Gallery 114 presents a two-person show featuring Amanda Ryan and Troy Briggs. The show is entitled Portland Modern Showcase.



Troy Briggs, in a spare and nervous drawing style, attempts to articulate nameless emotional events. His fluid drawing style is limited and elegant. His subject matter is saturated with domestic melancholy. Distorted female silhouettes emerge from the shower or float suspended before wallpaper patterns. Briggs creates ink drawings and uses neutral watercolors sparely to focus his compositions on the central figure. Most of the drawings are then coated with acrylic gel medium, which interacts with the ink and creates surprising accidental flows.

Briggs' work is raw and emotionally expressive, and most of it seems under-priced. Although I loved some of the expressive events that occurred in the interaction between the ink and gel medium, the gel medium had the unfortunate effect of making these raw, powerful drawings appear laminated. In addition, where some of the work seemed eloquently spare, other pieces seemed simply underdeveloped.



Mechanized Assault

Amanda Ryan works almost exclusively in primary colors, and doesn't seem to use a paintbrush at all. Oil paint is scoured, dragged and shoveled onto her surfaces. She works by instinctually responding to the color and texture of the pieces she builds in scraped layers.

By using only red, yellow and blue, Ryan makes a statement about the primacy of paint as a material.

Most of her paintings are around 16 inches by 20 inches, and I found myself wanting them to be much bigger. Her bold choices would play out better in a larger arena. This is especially true considering the titles of two of her pieces, Mechanized Assault and Pandemic, which seem to call for overwhelming paintings. Because of their smallish size they remain manageable objects with little hint of the danger the titles foresee. Troy Briggs and Amanda Ryan are also in the new edition of Portland Modern Magazine, which is soon to release its third issue. Submissions to the new issue of Portland Modern are due by Saturday, August 27th. Link here for further information: Portland Modern.

Through August 27th • Tuesday-Saturday 12-6
Gallery 114 • 1100 NW Glisan • Tel. 503.243.3356