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ART: SKETCHES

Wednesday, October 2, 2023

HARE AND NOW

Someday we may overcome the benign Bunny Love virus, but not this season. The most recent outbreak of BL is in work by Wilmington artist Pahl Hluchan at the Esther M. Klein Art Gallery. "Red Rabbit" is the main character in a cycle of 24 paintings and a video that merge a fairy-tale motif with the American suburbs � la Edward Scissorhands. A sweet stuffed animal with an egg obsession, Red has all the characteristics of a child. Naughty and nice, innocent and hell-raiser, Red smashes some eggs, then looks forlorn. The paintings are a little hot, insistent and theatrical, but the two-minute stop-action video, Red Rabbit and the Magic Egg, is just right. The video, which brings the bunny to life as a toddler barely able to climb the stairs, is cool, funny, a little eerie and more openly allusive, which is useful to its themes of love, loss, vulnerability and fear. Hluchan's work is paired, oddly, with sculpture by Wilmington artist Stan Smokler. There are few points of comparison between the tightly scripted work of Hluchan and Smokler's intuitive welded-steel sculptures. Alcazar and Box Cars, however, two critterlike sculptures (one reminds you of a TV; the other of an Iron-Age R2D2) are imbued with a sense of playful menace and would be at home in Red's neighborhood.�� -- Roberta Fallon

"Pahl Hluchan and Stan Smokler: Eggs and Iron," through Oct. 31. Esther M. Klein Art Gallery, 3600 Market St. 215.387.2262. www.kleinartgallery.org

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/ae/art/sketches/