Janie Gross, "Crack Gardens"
The Galleries at Moore
1916 Race St.
Philadelphia
Seen March 26
Showing March 13 - April 26
Crabgrass growing through cobblestone grouting. Clover rising between rocky pathways. Dead leaves collecting in disregarded potholes.
These miniature landscapes are the inspiration of Janie Gross’ exhibit “Crack Gardens,” now on display at the Galleries at Moore.
Though the show’s title elicits images of bohemians smoking cocaine, the artworks are tribute to a different class of outsiders. Gross captures photographs of weeds asserting themselves through the crevices of society: Grates and gutters, drains and ditches. Then, she transforms those splices of plant life into the subjects of kaleidoscopic posters pregnant with hypnotism.
I stumbled into the gallery after spotting the trippy panels through the museum’s shop window. I was immediately sucked in, compelled to look closer.
Gross plays with the fact that her photos could easily be overlooked or downplayed, just like their content matter. Some of the framed images were even installed along the horizontal base of one of the gallery’s walls, stacked in line like a trench. But when you observe the collection in full, it’s impossible not to turn your attention to the patterned repetition of wild greenery poking through the manly smoothness of infrastructure.
The theme seems to be holes emerging in the grid. That idea is foiled by Gross’ second plot line of artistry, which reworks such soon-to-be-manicured shrubs into succulent tessellations. Patches of color and texture are pulled to the forefront, mesmerizing in nature and, when blown-up into taller proportions, evidently designed to absorb our gaze.
The artist does not stop there: Also in cases and behind frames are ceramic knots, piled up like rock-hard puff pastries, which she similarly arranges into funky shapes and edits into symmetrical ladders of photo.
The optics of kaleidoscopes revolve around repeated reflection. It could read as solipsistic to stare so long at fractured ground, but unlike the finitude of video games or other attention-seeking inventions, the vastness of life knows no bounds.
The details that so often pass us by are sometimes the best guide to living large with what little time we have. That said, smoking crack can work, too.
