Also this issue: 20/20 Vision Snyderman Gallery celebrates 20 years in the furniture business. -Lori Hill “A Night at the Casbah” -Lori Hill Baseball panel discussion -Andrew Milner Louis Faurer: A Photographic Retrospective -John Vettese Sherman Alexie -John Freeman Bloomsday Celebration -Lori Hill Frankie Avalon -Interview by A.D. Amorosi A Picasso -David Anthony Fox

June 12-18, 2003

art

Worlds of Wonder

Michael and Lynne Brolly, John Biggs, Zac Robbins, Chris Coggiano and Tony Delong, Cirque de Cabinet (2003); Kurt Nielson and Dan Essig, Seven Wonders (2002).

“Cabinets of Curiosities” is a magical journey through time and spaces.

by Robin Rice

In Gian Carlo Menotti’s Christmas opera, Ahmal and the Night Visitors, King Kaspar, one of the three wise men, sings, "This is my box. This is my box. I never travel without my box. In the first drawer I keep my magic beads: One carnelian against all evil and enemies. One moonstone to make you sleep. One lapis lazuli to help you to find water. … In the third drawer … I keep licorice!"

The sage's treasure box is a wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. A wunderkammer might be a portable chest or an entire museum and it might contain anything from candy to the rarest artworks, scientific marvels or pornography. The need for such storage has been recognized by most cultures. The Wood Turning Center and The Furniture Society (meeting in Philadelphia through June 14) commissioned a group of 14 astonishing contemporary cabinets of curiosities, currently displayed at the WTC. The exhibition will tour for at least the next three years.

The most traditional and labyrinthine piece is the work of 18 Canadians, led by Doug Haslam. Inspired by Qing dynasty To Pao Ko (cabinets of miniature curiosities), its fantastical contents include a tarantula, a board game, a tiny puppet theater and a silver-plated gumball (from a tree) stored in a box with a foil (candy) gumball wrapper for a handle.

Collecting and science were popular avocations in the 17th century, when thinkers like Descartes inspired a belief that one day the workings of the universe would become as intelligible as clockwork. Physiological oddities, botanical specimens and archeological and geological fragments were promises of secrets to be unlocked, as well as evidence of the intricacy and beauty of God's plan. Cabinets of curiosities often paid homage to these ideas.

Most in this show allude to nature in some way. All allude to culture. The structure of each can be viewed as a metaphor for knowledge or culture. Po Shun Leong and Bob Stocksdale's hinge-articulated cabinet in the shape of a human with a clock-face head suggests that knowledge is human-centered. Though the blocky figure is amusingly mechanical, sections of the late Stocksdale's burl bowls provide an unpredictable poetic, organic contrast.

Houses are often surrogates for the human form. Amy Forsyth's house on Mark Sfirri's beautiful multiple-axis-turned legs is home to a sculptural family of chess figures. Gideon Hughes and Adolf Volkman's house clings almost desperately to the wall. A convenient flashlight (a symbol, perhaps, of science) helps us see the pulleys and weights inside.

Thanks to the computer work of Tony Delong, Michael Brolly's team envisions a green big-bellied Buddha-alien resting on a bed of nails. When humanoids approach, it nods and blinks (by John Biggs) and a rotating tray reveals more treasures.

Kurt Nielsen carved the tortoise base and the tiny tortoise-within-a-globe at the top of the rotating display case housing Seven Wonders. Dan Essig made the sculptural books inside. Behind a door containing a luna moth is a book with luna moth pupa in its cover. This mythos does not reject science.

William Leete and Sam Chung's abstract wood and ceramic Holon Form proposes a modular cybernetic universe. In Round Guy Meets Square Guy, Michael Hosaluk and Mitch Ryerson prove that opposites can make beautiful music together, at least with maracas. And, perhaps, that once a round peg gets into a square hole, it will refuse to leave.

The botanical alphabet Vargueño (a chest on a stand) constructed by Miguel Gomez-Ibañez and painted by Joseph Reed, was deliberately left empty to store whatever the owner chooses. Seeds of Curiosity: Staples of Communication, by Jack Larimore and Stephen Hogbin, has the external form of a giant plant of metal and wood. It opens to reveal tiny bottles containing seeds.

Michelle Holzapfel originally suggested the theme for the entire show. Her group's entry, a pile of old books on a wrinkled linen cloth, is stunning trompe l'oeil of carving and paint, blending imperceptibly with a couple of real books bound by Donna C. Hawes. One is slip-cased with a matching illusory volume. Here "truth" is depicted as constructed by its presentation, perhaps a deconstructionist position. Holzapfel invites everyone to participate in the collaboration by writing in a real book that is part of the sculpture.

In contrast, perfectionist Gordon Peteran can pull off a white-on-white non-collaborative cabinet that provides a postmodern encounter with curiosity forever unsatisfied.

The viewer will experience this exhibition as, among other things, a discourse on scale: boxes within boxes within boxes. Some of the smallest items allude to some of the biggest ideas. If every cabinet is an allegory on knowledge, the whole of the exhibition is, itself, a cabinet of curiosities, setting our thoughts on journeys of intellectual wonder and experiential delight.

Cabinets of Curiosities

Through July 26, Wood Turning Center, 501 Vine St., 215-923-8000