Donut Shop by Brittany Powell

Tommorow night kicks off the first of a series of weekly gallery talks led by Biennial artists. Artists will discuss their working process, influences, and philosophies as they relate to the works presented in the Biennial. This week's talk features Brittany Powell, Jesse Hayward, and Pat Boas. The Oregon Biennial will be on exhibit at the Portland Art Museum until October 8.


Jesse Hayward


Pat Boas

Biennial Artists Speak • Oregon Biennial
Thursday Aug. 10 • 6-7pm
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park • Portland, Oregon

Powell and Hayward both went to CCA so they are an interesting mix of mission district meeting Portland's spatial panache.

Boas' work as mutating process art dovetails with Hayward's Frankenstein aesthetic as well. Powell and Boas are very tidy but all three artists are highly systematic, almost like algorithms. Yet, all three are so different.

Hayward's work has provoked the strongest reactions of love/hate in this biennial and that's probably a good thing. Speer at the WWeek hates it, DK (Oregonian) and Chas (at the national enquirer-esque Mercury) both like it...

I hear Hayward and Speer discussed the work face to face last weekend. Sometimes it's better to provoke critics than convince them and I dont think any greater understanding came of the talk. Stuart Horodner and I have been big supporters of Hayward and own the very first 2 of his super-goop paintings first displayed at PDX's window gallery years ago.

Eventhough Jesse and I are close friends I'm still processing this biennial piece... it's actually work that we chose not to incorporate in Fresh Trouble and isn't as new as what we used. I like the tension of order and b-movie-horror in the work. Some dealers love it, some just cant process it. He's definitely onto something but the newer work is more systematic and overtly ordered... like a city of paint rather than this more primal offering.

Boas' work is the most fully realized here and Powell's work is very promising... right now it screams "recent MFA" from across the room, she needs to develop... same with Houston (arrows = modest mouse cover, ugh.. plus the file cabinet only looks good in photos, the paint drip is really unconvincing, especially next to Brad Adkins' paint can... Brad's been working hard at this and in that piece it shows).

It really takes a few years after the MFA to develop and what is so great about Portland's scene is that is allowed to happen. In LA and New York of you dont have a gallery before your thesis show you are probably not going anywhere.

I'll be at the talk and I think all three constitute a really exciting talk.

Haunting. That image of Pat Boas makes her a dead ringer for one of many women painted by Mondigliani.

Looking forward to the talk.

Jeff,

I didn't realize this when we talked about the similarities between Houston's piece in the Biennial and the Modest Mouse cover the other day, but I checked the liner notes for Good News For People Who Love Bad News and discovered that Houston is actually the artist responsible for the artwork that accompanies that album. Not sure if you were also unaware of this or just don't like the GNFPWLBN cover art.

I'm not sure that Houston's paint drip should be convincing. There's something playfully absurd about representing a liquid with such an obviously solid material that really works with the mood conjured up by an apparently white-blooded filing cabinet sinking into (or emerging out of?) the floor while under attack by albino arrows. A realistic paint drip might have seemed out of place in the surreal parallel world in which Houston's sculpture seems to exist.