PHILADELPHIA— Artist provocateur Eric Doeringer’s most infamous project to date is his “Bootlegs” series, a collection of re-creations of artworks by more than 100 well-known contemporary artists — including Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and Richard Prince — that he started in 2001 and initially sold on the streets of Chelsea in front of prominent art galleries. (At one point, dealer Mike Weiss complained to the police that Doeringer was selling Bootlegs in front of Weiss's gallery, an incident Doeringer has documented on his Web site.) The artist has “bootlegged” sculpture, photographs, drawings, collage, and video, but most common are his paintings, which generally consist of collaged elements applied to hand-painted backgrounds. And Doeringer has taken his Bootlegs beyond Chelsea, setting up shop at (or in front of) Scope art fairs Miami, London, and the Hamptons; ArtLA; GEISAI Miami; the Nova Art Fair (now Bridge) in Chicago; Flash Art Fair in Milan; the Whitney Museum in New York; and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León and Centre d’Art Santa Mònica in Spain.

Clearly Doeringer’s art tweaks the very art establishment of which he is a part, and while tolerated and respected by many in the art establishment — critic Jerry Saltz has admitted to owning Bootlegs — several artists have asked him to cease and desist and to take images off his Web site.

At the F.U.E.L. Collection in Philadelphia, the Brooklyn-based artist, who has also had solo shows at Katharine Mulherin in Toronto and Apex Art in New York, is having a miniretrospective of sorts. In addition to his Bootlegs, Doeringer is showing his re-creations of murals of Saddam Hussein that were defaced by American troops in Iraq, his fraudulent Art Basel Miami Beach VIP card, fake Whitney Museum admission stickers, and re-creations of seminal conceptual artworks by John Baldessari, Sol LeWitt, Yoko Ono, Hans Haacke, and On Kawara. In 2006, Doeringer created a fake fan site about artist Matthew Barney called CremasterFanatic.com, and curated an exhibition of related artworks and artifacts at Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn. An installation of this Barney memorabilia is also included at F.U.E.L.

“Eric Doeringer: Bootlegs, Homages, and Recreations” is on view until December 28.

Below Eric picks five more places to see art in Philly:

1. Permanent collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, ongoing.

“With more than 225,000 objects in its collection, the Philadelphia Museum is one of the largest art museums in the country and the preeminent art institution in Philadelphia. The museum houses a major collection of work by Marcel Duchamp, including Nude Descending a Staircase, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (aka The Large Glass), and Étant Donnés, the work Duchamp crafted in secret during the 25 years when he had supposedly given up making art to play chess. The museum’s steps featured prominently in the training sequences in the Rocky films and the bronze statue of Rocky from Rocky III is installed at the foot of the stairs (see www.ushistory.org/oddities/rocky.htm to read about the controversy over whether the statue is a work of art or a movie prop).”

2. Permanent collection at the Mutter Museum, ongoing.

“The Mutter Museum, a Victorian-era medical museum, is located near the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s a little hard to find, but worth the effort. The museum was founded in 1858 to educate future physicians about medical anomalies. The collection includes a plaster cast of the original 'Siamese Twins' Chang and Eng (their autopsy was performed at the museum in 1874), a corpse that turned into soap because of the soil conditions where it was buried, a collection of over 2,000 objects removed from the throats and nasal passages of patients (pennies, dried peas, etc.), and a cancerous growth sliced from President Grover Cleveland’s jaw during a secret operation on a private yacht in 1893.”

3. Peter Saul: A Retrospective at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, through January 4, 2009.

“Peter Saul is an underrated member of the Pop Art generation. While his work shares Pop’s affinity for bright (some might say garish) color, his style and subject matter suggest a kind of Mad magazine written for left-leaning adults. This exhibition brings together 50 of Saul’s paintings and drawings from 1958 to the present, luridly depicting subjects from Columbus’s discovery of America to Abu Ghraib Prison.”

4. Project Room at Cereal Art, through January 10, 2009.

“Cereal Art produces a wide range of inexpensive multiples by contemporary artists. They’re sort of like the 'officially licensed' versions of my Bootlegs. Cereal Art’s space on North 3rd Street includes a showroom for their editions (they currently have some super-cool Taylor McKimens houseplants in the window), the company’s offices, and a project room (exhibiting prints by Kenny Scharf, Laurie Simmons, Jeremy Deller, Mickalene Thomas, and others through January 10).”

5. Public Murals, various locations throughout Philadelphia.

“The city of Philadelphia is filled with public murals — most of them sponsored by Mural Arts, a nonprofit organization that has produced more than 2,800 murals in Philly since 1984. The Mural Arts program was founded to combat graffiti in the inner city, but some of the more controversial murals (like the one of former mayor Frank Rizzo) seem to actually attract vandalism. My personal favorites are the small murals often seen on fire stations (like the one at 4th and Arch Streets) that warn, “Check the batteries in your smoke detectors!,” while depicting the dire consequences for those who fail to heed the mural’s advice. Mural Arts conducts bus tours of the murals on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, spotlighting a different neighborhood each week. Or, you can download a self-guided tour map (which includes both walking and driving tours).”