The Design Center at Philadelphia University

Virgil Marti Creates Living Rooms of Curiosity in Swinging 50s Abode

The Design Center at Philadelphia University (TDC), located in the home of the late Goldie Paley (mother of William Paley, founder of CBS), is pleased to present Crazy Quilt: Virgil Marti‘s Selected Works, a solo exhibition that will run Monday, August 28 – Friday, November 17, 2006. A free public opening reception is planned for Thursday, September 21, 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

Philadelphia-based Marti is internationally known for walking the ever-thinning line that separates design and fine art.

When, in the not-too-distant future, glossy shelter magazines feature moon-base décor, there’s a good chance the photo spreads will resemble [Marti’s] high-concept artworks that is, of course, if the tastes of tomorrow’s decorators are as steeped as Marti’s in cheesy science fiction, 19th-century French literature and the history of interior design.

Art in America

His stirring, yet humorous work won him a spot in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, as well as solo shows at Holly Solomon Gallery, Participant Inc., and Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York; Habitat, London; Santa Monica Museum of Art; and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Crazy Quilt is a site-specific installation located in the 50’s era, California ranch-style house that is The Design Center at Philadelphia University. Here Marti assembles his beloved 1970s collection of haute kitsch – beer cans, elongated soda bottles, fondue pots, hooked rugs – with choice articles from The Design Center’s Textile Collection – a 19th-century friendship quilt, a stuffed hummingbird fan, carved tortoise shell combs. Gathered like a cabinet of curiosities from some dandy 18th-century collector, these artifacts form the basis of Marti’s assemblage in the remaining galleries.

In Gallery One, the living room, Marti contorts nature in stunningly subtle works. An enormous stag horn chandelier cast from resin and festooned with darling illuminated flowers hangs front and center.

Walls are covered in what at first appear to be a decorative plaster motif of flora and fauna. On closer inspection, though, the folly is revealed: flowers, butterflies and vines are configured from cast bones – skulls, coccyxes, femurs, clavicles and the like – recalling the bone chapels of the Capuchin Monks of Rome in which all manner of architectural relief were made from the skeletons of dead monks. Completing this imaginary grotto is a large sconce: a giant tortoise shell with faceted, mirrored Plexiglas interior, and enhanced with metal-plated and rhinestone-encrusted cacti in bloom.

From oddly elegant to tongue-in-cheek, Gallery Two is hung salon style and suggests a rec room, with a mixture of artist-collected 70s ephemera and Marti’s own digitally printed posters. Two inset wall cases are lined in Marti’s champion beer can collection and other representative samplings of the artist’s bounty – fondue pots, R.W. Berries figurines, resin grape clusters.

Gallery Three returns the viewer to Marti’s twisted take on the nature of nature – in this case, Hudson River School meets head shop cool. Here, in a room wallpapered in a black-lit, flocked psychedelic landscape, are monitors playing clips from the films that have inspired this particular work: The Man Who Fell to Earth and Soylent Green.

Virgil Marti lives and works in Philadelphia. He received an M.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art and a B.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. Marti’s work is included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, The RISD Museum and the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM). He is a master printer trained at FWM, and represented by Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York.

The Design Center at Philadelphia University (TDC) promotes the appreciation of design in everyday life. Addressing a broad audience, TDC furthers the awareness and understanding of design, both past and present, through exhibitions, research, education and the stewardship and interpretation of its collection. For more information, visit www.PhilaU.edu/DesignCenter.