Wonderspaces Adds Three New Installations in Time for Their Summer Season!
Wonderspaces Adds Three New Installations in Time for Their Summer Season!
Wonderspaces Philadelphia (27 N 11th St.) announces the debut of three new installations coming to the Philadelphia Fashion District just in time for summer. Starting Wednesday, June 30th, Wonderspaces welcomes Our Top 100 by Jody Servon, Erupture by Nicole Banowetz, and Micromonumental Mapping: The Essence of Creation by Limelight. The new exhibits join other recent additions and continuing installations, such as Submergence by Squidsoup, Body Paint by Memo Akten and Thank You Bags by Reed van Brunschot. Wonderspaces continues to be a unique, interactive and socially distanced activity for locals, neighbors and visitors in the heart of Center City.
Wonderspaces is currently operating at reduced capacity, making the experience even more personal and intimate. Timed with the launch of these new installations, Wonderspaces will expand capacity to 20 people per every fifteen minutes. Masks are required for all visitors who are not fully vaccinated. Hours are Wednesdays to Fridays from 4:00pm to 10:00pm, Saturdays from 10:00am to 10:00pm, and Sundays from 10:00am to 9:00pm. Wonderspaces is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Tickets for timed slots are on sale now at philadelphia.wonderspaces.com/
“Wonderspaces Philadelphia continues to bring extraordinary work by international artists to the city of Philadelphia,” said General Manager Jenn McCreary. “Our goal is to continuously evolve our experience and gallery. What the evolution looks like is shaped by our local Philadelphia team and it is based on the feedback we get from the community members who are attending the show each and every day. We plan to continue the evolution as we move through our second year, with additional new pieces coming later this summer and fall.”
After a members-only preview, Wonderspaces officially launches the three new installations starting on Wednesday, June 30th. The additions come just as Center City Philadelphia continues to fully open after the easing of restrictions. This is the third time Wonderspaces has introduced several new works to its 24,000 square foot permanent Philadelphia home.
NEW INSTALLATIONS
Our Top 100 by Jody Servon is a community-built playlist consisting of songs and memories about songs shared by participants in specific cities and towns. People have shared stories of love, loss, travels, sadness, celebrations, families, and much more. In both physical places and through social media, Servon aims to provide opportunities for people to consider their memories, experiences, and surroundings and hopefully enhance their human experience.
Servon said, “My projects rely on the participation of others. Behind each image, object and handwritten notation is the voice of a person sharing something personal about themselves. Although inspired by my experiences, my works are collections of personal histories shared by others. In my socially engaged projects, I provide prompts for people to respond to in a variety of ways. Their responses range from recalling a memory attached to a song to sharing a photograph and text about an object that they have saved from a deceased loved one.”
For Erupture, artist Nicole Banowetz created a giant inflatable sculpture that depicts a surreal landscape of microscopic lifeforms. Their enlarged presence makes the installation feel calm, comforting, yet disorienting. The arrangement of these inflatables recalls dioramas from biology class, with large groupings of these odd forms bursting at delicate seams. The artist, Nicole Banowetz sewed the work entirely by hand, sharing the vulnerability between the artist, viewer, and the installation as a whole.
“We are thrilled to add Erupture to our current lineup of work currently on view in Philadelphia,” said McCreay. “Erupture is part of a series of massive inflatable sculptures which represent microscopic lifeforms in a macroscopic way. Denver-based artist Nicole Banowetz sewed the work entirely by hand while navigating through a breakup, and has created an unexpectedly intimate environment for visitors to experience through sight and touch.”
Micromonumetal Mapping: The Essence of Creation by Limelight was originally created to be displayed on the Opéra de Lille in France for the Lille Video Mapping Festival that was set to take place in April 2020. Due to COVID 19, the festival had to be postponed so the artists decided to downscale and project it onto a 1:40 3D model of the building. Inspired by the national divinity of the Greeks’ Apollo, who has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, war and death, the artwork conveys this complexity by using the symbolic and physical elements of the building.
Limelight said, “If we can’t make it big, we’ll go micro. We were commissioned to create an artwork for the Lille Video Mapping Festival. Despite the event being cancelled, we are determined to show the world our artwork, so we decided to downscale and project it onto a 1:40 3D model of the building. We believe in the transformative power of art, and that our souls need it now more than ever. We are here to stay.”
