Bruce Conkle's latest show, conveniently located in nearby Iceland?

If you just so happen to find yourself in Iceland this weekend, Bruce Conkle will be gracing Reykjavik's Living Art Museum with his latest show, "Landscape and Assassination." It opens tomorrow. Bruce has been talking about JFK's assassination, whale blubber and alumninum smelting so prepare yourself. Also, I love that visit Iceland website which contains statements like, "Iceland is not only closer than you think..." Uh, no it isn't, it's actually really far from the US and that's part of the attraction, if I want to go someplace reasonably close by but worth a road trip Ill go to Vancouver British Columbia.


Aili Schmeltz at Raid Projects, LA

Also, on and off again Portlander, Aili Schmeltz, has a show at Raid Projects in LA, weve always liked her ergonomic explorations (slightly Shirley Tse-ish) and the introduction of light field elements is an interesting development. Overall, LA is pretty much the opposite of Reykjavik. Portland has elements of both which is why this crazy city is so hard to define these days.

Jeff, I was curious to know exactly who you were speaking of when you posted the following comment in response to the biennial and current local trends
"Yep, I'm half tempted to host a night of drawings using nothing but root beer… call it the Dzama-ripoff-o-rama."
Silly me! It is quite obvious you were referring to local star Bruce Conkle's works on paper. Being that Bruce was not included in this years biennial threw me for a bit of a loop, but in retrospect, his talent would be wasted on Portland and has found a deserving home in Iceland.
GO BRUCE!!!!!!

BTW, If anyone is interested in hosting a homecoming party, I will bring the root beer.

CL,

Bruce is primarily an installation artist and that is merely a prep sketch for the project, so it has practically nothing to do with Dzama. Also, like many artists he didnt bother to enter the biennial (maybe its also because he was added to the collection and the work is now on display). Next time it will work much better if they invite people. As to who I was referencing? Ill have a full scale review of the biennial next week... I wanted to spend a lot of time with it and go past what has already been said.

Let's do the Dzama-ripoff-o-ramma... (let the self conscious drawing trend end with it) my sujbect matter will be a certain local writer's unfortunate descent into exploitive tabloid journalism. He will hang out with bears, cowboys etc... the whole self-conscious Dzama ripoff lexicon.

Hahaha sounds great! I can picture you now.
http://www.ghostbusters.se/div/egon.JPG

Lovin' it.

yup that's actually where I got the idea, hah.