Art

by Roberta Fallon

POP GOES THE EASEL

Sometimes Thom Lessner paints big, and sometimes he paints small, or even tiny. But in all cases, what the self-taught 25-year-old artist depicts remains the same: icons from his boyhood in the 1980s and recent stars in his personal firmament, like Philadelphia 76ers players and current phenom Andrew WK. Lessner's portraits have characteristics reminiscent of folk art: thick, black outlines; flat, shadowless space; and occasional scale shifts (e.g. big eyes, baby-size feet), with colors that swing from battleship-gray to Easter pastels to patriotic red, white and blue. And though artists love pop icons, what they do with them is most telling. Andy Warhol took Marilyn and Jackie and glamorized them into even more distant stars. Jeff Koons took Michael Jackson and Bubbles and made a mockery of them in ceramic parody. When Lessner paints Mike Schmidt, Garry Maddox, Sade and Rodney Dangerfield, he makes them vulnerable and touchable humans, which is, after all, what they are.
>> "Smells Awesome: Thom Lessner," through May 24. Spector Gallery, 510 Bainbridge St. 215.238.0840. WWW.SPECTORSPECTOR.COM

DON'T PROVOKE HER

For more than 30 years Lynda Benglis has been twisting, squeezing, pouring and spraying materials to make forms that swoop and billow, ooze and coagulate. Meditations on nature and the body, the works can be gorgeous or scary. And with their hands-on physicality and androgynous edge, the pieces seems to presage the work of a younger generation (think Robert Gober, Kiki Smith). "I was interested in the rhythms of nature and the dance," says Benglis, 61. An early feminist provocateur, Benglis is also known for an ad she placed in Artforum magazine in 1974. The ad shows the artist nude, holding an enormous dildo. She placed the ad as a kind of protest "because Artforum did not do 'centerfolds' of artists' projects. Ingrid Sischy later told me that my ad inspired her to start the artist's project series at Artforum. I also wanted to have some humor in the movement."
>> "Lynda Benglis: Soft Off," through May 31. Locks Gallery, 600 Washington Sq. South. 215.629.1000. WWW.LOCKSGALLERY.COM

WHO'S A PURTY BIRD?

"Hooters and Peckers" dusts off the tail feathers, puts out a little seed and turns 17 artists and one gallery owner into some kind of flock. From the ambient sounds of chirping as you enter ("That's my contribution, it's a CD," says gallery owner Chris Schmidt) to the photographs, paintings, sculptures and drawings in the big group show, flights of fancy reign. Birds, of course, can be messy things, but that's not strongly alluded to here. It's the poetry of birds that stokes the imagination--flight fierceness, nesting, weird beaks and talons--and it's rich territory. Michael Gallagher's Islam twists a flock mid-flight to evoke the architectural adornment of Islamic art as well as the group dynamic. Kate Javens' anthropomorphic paintings create fierce fliers and nesters who sit on top of the world. From Elisabeth Nickles' small bronze "Harpies" to Stuart Klipper's Antarctic photographs of penguins, the show's a rich aviary of pleasures and allusions.
>> "Hooters and Peckers," through May 18. Schmidt-Dean Gallery, 1710 Sansom St. 215.569.9433