This week is your last chance to head down to Chinatown and see Wind Inside by Liz Harris at Motel. The gallery space proper is taken over by a pink and blue tape web, shifting the perception of the space. Accompanying the installation is a series of really nice works on paper where marks accumulate forming mass and structure. Hard fine lines of black pen intersect, jump and intertwine with gently ominous and organic spills of black iridescent ink. The black and white pieces play with optical perception where the close proximity of the multitudinous lines causes the drawings to “move” of their own accord.

Originally hailing from Northern California, Harris is a recent PDX transplant that I am sure we will see much more of.


Liz Harris, Wind Inside • Motel
Through August 19, 2006
19 NW 5th Avenue, Suite C • Portland, Oregon 97209
Located on NW Couch Street, between 5th & 6th Avenues

Yes, Jenn of Motel and I are business partners in PORT but besides that fact this is probably the single best show by a young Portland artist on view this month. Both Scott Wayne Indiana and Houston at the Portland Art Center are interesting but their installations are nowhere near as realized as this.

Harris' show is uncomfortable in a way that both Houton and SWI are going for but this succeeds where theirs is diffused by the hang and a cloying literalness that is a little too easy to achieve. None of these three artists is all that original but Harris has command over the effect not just the conventions of the institutional critique genre.

Artists such as Jim Lambie, Brice Marden and even architects Rem Koolhaas and Daniel Liebeskind are referenced in Harris' day glow, pixie stix fueled installation. It produces a bodily response, almost like a hall of mirrors.

Jenn's gallery doesn't often do things that are up my alley but this is impressive and I want to see what Harris develops with this type of work.

You are so right Jeff. The black and white drawings are fantastic, but the gallery installation is amazing!!! Try and spend more then a few minutes in the room.