their antique patina and the quirkiness of the design evoking a particular socio-economic cultural time and place.

‡ Ausikaitis performed with her Aitis Band at the climax the reception.

False Alarm: Lee Maxey and Libby Rosa
Blah Blah Gallery
907 Christian Street
April 5–May 17, 2025
Thurs–Saturday

Kyle Joseph Kogut: Iconomancy
Information Space
2024 East Westmoreland Avenue
May 3–31, 2025
Saturday Only

Air Alone (from my dream): Kim Altomare and Melina Ausikaitis
Big Ramp
2024 East Westmoreland Avenue
May 3–31, 2025
Saturday Only

G. Farrel Kellum: Dark Energy
commonweal
1341 North Mascher Street
Saturday Only