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Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? And, in the Philadelphia art world, these days it has to be Ellen Harvey’s site specific installation at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Fittingly enough, the installation is called "Ellen Harvey: Mirror" and it will be up through Jan. 8.
Installations often fail for two reasons – one, the site is underwhelming; and two, the artist has little to say about the site much less create a synergistic creative piece of art. Happily, in this case, the work succeeds tremendously with one of the stars being the museum building itself. The work is most simply described as a re-creation of the interior staircase using videos and a nearly life-size engraved mirror. There is no mention of smoke or magic being used, but the overall effect is maxed-out awesome.
As is well known, the Academy is housed in a gem of Victorian gothic as conceived by Frank Furness and George Hewitt back in 1876. That interior reflected and manipulated becomes the art, but there is more. Seems the re-creation is not exactly accurate nor is it meant to be. Harvey has bestowed qualities and artifacts that do not occur in the building itself. The viewer can see him- or herself in the reflection, thus becoming a part of the art.
Most artists are better at creating their work than explaining it and Harvey is no exception. She comments her creative process is "an often futile attempt to deconstruct clichés of art production in order to understand or reveal their continuing hold on the imagination despite their apparent obsolescence."
The mirrors are assembled as four, 12-by-9-foot units on armatures covering the four walls. They reflect the interior and the engraved lines are illuminated. The finished work, as well as the construction of the piece, are captured on video. The exhibit also has drawings and the performance lasts about an hour. At the end, the mirrors shatter and the drawings burst into flames.
There is so much going on the eye jumps from one spot to another and each gaze picks up one more delightful oddity, such as plants growing out of the arches. The Academy notes say the work not only explores the architecture, but also, with the drawings and the flames, makes reference to the tradition of copying art as a way to learn how to create art, as well as a historic blaze at the Academy prior to the 1876 construction of a fireproof building.
Harvey, a Brooklyn-based artist, has done a number of other "museum interventions" for such venues as the Whitney Museum in New York, the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Poland, and the Secession in Vienna, Austria. In New York, she is best know for the "New York Beautification Project" (1999-2001). She spent more than three months making oil reproductions of 19th-century landscape paintings throughout the city. Eventually, there were 40 works painted on walls, Dumpsters, signs, pay phones – side by side with existing graffiti. That public art far outstripped the much-ballyhooed and expensive "The Gates" assembled by Cristo for Central Park. Part of the success of Harvey’s public art has to be her wide-ranging background. She studied at a high school/junior college in Germany, took her undergraduate the graduate degrees from Harvard and, just for good measure, has a law degree from Yale.
Alex Baker, the curator of contemporary art, who has brought a number of innovative shows to the Academy, was the curator for this show. A full range of public programs about Harvey’s other public art and the Furness architecture have been scheduled. A full-scale catalogue of the exhibition will be published this month. Following the Academy show, Harvey is scheduled to work on a diverse number of projects in Berlin, Dresden and India … and also a Queens, N.Y., subway station.
The current exhibition projects a hopeful future, not only for the Academy itself as it grows older (this is Its 200th anniversary), but also for installation art as a genre. Here the site is up to the scrutiny of the artist, the artist has found much to say and the result is, in fact, a creative piece of art that sparkles.
"Ellen Harvey: Mirror"
Through Jan. 8
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
118-128 N. Broad St.
215-972-7600.
www.pafa.org
Admission: Adults, $7; seniors 62 and older and students with valid identification, $6; ages 5-18, $5; and children under 5, free
