WHEN WILL MY LOVE BE RIGHT, 2013, galvanized welded and riveted steel, leather, brass, copper and seashell, 26" x 25" x 40 1/2", installation view, photo by Jeff Jahn

Arnold Kemp, chair of the Visual Studies program at PNCA, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. His current exhibition at PDX Contemporary When Will My Love Be Right references a song recorded by Robert Winters and Fall in the 1980s that comes out of a genre transforming gospel and r&b into the funky and secular. On view will be a series of handmade mens' accessories, seashells, poetic texts, and images made from the manipulation of aluminum. "These works conceptualize a sense of touch, a sense of empathy and a sense of humor. In thinking about the characters that are described in the various 'aluminums' I find that characters emerge also in the mundane objects of the shoes, the shells and the leather belts that bear a buckle that simply names them as SHY. These works are poetic, associative, and sensual in their insistence on the possibility of mundane objects to portray tense spasms of the soul peppered with pain, laughter, irony and question marks."

When Will My Love Be Right | Arnold J. Kemp
January 22nd - March 2nd
Opening Reception | February 7th | 6-9 PM
PDX Contemporary | 925 NW Flanders

Derek Bourcier @ Littman Gallery

I'm very excited to see the solo exhibition by one of my favorite Portland-based emerging artists, Derek Bourcier. He has a curious way of uncovering the magically vital force of objectness. "More Doubt and Wonder is an exhibition of conceptual sculpture and video that trusts in the unseen, the contained, and the imagined as a means to communicate ideas of isolation, imagination, and artistic self-doubt. Bourcier conflicts the inclination to create objects as a necessary part of life with feelings of uneasiness in that form of expression." At the White Gallery just down the hall, there will be a series of 'drawings' by Dunja Jankovic.

More Doubt and Wonder | Derek Bourcier
February 7-28, 2013
Opening Reception | February 7th 5-8 PM
Littman Gallery | PSU Smith Hall, Room 250 | 1825 SW Broadway

Still from With Eyes that Might not See, Claire Zitzow, 2012, 10' 15" HD video, stereo sound, image courtesy of the artist

In February at White Box, two exhibitions are opening that focus on place and human intervention into representations of natural landscapes. The exhibition by Claire Zitzow exploring the Coloradan landscape "consists of four new sets of works reflecting on a mediated relationship to landscape that occurs through observational study, a multiplicity of image production, and the experiential." Goldfields is a three-channel video installation by Dawn Roe that "consideration[s] cultural memory in relation to the opposing perspectives of indigenous and colonial settler narratives, pastoral landscape representations, folklore and myth."

Claire Zitzow | Remains To Be Seen
&
Dawn Roe | Goldfields
Opening Reception | February 7th | 6-9 PM
White Box | at University of Oregon | 24 NW 1st Ave