Poster for Judd Conference featuring image of Judd's 1974 piece at the PCVA (photo Maryanne Caruthers)
Just in case you hadn't heard already, there will be an historic scholarly conference and exhibition exploring the core issue of Donald Judd's Delegated Fabrication at the U of O in Portland (featuring keynote speaker Robert Storr and many others). In support this event many other Judd related events are taking place throughout the month.

There are several talks:


One of Dan Graham's outdoor installations

On April 15 The University of Oregon in Eugene is hosting a lecture by Dan Graham from 7-8PM at Room 177, Lawrence Hall. You can even video conference from the Portland Campus. Besides being a world renowned artist himself, Dan Graham was also Donald Judd's first art dealer at the John Daniels Gallery. Both artists were products if the same era and took a similar very empirical approach towards art and life.


On April 17 at 3:00 PM PNCA will host Judd Related, a multidisciplinary panel of noted Portland artists whose work has had a strong relationship to Donald Judd's. This will be a be a thought provoking discussion about intersecting influence, precedent, examples and the inevitability of where these artists differ from Judd. Of particular interest is the inter-artist note-comparing portion of this gathering all of the participants produce such divergent work. The panel consists of; Storm Tharp, Laura Fritz, Victor Maldonado, Arcy Douglass and Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen. I will moderate.

Judd Exhibitions:


Besides "Donald Judd" an exhibition connected to the conference the Elizabeth Leach Gallery is exhibiting Select Prints by Donald Judd, including some of the early ones the artist executed with his father. It's a good introduction to Judd's ideas of manifold non hierarchical space.

Other related exhibitions:


Jesse Hayward's The Kitchen Counter Collective at Linfield runs through May 1st. If you are making a trek to Portland for the conference a sojourn to wine country and Linfield College's space might be a nice way to round out the weekend.


Victor Maldonado's Green Screen Series

Victor Maldonado's "Less" has tongues a wagging. I like how it pesters or teases the easy to ape "look" of minimalism while updating the line of thinking that lead to that era's work.


Julia Mangold's "New Work" is installation of rigorous spatial forms made from carbon and other materials, also at Elizabeth Leach Gallery rounds things out.

Reed's excellent Scarecrow exhibition is another thought provoker…. Though many people wrongfully think of Judd's work as object based sculpture in fact its more like performance put on for the viewer. Scarecrow explores performance with excellent documentary films by Warhol, Benglis and Rauschenberg, etc.


Besides those related shows, several unrelated exhibitions at PAM like Disquieted (featuring Daniel Richter, Charles Ray, Jaume Plensa etc), Leon Golub and Cy Twombly further justify a trip to Portland the weekend of the 25th, with either Jet Blue or I-5 its a good time to visit.