Who Say It Be: Adam Lovitz and Sarah Peoples

Two Artists, One Unusual Conversation

At first glance, the work of Lovitz and Peoples seems to come from very different places. One looks closely at the objects people leave behind; the other turns toward landscapes and the remnants of civilization.

Yet that difference is exactly what makes the exhibition work. Both artists are interested in transformation: taking something familiar and placing it somewhere unexpected.

How do we understand ourselves through the objects and landscapes we leave behind?

Nature Meets the Remains of Civilization

Peoples' paintings create an uneasy relationship between nature and human history. Her landscapes can appear enormous and almost timeless, while buildings and other traces of civilization seem temporary by comparison.

The effect is particularly interesting because the landscapes are not simply peaceful images of nature. They suggest a world in which nature may eventually outlast everything people have built.

Adam Lovitz and the Beauty of Discarded Objects

Lovitz approaches a similar question from a much smaller scale. Instead of monumental landscapes, his work focuses on ordinary objects and discarded materials.

Things that might normally be considered worthless suddenly become the center of attention. Their original purpose becomes less important than the strange new context in which they are presented.

Star Stuff

In Star Stuff, tiny gumball-machine trinkets are embedded inside a stark white styrofoam form. The contrast is immediate: inexpensive objects associated with childhood are preserved almost like archaeological artifacts.

Their value is deliberately unclear. Are they important because they have been placed inside a sculpture? Or does the work reveal how easily we can assign meaning and value to otherwise disposable things?

Why the Exhibition Feels Playful—and Unsettling

One of the pleasures of Who Say It Be is that it does not take itself completely seriously.

References to childhood imagery, fantasy, popular culture, animals, and everyday objects give the exhibition a distinctly playful personality. But beneath that humor are much heavier questions about consumption, memory, identity, and mortality.

• What objects do we choose to preserve?
• Why does one object become precious while another becomes trash?
• What traces of our civilization will remain?
• Can something absurd still carry serious meaning?

The artists never need to answer these questions directly. Instead, they build situations where the viewer starts asking them independently.

Small Details Inside Larger Worlds

Scale plays an important role throughout the exhibition. Something enormous can contain an almost invisible detail, while a tiny object can suddenly become the most important element in the room.

This creates a kind of visual nesting. The closer you look, the more complicated the work becomes.

A rhinestone, sticker, toy, or fragment might appear completely insignificant at first. Then, almost without warning, it becomes the detail that holds the entire composition together.

The Human History Inside Everyday Things

Beneath the exhibition's humor is a surprisingly human subject: the physical evidence of our lives.

People build cities, produce objects, consume them, throw them away, and eventually leave behind enormous quantities of material evidence. Lovitz and Peoples turn that process into something viewers can examine from a distance.

The result is not a conventional meditation on nostalgia. Instead, the artists ask us to look at the present as though it were already an archaeological record.

Who Say It Be: Key Details

A Contemporary Art Exhibition That Refuses Easy Answers

Who Say It Be is most interesting when its contradictions are allowed to remain unresolved. It can be funny and serious, beautiful and awkward, natural and artificial, precious and disposable at the same time.

That tension gives the exhibition its personality. Rather than telling visitors what a particular object should mean, Lovitz and Peoples create enough ambiguity for the viewer to construct a meaning of their own.

For anyone interested in contemporary art in Philadelphia, the exhibition offers a fascinating example of how ordinary materials, landscapes, and cultural references can be transformed into something unexpectedly strange.