A Beautiful Find - PW

archives 2008 » sep. 3rd
Match point: “A Beautiful Find” showcases outsider art for insider souls. A-List “A Beautiful Find,” Disco Descending, Straight Up Vampire and The Hoppers Hit the Road. »Duchampian Brut “A Beautiful Find” Opening Sat., Sept. 6, 6pm-10pm. Through Oct. 6. Free. James Oliver Gallery, 723 Chestnut St., fourth fl. 267.918.7432. www.jamesolivergallery.com “Look, Dad, there’s another one of the filthy bastards!” roared my 6-year-old daughter Tracey Trotsky Spinoza Jones while gesticulating obscenely at a male bohemian studying sheets of densely scrawled foolscap pulled from a Center City trash can. We’d been spotting these suspiciously well-dressed bin-rummagers for weeks. Tracey speculated they might be lost dimensional travelers desperately trying to get home to an alternative magical garbage-universe “like in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.” I thought it more likely we were witnessing the emergence of a new authenticity-fixated urban tribe of rubbish junkies—the dipsters. Turns out we were both wrong. The detritus-diving miscreants we witnessed were super cool Philly artists—former and current Man Man members, for instance—seeking material for what looks likely to be a truly trouser-burstingly exciting exhibition of “found” art at the James Oliver Gallery. Among the crap these geniuses have reclaimed and recontextualized for your chin-stroking viewing pleasure are mummified rats and mouse bones picked out of an owl pellet. Mmm! There will be so much grooviness packed into this stupendously sophisto-chic artist-attended opening reception that the universe might well prolapse under the strain, ending all life as we know it. But what a way to go. (Steven Wells)