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Portland art blog + news + exhibition reviews + galleries + contemporary northwest art
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Tuesday 05.06.08 Judy Cooke and Amanda Wojick at Elizabeth Leach Gallery  Judy Cooke, Oil, 2007 rubber, aluminum and oil on wood 43 x 38.5 x 2" Black Rubber has many connotations. Some of us might think tires, others its uses as a shock absorber/ dampener and others, well how should I say it, something more entertaining. According to Wikipedia, natural rubber is an elastic hydrocarbon polymer that naturally occurs as milky colloidal suspension, or latex, in the sap of some plants. In other words, rubber is a natural substance that has found lots of uses in industrial applications: tires, tubes, gaskets, etc. We use rubber to make sure our cars stay on the road and to make sure that when we connect to pipes that don't leak. Not to overstate the obvious but rubber is flexible, it adapts... (more) Posted by Arcy Douglass on May 06, 2008 at 9:46 | Comments (1) PermalinkFriday 05.02.08 Paul Sutinen at the Nine Gallery  Detail of Paul Sutinen's Sculpture in the Form of a Small Building in the Distance at the Nine Gallery Unless you are camping or a cave dweller, buildings are the main stage for most human activities. We humans are essentially hive dwellers and buildings are our honeycomb. Because of this, Paul Sutinen's Sculpture in the Form of a Small Building in the Distance at the Nine Gallery collective (located inside Blue Sky in the Desoto Building) was a welcome respite from all of the sculpture du jour (self conscious with a light touch) on view for May's First Thursday... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on May 02, 2008 at 14:37 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 04.18.08 Overstock: Chris Held at Jace Gace  Drene Shampoo Ad Proctor & Gamble 1952 The other night I stopped by the Safeway on my way home from work. I popped in to purchase toilet paper, toilet paper, and only toilet paper when I suddenly found myself in the shampoo and conditioner aisle. My gaze lingered lovingly and languorously over the many options afforded me. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on April 18, 2008 at 11:07 | Comments (9) PermalinkSunday 04.13.08 Damien Gilley at Portland Building + other Portland space rangers  Gilley's Plus Minus at the Portland Building Portland's art scene is host to pretty much every genre imaginable but spatially concerned installation work has become a very prominent element over the past 6 years. It's time to add Damien Gilley to the ever-growing list of first rate to promising practitioners of the genre. This focus on redefining space makes sense as Portland is currently reimagining itself as a city (many would argue that it is a city state built on civics rather than corporate greed). Gilley's Plus Minus at Michael Graves' history making Portland Building makes use of vinyl tape to render and conflate the cityscape and interior space on a wall based web. The effect isn't unlike a city planner's PowerPoint slide manifested in real life by some giant graphic design obsessed spider (it is so very Portland). ...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on April 13, 2008 at 22:09 | Comments (3) PermalinkFriday 03.28.08 Last weekend round the corner reviews There are lots of interesting solo shows coming down this weekend and a few of them deserve a little more critical attention. Conveniently all are within 2 blocks of eachother:
 Adam Satushek's Puddles (2005) at Rake Gallery One exciting discovery is Adam Satushek at Rake Gallery. His large format photographs of decay, debris and human activity comprise one of the tighter solo shows in Portland for the month of March. It satisfies my need to see photography do more than just depict the more pleasant aspects of civilization and nature and much of it is unintentional earth art...  Raphael Goldchain at Bluesky Gallery... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on March 28, 2008 at 12:38 | Comments (1) PermalinkSaturday 03.22.08 Elegy to Analog: BYOTV at The New American Art Union  SuperPaint System in 1973 Image Courtesy Computer History Museum Dear (Video) Ladies and Gentlemen, The death of an era is upon us. On February 17, 2009 the FCC will terminate the broadcast transmissions of analog signals in favor of an entirely digital broadcast system. To receive these new signals, one must own either a digitally receptive television or purchase an analog converter, for which the government has issued coupons and for which may be applied through various FCC websites. Such a change will mark. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on March 22, 2008 at 12:05 | Comments (1) PermalinkFriday 03.14.08 Carson Ellis at PCC Rock Creek  Carson Ellis, original artwork for the The Decemberists' The Long and Short of it Tour (detail) It is no secret that Portland has an impressive music scene nor is a secret that the art scene is equally robust, what isn't talked about much is how often they are entwined in each others affairs. The two have grown up alongside and supported eachother. Take for instance one of my favorite local artists, Carson Ellis and her work for The Decemberists. Way back in the old days 2001/2002 (before Portland actually believed something was going on) Ellis got my attention for her sure hand and novel wit. Later, her ghost ship painting was used for The Decemberists Castaways and Cutouts album and the rest is history. Soon she'll have a show in Chelsea, but till then there is small but wonderful retrospective of her The Decemberists work at PCC Rock Creek up for the month of March.... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on March 14, 2008 at 11:27 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 02.22.08 Nathaniel Shapiro at PNCA's Izquierdo Gallery 
Last year I noted Nathaniel Shapiro as one of the most promising new artists to the Portland art scene. In just under a year he's proven why with a stark and beautifully laid out show in PNCA's Manuel Izquierdo Sculpture Gallery. Titled "The Way of Progress" Shapiro's most convincing show to date consists of only two installations, neither of which utilizes any gallery lighting because they provide their own light sources... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on February 22, 2008 at 11:34 | Comments (6) PermalinkThursday 02.14.08 Johann Neumeister at Rock's Box  L to R Unica Zurn, Virginia Woolf and Valarie Solanas Portland is currently teeming with more interesting alternative spaces than ever before but Rock's Box has earned some distinction in less than a year with the only thing that really matters; four consistently intelligent, daring and engaging shows. Admittedly, these weren't all necessarily masterpieces but they were challenging and consistently professionally executed (note: proprietor Patrick Rock is himself one hell of an artist [with an MFA from SFAI] and a rare native Portlander). The latest show, "Johann Neumeister - is - Dr. Herbert Dreadful Introducing: Psychopsychoanalysis" is easily the tightest and most impressive show at Rock's Box to date. Upon entering the...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on February 14, 2008 at 13:49 | Comments (0) PermalinkTuesday 02.05.08 A "Working History" at Reed  Fred Wilson "Seat of Power" 1991, Kianga Ford "Counting 2000-2008" The group show at Reed this month is in honor of change and the ability to alter popular notions of thought. Entitled 'Working History: African American Objects', this exhibit explores the contemporary African American experience through languages both appropriated and created. An amalgam of artists compiled and arranged by Cooley Gallery curator, Stephanie Snyder, this show is a brilliant, reified miasma of African American identity politics that bleeds. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on February 05, 2008 at 8:16 | Comments (2) PermalinkFriday 02.01.08 Jessica Jackson Hutchins' Hours and Ours at Small A  Some artists seek to refine a convincing material experience by removing any irregularities while others invite entropy by creating fissures and cavities, which are places for esthetic skepticism to fester and breed. Jessica Jackson Hutchins is the latter type of artist but with Hours and Ours she seems to be testing a different realm or two with the addition of a Proustian document laced with family life. Back to esthetics (which really matter here), both perfectionist and imperfectionist strategies make enemies and allies of viewers almost too easily. As alternative sides of the same materially indulgent coin both strategies are susceptible to the charge of being merely a fetish or patina. There is a danger of being formulaic but great artists like Robert Rauschenberg and...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on February 01, 2008 at 17:36 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 01.25.08 Sarah Johnson at Chambers Gallery 
Sarah Johnson's debut at Chambers Gallery is a breath of problematic air. Comprised of the words (poetically broken by the walls), "I'm not sexua | lly satisfied" it is spelled out in dots candies. The break is perfect, implicating the viewer and space. There is also... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on January 25, 2008 at 11:34 | Comments (0) PermalinkTuesday 01.22.08 Joe Macca's Slowblivion at PDX Contemporary Art  Joe Macca Untitled, 2007 Acrylic and Oil Medium 45" x 45" Image courtesy of PDX Contemporary Art Copyright Joe Macca 2008 When I look at Joe Macca's paintings, I am always surprised with the subtle division between the forms and the color of his work. One might think of it as the forms are the drawing component of the work, while the color is its realization. One is the vehicle, and the other is the message. I am taking the time to make a distinction between color and form in these paintings because in his case they reveal his process in an extraordinary way. The paintings are a union of opposites: between the square and the circle, between personal and the public, between the abstract and the real. More... Posted by Arcy Douglass on January 22, 2008 at 14:48 | Comments (1) PermalinkMonday 01.14.08 Aaron Siskind at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art  Jerome 20, 1949 Gelatin silver print, 1957 "If you look very intensely and slowly, things will happen that you have never dreamed of before." -Aaron Siskind I was caught a little off guard when I walked into the Charles Hartman Fine Art to see a show of Aaron Siskind's photographs. In most of my favorite photos there is no object in the picture. Just a surface. More often than not, it is decaying as we silently watch it. In his best photos he destroys the object in the same way that the best abstract expressionists destroyed the figure. More accurately, the body is what filters the experience, both of the photographer and the viewer, rather than being the object... (more) Posted by Arcy Douglass on January 14, 2008 at 0:27 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday 01.10.08 Breathing in the Light: James Turrell at Pomona College  James Turrell Entrance to End Around, 2006 neon light, fluorescent light & space Courtesy GRIFFIN, Santa Monica Photo by Florian Holzerr Copyright James Turrell It is the day after Christmas, and I am walking up a narrow corridor to enter James Turrell's End Around at the Pomona College Museum of Art. There is a soft, blue lavender light that spills into the space of the corridor from an adjacent room. It is hard to describe the effect of the light, but it is a light that has its own identity, its own volume. It is man-made and not natural, so the environment feels slightly alien and unlike anything I have ever seen. I realize quickly that I am about to enter a space that I'm probably not prepared for and for which there is no natural equivalent. As I turn the corner, the blue light floods the space, as floors, walls and ceiling converge at a rectangle in the center of the room. There is nothing for my eye to focus on. This is one of Turrell's ganzfeld pieces. Ganzfeld means "total (or entire) field" in German and comes from the experiments of Wolfgang Metzger in the 1930s. The premise is simple: if we spend all of our time using our eyes to focus on objects, what happens to our eyes (and our minds) when we do not have anything to focus on? So turning the corner and entering End Around, I felt a lot like Alice wondering how deep the rabbit hole goes. More... Posted by Arcy Douglass on January 10, 2008 at 23:02 | Comments (0) PermalinkSaturday 12.22.07 Gordon Barnes & Shelby Davis at Jace Gace  Yes, a tank in a waffle house... Recently Jace Gace (a hybrid waffle house/gallery on Belmont) has become the newest place to see challenging art in Southeast Portland and openings have been packed despite the extensive condo construction next door. This installation art/waffle development would be more surprising if it hadn't been started by a bunch of MFA's from CCA and located in the Portland Art Center's smaller but wonderful old space when they were dedicated to installation art (2005). Jace Gace's current show, titled "The Closest It Gets From A Safe Distance" features a large scale model tank made of cardboard. At nighttime it features an electric lightshow, fog and music by Megadeth... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on December 22, 2007 at 14:45 | Comments (4) PermalinkMonday 12.03.07 William Kentridge at Lewis and Clark College  "Weighing and Wanting" Installation Shot Hoffman Gallery Despite the discouragement of the weather and the natural predilection for hibernation during this time of the year, there is soulful reason this month to bundle up and get out. Lewis and Clark's Hoffman Gallery is currently exhibiting "Weighing and Wanting" an animated film and associated drawings by William Kentridge.. . . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on December 03, 2007 at 9:30 | Comments (0) PermalinkWednesday 11.28.07 Your Art: Olafur Eliasson's Take Your Time and Your Tempo at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art  Olafur Eliasson One-Way Colour Tunnel, 2007 Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, installation view at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; (c) 2007 Olafur Eliasson; photo: Ian Reeves, courtesy SFMOMA The first thing that you notice when you get off of the elevator at Olafur Eliasson's Take Your Time at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is that you are entering a room that is saturated with a bright yellow light. The piece is called Room for One Colour and the room is saturated, or soaked if that is possible, with this bright yellow light. The light is so bright that the walls in the elevator lobby seem to dematerialize and the room seems much larger than it really is. It is a good introduction to the show because from now on nothing will be what it seems. Eliasson is the master of inverting your expectations. Anything that you think you know about a space or a material goes out the window. His strength as an artist is his ability to look at materials or phenomenonal effects with a fresh eye. He is able to isolate the raw potential of a material so that it can be used to transform the experience of the viewer. More... Posted by Arcy Douglass on November 28, 2007 at 22:09 | Comments (0) PermalinkTuesday 11.27.07 November in Portland: a glut of good shows  This November Portland was full of interesting shows that probably deserved more attention and if you want to walk off some of those Thanksgiving calories you can check out these shows that aren't by Kentridge, Campbell, Lulic/Kreider, Boberg and Von Rydingsvard…. Yes, those are still my top picks but here are some other vexing shows that collectively show just how varied and unpredictable Portland can be. Recently Jen Graves and Regina Hackett started a conversation in Seattle about the center of their scene... for contrast things are too varigated here in Portland to even consider a center these days. Sure we had a center or two back in 2002-2004 with Haze and the original Savage gallery but now each of the 100 or so factions is pretty much capable of getting 100-500 of their cohorts to show up to a big event… There just isn't a single room big enough to fit everyone and a lot of these groups have international connections that make trying to "be THE place" in Portland a bit of a waste of time. Instead we have lots of alt spaces and old haunts:  Bryson Gill's Atrium Surrealism in Grey Jace Gace is a great new altspace addition to the Portland art scene started by a couple of recent CCA grads...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on November 27, 2007 at 13:21 | Comments (6) PermalinkFriday 11.16.07 a band on every thing: Gary Hill Lectures at Reed  "Frustrum" Gary Hill 2007 If you didn't have the chance to attend video artist Gary Hill's lecture the other night at Reed, you may have missed one of the rarer opportunities to revisit the contemporary phenomena of existence with one of its most ardent investigators. While modern day philosophers. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on November 16, 2007 at 19:34 | Comments (1) PermalinkSaturday 11.10.07 Beth Campbell at PNCA's Feldman Gallery For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction - Sir
Isaac Newton's third law of motion
 a portion of Beth Campbell's The Following Room (2007) at PNCA Art can get lost in the paradoxes it courts and sometimes that is a good thing. Yes, some contemporary art is designed to ingratiate itself by reaffirming the tastes of those who see it, whereas other work is designed to confront and challenge those expectations. Beth Campbell's show at PNCA's Feldman gallery is mostly of the challenging journey variety. It has a kind of magic despite the fact it goes pretty much nowhere through its use of a series of faux mirrors. The effect is a bit like the Bermuda Triangle in an Ikea store, or a kind of physical paradox where pop culture meets nameless individual. The important part is how viewer gets a little lost and discombobulated by the experience forcing them to question the way optics and cognition converge. Getting lost has an important and pervasive history that can't be ignored. Great literary characters like Melville's Ishmael or cheesy self help books are both built on the idea that one has to lose themselves in order to find oneself. In Chinese philosophy Mencius focused on the internalization of one's external world to stay true to it. Similarly the western philosopher Wittgenstein focused on the human tendency to solipsisticly see one's self as the center of the universe... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on November 10, 2007 at 17:21 | Comments (3) PermalinkSaturday 11.03.07 Beyond the Frame: Robert Irwin's Primaries and Secondaries at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego  Robert Irwin examining Light and Space a few moments after it was turned on Photograph by Jeff Jahn Copyright Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society, New York Robert Irwin is walking to the left and then to the right, stepping forward and then back, until finally stopping at a spot where the work fills his entire field of vision. He is trying to understand what this new piece is about and he has always said that looking is as much about the body as the eyes. For the first time, his assistants have just turned on Light and Space, a work designed specifically for his retrospective, Primaries and Secondaries at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. Light and Space, like the eponymous art movement is about a particular environment or set of conditions to experience. In this case it is a large empty room defined on a one long by a field of fluorescent light fixtures. The lights are installed in a non-repeating modified grid pattern that completely fills a giant wall. There is no focus and is non hierarchical, it is just the experience itself. The experience resonates between the field of light that is created by the fixtures and the way that the light redefines the space of the room. The transformation and reorientation of the space makes the new work a classic Irwin piece.  Robert Irwin examining Light and Space Photograph by Jeff Jahn Copyright Robert Irwin/Artists Rights Society, New York At that moment, like the rest of us, Irwin has never seen this particular work before, and we are lucky enough to watch him as experiences it for the first time. It is an event that crystallizes much of Irwin's approach and reveals as much about the man as the art. In the excellent retrospective of Irwin's art currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego we are treated to almost fifty years of his work, most of which is supplied by the Museum's own collection. The installation of the work is clean and spare and you can feel Irwin's eye not only in the work but also in the way the work becomes inseparable for the space in which it is installed. More... Posted by Arcy Douglass on November 03, 2007 at 9:14 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday 10.25.07 Drawn of the Dead: Jessie Rose Vala at Motel Gallery  "My Sinews Take No Rest" 2007 Jessie Rose Vala For those of you with a penchant for the undead and the inner workings of their lost souls, head to Motel, and quickly, to see the remnants of Jessie Rose Vala's solo show "The Torturous Veil" which goes down this weekend. These large scale graphite pieces are delicate emanations of flesh and symbol, vivid and rotten, and rich with a contemporary mythology. These large drawings defy our age in a way, ...(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on October 25, 2007 at 20:49 | Comments (2) PermalinkFriday 10.19.07 Marko Lulic and Peter Kreider at Reed College  Work by Peter Kreider (fg) & Marko Lulic (bg) Reed's Cooley Gallery has reopened with a new walnut floor and a strong two-person show featuring Marko Lulic and Peter Kreider...(more) Posted by Ryan Pierce on October 19, 2007 at 9:24 | Comments (1) PermalinkWednesday 10.17.07 Camouflage at Portland Art Museum  (L to R) works by Philip Taaffe, Andy Warhol, Agnes Martin and Damien Hirst (photo by Dan McLaughlin) The universe is stuck in a rut, be it the motion of the planets, the behavior of subatomic particles, the cycle of life & death or the ebb and flow of freeway traffic… everything tends to follow some predictable patterns. Yet the patterns of life, be it the movements of the sun or the coordinated acrobatics of flocking birds are so pervasive that they often become invisible to us… unless something provokes a pause rendering them visible once again. Art can achieve that perceptive pause. How poetic is it then that this small show at the Portland Art Museum with major works (many on loan from the Broad Art Foundaion) exploring the use of pattern in Post WWII art is called Camouflage?  Damien Hirst's The Kingdom of The Father gets Scout Niblett's undivided attention With works by Agnes Martin, Christopher Wool, Philip Taaffe, Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol it is small but heavy hitting sampler of a major trend in postwar art...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on October 17, 2007 at 9:30 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 09.28.07 Last chance reviews Mcfarland and Cowie  Part of Mcfarland's Preparations @ PAC September was blessed with a glut of interesting shows that didn't get proper reviews because the requisite TBA and the Affair at the Jupiter Hotel overview pieces took up most of the column inches allotted in the Oregonian, Mercury and WWeek. Sure they each had reviews but their obligatory information articles sort of ate into the critical space. To counter that effect here are two quick reviews of shows worth your attention this coming weekend: Posted by Jeff Jahn on September 28, 2007 at 14:29 | Comments (6) PermalinkThursday 09.27.07 Walking the Path: Richard Serra Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art  Richard Serra Sequence (Detail), 2006 Weatherproof steel Overall: 12'9" x 40' 8 3/8" x 65' 2 3/16" (3.9 x 12.4 x 19.9 m) Collection the artist (c) 2007 Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Lorenz Kienzle In Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Serra's work provides a guide to the way that materials can be used to transform or define space. No sculptor has put more thought into the problems and pleasures of navigating and defining space. I was surprised to see how rigorous his approach to the experience of space has been over the last forty years even though his own language and budgets have grown considerably during that time. One thing that became immediately clear is that, Serra has thought harder about space than any artist, ever. More... Posted by Arcy Douglass on September 27, 2007 at 9:45 | Comments (1) PermalinkTuesday 09.25.07 Jeffry Mitchell at Pulliam Deffenbaugh  Elephant Lantern 2007 Jeffry Mitchell 2007 Upon entering the the Pulliam Deffenbaugh gallery this month, artist Jeffry Mitchell's work greets you with a giant "Hello!" followed by exclamation points. The first, most impulsive response hearkens to childhood, and the mind answers with an enthused "Hellooooo!" in return. Perhaps it is the handstands of the ceramic elephants on Mitchell's shelves, or the curve of the greetings that adorn the big elephant lantern and drawings, but an intonation resonates from the letters. . . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on September 25, 2007 at 9:34 | Comments (2) PermalinkFriday 09.21.07 Darren Waterston and Tyrus Miller :The Flowering (The Fourfold Sense) at Lewis and Clark  Darren Waterston, Leper's Conversion, Pigment print with letterpress and coloring 2007 Each of us knows what our bodies look like. There are different proportions but more or less it's several limbs, a layer of skin covering a skeleton of bones with various internal organs. That is our body, but is it what we are? Perhaps more than any other, Saint Francis found the divine through the body. He did not find it by looking at the ideal beauty of the ancient Greeks but in the wounds of the lepers and the homeless that surrounded his home in Assisi. He embraced things that we would normally turn away from like the bleeding sores of those who are sick. He resisted the temptation to run away, transcended his natural feelings of self preservation, and cultivated compassion to discover the divine through the path of caring for those around us. More... Posted by Arcy Douglass on September 21, 2007 at 0:00 | Comments (0) PermalinkTuesday 09.11.07 Rock/Paper/Scissors at the Portland Art Museum 
Wolfgang Laib's Reishaus, 1989 (MillerMeigs Collection) Like the opportunistic Camouflage, the Portland Art Museum has yet another new contemporary group show called Rock/Paper/Scissors that went up this past weekend in the Suwyn gallery. It is a small scale exploration of post WWII European art and is especially nice because it is culled mostly from the museum's collection. More scholarly than bombastic and appropriately sober considering Europe's need for extensive Marshall Plan reconstruction after the war...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on September 11, 2007 at 13:29 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 09.07.07 The Wisdom of Light: The Hiroshi Sugimoto Retrospective at the De Young Museum  Hiroshi Sugimoto, Boden Sea, Uttwil 1993 Photography is by definition about the interaction between time and light. In Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographs we are able to engage in a conversation with light. In a very real way, he opens the light to us. He lets the light speak to us in a way that would be impossible in any other medium. Sometimes the light is fast like in the Seascapes and the dioramas where the exposure time is some small fraction of a second. In other work the light is slow, so slow that one photograph is exposed for the length of an entire movie. In most of his photographs the light is reflected, so that the light seems to be emanated from the subject that he is photographing. More... Posted by Arcy Douglass on September 07, 2007 at 12:15 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday 09.06.07 Jenene Nagy's False Flat at Linfield Gallery  False Flat (detail) Taking over the entire Linfield gallery Jenene Nagy's False Flat is one of the more ambitious solo shows in recent Portland history, with the added promise of a creating a lot more headroom for work her to expand. Until recently I had questioned whether Nagy (PORT's business manager) was going in a fruitful direction but after the controversial The Hook Up group show it was apparent she had made a major breakthrough by simplifying and... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on September 06, 2007 at 12:25 | Comments (0) PermalinkSaturday 09.01.07 Angela West: A Survey at Quality Pictures  "Sweet Sixteen #1" 2001 Angela West image courtesy Quality Pictures The attempt to photograph life in the south is not a new idea. Life for southerners and the characters the place makes them creates jerky flavored targets and meals for literature, film, and the saltiest of still images. It is a swarming breeding ground for nostalgia and ghost stories, as a balmy, pink, and protracted humanity thickens the waterlogged atmosphere there. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on September 01, 2007 at 11:51 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 08.24.07 Heart of Darkness: Eden's Edge at the Hammer Museum  Liz Craft Ballad of the Hippie 2003 Bronze and Peacock feather at Eden's Edge Curated by Gary Garrels, Eden's Edge: Fifteen L.A. Artists, at the Hammer Museum until September 2, is a cross section of the art scene of Los Angeles bringing together work of artists as diverse as Ken Price, Lari Pittman, Matt Greene, Liz Craft, Anna Sew Hoy and the late Jason Rhoades. I felt that when I was walking through Eden's Edge, I was traveling up river on my own trip wandering through the various studios of Los Angeles artists and wondering how deep the river really goes...(more) Posted by Arcy Douglass on August 24, 2007 at 9:00 | Comments (5) PermalinkFriday 08.17.07 "Entropy and Emergence": Kimber Shiroma at Gallery 114  "Attached #3" (Detail) Kimber Shiroma 2007 Kimber Shiroma's latest exhibit, "Entropy and Emergence" is an intriguing show to check out this month at the artist's collective Gallery 114. This new work of Shiroma's is ambitious and experimentally thorough as the artist attempts to mold breath and symbolism into a mishmash of materials that run the gamut of malleability. Posted by Amy Bernstein on August 17, 2007 at 18:00 | Comments (1) PermalinkThursday 08.09.07 Me, you and everyone else we know is a ventriloquist at Small a  Michael Zahn's Then We Came To The End (2007) WARNING this show at Small a projects is the product of a novel curatorial idea, something which viewers should always be suspicious of. In this case "Me, you,you. a ventriloquy" presents artists that treat their aesthetics and materials somewhat like a ventriloquists' dummy. I take that to mean they are essentially animating the dead skins of art weve already seen before, while giving it a different voice. Weird but cool. Sure it is full of pitfalls but I highly recommend this show of aesthetic sock puppets. (Note the gallery doesn't have regular hours this month but you can call ahead 503 234-7993 and set a time… no doubt gallerist Laurel Gitlen will often be there taking care of details for the Affair @ the Jupiter hotel art fair Sept 14-16). Now for the art...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on August 09, 2007 at 10:35 | Comments (5) PermalinkSaturday 07.28.07 David Eckard's Liveries (summer stock) at Mark Woolley Gallery  installation view (L to R) Proxy (beer bust), Bon bon bon & Bride (full bloom) This last winter David Eckard, arguably the premier Portland sculptor of his generation, surprised us with an interesting series of paintings at Chambers Gallery. That work resembled geological forms, bound flesh and clothing in an essential flattened space that had everyone asking, what does this mean for the sculpture? The question was further complicated by a recent residency in Rio that took place after the paintings had been created. The sense was the Eckard was restless and had some major changes afoot. More definitive answers came quickly with Eckard's show at the Mark Woolley Gallery, Liveries (summer stock), which delivers an important new shift to his work ...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on July 28, 2007 at 8:49 | Comments (1) PermalinkMonday 07.23.07 The Material World- APEX :Wes Mills at the Portland Art Museum and Wes Mills: Drawings at PDX  Wes Mills Travel Box 1998-2004 at APEX: Wes Mills at the Portland Art Museum A pencil, some white powdered pigment, a couple of pieces of paper and an open mind. You can't get much simpler than that, but when Wes Mills started drawing again in the early 90's that was as good a starting place as any, because what he was looking for was within. Starting with a limited palette of raw materials, and therefore fewer variables, Wes felt like he could get closer to the experience of art. When I look at his drawings, I am reminded of the Zen archers who find that they are aiming at themselves in the center of the target. In Wes' case, I think he finds himself in his materials...(more) Posted by Arcy Douglass on July 23, 2007 at 15:19 | Comments (0) PermalinkSaturday 07.21.07 The Poet's Nature Lab: Camille Solyagua at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art  "Three Seahorses" 1998 Camille Solyagua The birth of a new era is upon us within Portland's Pearl. The opening of the Desoto building this Sunday gathers the forces of a number of the Pearl's galleries in a space akin to airline hangers and origamied kites. Light floods this space and lifts it. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on July 21, 2007 at 9:16 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 07.13.07 Michelle Ross at Elizabeth Leach Gallery by Ryan Pierce  Ross' Outpost I Michelle Ross' new paintings, on display through July 28 at Elizabeth Leach Gallery, constitute a subtle and sublime travelogue through Italian landscape and architecture. A recent stint as a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome has led to a suite of oil paintings and related works on paper that are even more understated and essentialized than we have come to expect from this veteran Portland abstractionist...(more) Posted by Ryan Pierce on July 13, 2007 at 15:23 | Comments (3) PermalinkTuesday 07.10.07 Bryan Schellinger at Quality Pictures 
Schellinger's PDX-#9,07,2007 With 10 identically sized, cool-toned stripe paintings, an ice sculpture of the artist's head and a floor filled with black jaw breakers, Bryan Schellinger's New Works at Quality Pictures was the definite standout of First Thursday shows this month. Finally, a main Portland gallery is willing to challenge a show's homogeneity through related, but initially chaos inducing elements. ...elements that in this case inform one's understanding of the paintings. This show is a good thing for the First Thursday crowd, as previously one had to go outside the main Pearl District venues to experience anything that didn't just politely hang on a wall or sit on a floor. It is also an exciting debut of an artist whose work has grown considerably since leaving Atlanta for Portland over a year ago. ...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on July 10, 2007 at 1:24 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 06.29.07 Brad Cloepfil's: Drawing / Making - Projects of Allied Works Architecture (1997 - 2007) at PDX Gallery  Structural Concept Model for Krause guest house, 2007 Architects take definite stances towards the future be it; irreverent, hopeful, dismissive etc. Some like Rem Koolhaas are aggressive, breaking moulds and ruts first and foremost... making every other issue subordinate to their drive to reinvent. It is almost kitsch. While others like Portland's Brad Cloepfil seem to excel at making the future a bit more dignified. An inherently less reactionary or revolutionary stance but one that still has room for a few twists and turns within that essentially stoic outlook. In other words it is built to last...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on June 29, 2007 at 20:19 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday 06.21.07 Getting You to See What's Right in Front of You: Alison Owen at TILT  Detail of Alison Owen at TILT One of the first things that you notice when you walk into the TILT Gallery and Project Space for New York artist Alice Owen's show is the room is practically empty. The room is very sparse and there are two large blank pieces of paper pinned to the wall. No paintings. No drawings. No sculpture. No Art. Just an empty room. Or is it? More... Posted by Arcy Douglass on June 21, 2007 at 23:09 | Comments (7) PermalinkFriday 06.15.07 Off the Plane and Into Space: THE HOOK UP at the New American Art Union  (L to R) Jenene Nagy, Sean Healy & Stephanie Robison By exploring the rich area of cross fertilization between painting and sculpture, the show THE HOOK UP at New American Art Union provides real insight into new ways that art can get off the wall and interact with the viewers in real space. Though these ideas are not new they are becoming increasingly relevant. More... Posted by Arcy Douglass on June 15, 2007 at 9:41 | Comments (1) PermalinkFriday 06.08.07 More Relevant than Rembrandt: Kehinde Wiley at PAM  "St. John the Baptist" Kehinde Wiley 2006 Kehinde Wiley's works at the Portland Art Museum this month are some of the most pivotal paintings to come across this city in quite some time. After venturing through the museum's labyrinthine design, the room that holds Wiley's work seems to hum, existing in its own space, despite the vast variance of the museum's collection. The paintings seem to patiently await your presence, as if they know the breadth of what they hold and. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on June 08, 2007 at 8:39 | Comments (22) PermalinkThursday 05.31.07 Mississippi May or may not? 
Ryan Shank's mural "Friendly Times With Old Smellyneck" Warehouse shows have a near mythological status in the art world as spaces pregnant with possibilities and as benchmarks of ambitions. Historically, exhibitions like Damien Hirst's Freeze or the goings on at Forcefield's Fort Thunder have introduced new tight knit casts of art world characters and counter movements designed to change very local expectations and redirect the gaze of art viewing audiences. In theory at least, they present a challenge to the status quo and in the case of Hirst or Forcefield, they had lasting effects. Portland has had a ton of warehouse shows... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on May 31, 2007 at 15:40 | Comments (0) PermalinkWednesday 05.30.07 The Primacy of the Mark: the Brice Marden Retrospective at SFMoMA  Brice Marden Study for Muses (Hydra Version), 1991-95/1997; Oil on Linen Brice Marden has been trying to bring the experiential quality of making and looking at paintings into the foreground of his studio practice for forty years. If there has been a common subject matter to his paintings, it would be about the long, slow, patient observations that the paintings require and the effect those observations have on the way we see ourselves and the world around us. His career has been an exploration of the ways that different forms and surface could be used to tighten the image to the picture plane. He has, on his own terms, been always trying to cut through to what is the essential nature of painting, and he does it by asking a series of questions: when does one color change to become another, when does one object transform into another, and what effects do the paintings have on the people that look at them? more... Posted by Arcy Douglass on May 30, 2007 at 9:48 | Comments (15) PermalinkFriday 05.25.07 Catch these sparklers, before they are gone  Tetenbaum & Abel's Weather Report at NAAU Here is are some worthy things in Portland that come down shortly: Tracey Emin, Book Art, Tivon Rice & Nathan Shapiro...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on May 25, 2007 at 12:08 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday 05.24.07 Dinh Q. Le at Elizabeth Leach Gallery  Dinh Q. Le Untitled (Crowd), 2007 Photo Courtesy Elizabeth Leach Gallery When you walk into the Elizabeth Leach gallery this month, a barrage of imagery simultaneously assaults and seduces. The colors of Dinh Q. Le's six works in the outer gallery grab your eye again and again, in an overload of pulsing industry. They are pharmaceutical colors, candied colors.. ..(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on May 24, 2007 at 7:41 | Comments (0) PermalinkMonday 05.14.07 Habit Forming at PNCA  Kota Ezawa, The Simpson Verdict, 2002 digital animation, 3 minute loop Miller Meigs Collection Cartoon O.J. Simpson's lips twitch into a brief smile as the word "murder" is spoken for the second time..............(more) Posted by Jessica Bromer on May 14, 2007 at 21:03 | Comments (2) PermalinkFriday 05.11.07 Hereto, Where Art Thou? (by TJ Norris)  Maxwell's Demon (USA II) "We're all kind of basically involved in the same thing, putting up a blank of some kind and filling it in." - William Wiley Blank - Exploring Nothing is the latest curatorial conundrum from Atlanta-based aquaspace (aka artist/curator/writer Avantika Bawa) on view through the month of May at Tilt Gallery & Project Space. Essentially, Blank is a small group exhibition of eight artists (including Bawa herself) who are exploring the ambiguous, esoteric space of the intangible, sourcing the impossible scope of nothingness... (more) Posted by Guest on May 11, 2007 at 10:26 | Comments (0) PermalinkTuesday 05.08.07 Beyond Representation: minimalist/postminimalist prints at PAM 
Donald Judd Painted Woodblock 1991 Titled, "minimalism/postminimalism: Selections from the Collections of Jordan Schnitzer and His Family Foundation" this print and multiple show at the Portland Museum of Art is an exploration of the way that some of the best American artists of the '60s up until today explored the process and potential of printmaking. This excellent exhibition includes prints by some of the best American artists including Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Richard Serra, Brice Marden, Josef Albers, Frank Stella and Sol Lewitt to name just a few...(more) Posted by Arcy Douglass on May 08, 2007 at 10:00 | Comments (1) PermalinkTuesday 05.01.07 Retinal Reverb Revisited  "Coyote Search" Terry Chatkupt Upon entering the opening show for this year's PDX Film Fest, one encountered a shift in perception; linear living was altered somehow, and the viewer suddenly found him/herself immersed completely within a realm of video. The subtle bluish glow of screens and projections created. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on May 01, 2007 at 7:51 | Comments (2) PermalinkFriday 04.27.07 Quick and dirty reviews April 2006 There is a necessary but dirty art to reviewing shows without giving them the real space they deserve. Here are some shows who are on their last weekend and are worth checking out. Yes, with Photolucida this month there was a ton of Photography in Portland:
 (L to R) Pettibon, Starn brothers, Tillmans & Warhol Still Life: at Pulliam Deffenbaugh It pains me that I don't have enough time to go on and on about this show but let's just say the combination of a Starn Twin's snowflake next to a Raymond Pettibon with a hand grenade made this one of the most inwardly seething still life shows I've ever encountered...(much more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on April 27, 2007 at 13:34 | Comments (0) PermalinkWednesday 04.18.07 Talking With Ghosts: invisible.other at NAAU 
Ted Apel's Potential Difference TJ Norris, a local artist and curator, has put together a subtle but stimulating group show at the New American Art Union. The title of the show is invisible.other, and it seems like the work deals with the transient way that people inhabit spaces. Invisible.other is a fitting title for the show because most of the work details with a residual human presence in the people and things that we encounter and leave behind...(more) Posted by Arcy Douglass on April 18, 2007 at 23:38 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 04.13.07 Pooled Pathos: J. Bennett Fitts Quality Pictures  J. Bennett Fitts at Quality Pictures 2007 As a southerner, I grew up spending vast amounts of time in and around swimming pools. I spent entire seasons in swimming pools. In the summertime my bathing suit was a uniform and chlorine my scent of choice. Swimming pools in the southern summer were a place of respite from the merciless dragon Heat that triumphed and reigned in all spaces sans AC. These limpid wells gently rocked with... (more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on April 13, 2007 at 22:15 | Comments (1) PermalinkSaturday 03.31.07 Matt McCormick at Elizabeth Leach Gallery  Still from McCormick's Motor Hotel It's the last day of Matt McCormick's Future So Bright at Elizabeth Leach Gallery and the show has spurred a lot of private discussions I'd like to air here. The videos were initially shot on a 16mm hand cranked Bolex and have this wonderful color saturation, but they picked up some artifacts when scanned into digital. The mélange is a kind of purgatory moment in media, mimicking the temporal structures the images depict. At first the digital artifacts bothered me as it obscured the subtle rustling of the grass in front of an old mining building in the single channel video "Western Edge." In other cases the digital artifacts were impossible to distinguish between heat waves in front of an abandoned building. I both liked and felt cheated by the ambiguity. Does this need a higher resolution scan? Would that ruin it? What if the single channel video "Western Edge" were even bigger and shown by itself?...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on March 31, 2007 at 10:28 | Comments (4) PermalinkWednesday 03.28.07 Perplexing Conundrums and the Light in the Midst: Sue Coe at PNCA  "He Shot My Dog Ziggy" Sue Coe 2006 There is a limp irony in the handshake that pervades deals made and sealed in the art world today; in the midst of so much political unrest, tyranny, and corruption on a global level, there are surprisingly few artists who choose to address these injustices with the honesty and outrage as does artist Sue Coe. Coe intends to illustrate. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on March 28, 2007 at 19:40 | Comments (0) PermalinkMarie Watt at PDX  Marie Watt, Ledger: Tread Lightly, 2007 Reclaimed wool blankets, satin binding thread, 92 1/2" x 121" Wool blankets are hung on the walls and piled on the floor of PDX Gallery like well-worn, well-traveled canvases. They've been claimed and reclaimed, frayed , cut, recut, unraveled and resown. Some have been altered out of existence, with wood or cast bronze replacements left in their stead................(more) Posted by Jessica Bromer on March 28, 2007 at 5:28 | Comments (11) PermalinkThursday 03.22.07 RE:Dude's Night Out  Todd Johnson, clockwise from the top: DD-2 (Dove Decoy),P-1 (Pistol), D-2 (Duck Decoy), FL-1 (Fishing Lure), K-1 (Knife) all 2007 When Cris Moss tapped into a circle of friends at the last minute for the show "Re: dudes night out" at the Linfield Gallery, he unexpectedly dug deeper into one of the more prominent undercurrents of the Portland art scene, translocated or transposed territory. The intention of the show (on an extremely tight time schedule) was to show how a group of artists might relate to one another as a social network rather than though shared ideas about work, process, or some overall theme. Strangely, although the artists work in a wide variety of mediums, most of the artists seemed interested in one way or another in transposing one idea about space or territory into another so that when it is placed in a new location it is transformed into something completely different... (more) Posted by Arcy Douglass on March 22, 2007 at 10:14 | Comments (11) PermalinkThursday 03.15.07 Red Yellow Blue by Arcy Douglass  Land's End (1963) These are the three primary colors stenciled by Jasper Johns onto his famous painting Land's End, completed in 1963. It is currently in the collection of San Francisco Museum of Art and now on view at the National Galley of Art for the Jasper Johns' show, An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965. Starting from the three primary colors, an artist can...(more) Posted by Arcy Douglass on March 15, 2007 at 18:08 | Comments (0) PermalinkWednesday 03.14.07 "Paper Chase" at the Guestroom Gallery 
"Thomas Lloyd" 2006 Philip Iosca Photography courtesy Dan Mclaughlin This month the Guestroom Gallery offers up their tasty take of what seems like a called suit in Portland's art scene recently: the medium of collage (see Liz Leach's 25th anniversary show as well as December 2006 for the Chambers Gallery). Call it Dada or jazz or. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on March 14, 2007 at 8:14 | Comments (3) PermalinkWednesday 03.07.07 Adam Sorensen's The Glows at Elizabeth Leach Gallery  By 2003 Sorensen had been curated into the Oregon Biennial and Core Sample (by yours truly). He was good but not fully developed. His work had a Gary Hume like flatness of field and a precious floral quality that seemed undistinguished if appealing. It felt like an opaque projection only a few steps away from wallpaper but it had a tension that kept it alive. The surfaces were also a little overworked too. Basically, he was a talented painter who hadn't reached his full potential. Now its 2007 and 3.5 years since the last time we've seen more than 2 of his paintings on a wall and Sorensen has his big debut at what is arguably Portland's top contemporary gallery...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on March 07, 2007 at 11:10 | Comments (3) PermalinkFriday 02.23.07 Last chance, some quick reviews I always feel guilty writing about worthy shows in a very short form, yet since all of these shows ends this weekend I feel it's worth the brevity:
 Whitney Nye at Laura Russo Whitney Nye at Laura Russo: Yes, Portland has had way too many collage shows but this is a breakthrough for Whitney Nye and "Counterpane" is just one of the standouts....(more Nye, Weber, Hilliard, Vogland, Eckard, Dan May and Jim Hansen) Posted by Jeff Jahn on February 23, 2007 at 17:27 | Comments (0) PermalinkDeath Staring Back You: Damien Hirst at PAM by Arcy Douglass .
 No Art; No Letters; No Society (Detail), 2006. Glass formica cabinets with medical packaging and human skulls, The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica. Hirst has become famous over the last twenty years for art that pushes back at the viewer, and this exhibition is no exception. His most famous works like The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a large shark floating in a giant tank, forces spectators to confront their own mortality. The four works included in the exhibition from the Broad Collection are a good overview of some of the themes that run through Hirst's work, all presented with the fun and horrors of a haunted house at a traveling carnival. His work is at the crossroads of many contradictory ideas by being both funny and sad, shallow and deep, slapstick and profound...(more) Posted by Arcy Douglass on February 23, 2007 at 10:52 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday 02.15.07 The Candor of Cali: Chris Johanson at The Portland Art Museum  Non-Time Specific Chris Johanson (Detail) Non-Time Specific Molecular Contemporary Landscape, 2007 Latex, acrylic, and spray-paint on reclaimed wood 48 x 45 3/4 inches Courtesy of Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco and Los Angels, and the artist Photo: Paul Foster The latest APEX spotlight to hit the Portland Art Museum this month is Portland-based artist Chris Johanson. In the past couple of years, Johanson has received national and international attention as part of a group of artists hailing from San Francisco's Mission District. Occasionally titled "The Mission School" this group of artists (also including Barry McGee, his late wife Margaret Kilgallen, and Alicia McCarthy, among many others) revels in the intersection of public, private and the D.I.Y. philosophy of a generation suffocated by consumer culture. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on February 15, 2007 at 20:36 | Comments (13) PermalinkMonday 02.05.07 Voodoo Hymn and Primal Anecdote: Zen Parry at Contemporary Crafts Museum & Gallery   "Engagement: White Light" Zen Parry at Contemporary Crafts Museum & Gallery The Contemporary Crafts Museum & Gallery ups their own pretty ante this month, expounding even further on the definitions and boundaries of the terms "arts" and "crafts" and asking (not so politely) for the rest of Portland to mosey on up to the bar. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on February 05, 2007 at 17:39 | Comments (1) PermalinkFriday 02.02.07 21st century conciousness and Portland's Aerial Tram  There are several flavors of influential architecture which redefine cities; the phallic tower of power... made popular in during Italian renaissance (Pisa, Eifel Tower, Chrysler Building, Space Needle etc.), the temple or jewel (Parthenon, Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim, Gehry's Bilbao or Rem Koolhaas's Seattle Central Library), power plays (the Great Pyramid, US Capital building, Kremlin) and then there is my favorite, the pragmatic but show stopping philosophical conversation piece like Zaha Hadid's Bergisel Ski Jump (which conveniently directs jumpers towards a very old cemetery), Golden Gate Bridge or the Statue of Liberty (basically a big, poetic welcome mat, ideological advertisement and thank you note all in one).  going up Portland's Aerial Tram is just that, a pragmatic but philosophical conversation piece. Pragmatically it was made for transporting people from the tall new glass towers in the South Waterfront neighborhood to Oregon Health and Sciences University at the top of Pill Hill but has courted and accumulated a lot of other meanings. Like the Eifel Tower, Space Needle, Arc de Triomphe and Statue of liberty it will forever be considered alongside the pervasive philosophical challenges and contexts in which it was built. For Portland today though context is questioning man's relationship to the environment (fossil fuels in particular), health care and science as a partner with nature, our use of increasingly scarce real-estate, issues of civic interdependence and the nature and use of the US's power. It is a unique architectural project and time will tell how the conversation it spurs will pan out....(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on February 02, 2007 at 16:46 | Comments (4) PermalinkThursday 01.25.07 Some small scale shows you may have missed 
Carrie Iverson's Survey @ the PDX Window Project Man what a great month of shows (from Hirst to Tharp, Riswold and Julie Orser). Even considering the coverage from other publications there was simply no way to review it all and some worthy things got passed over. Here are some interesting small scale art shows that come down this weekend to consider checking out...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on January 25, 2007 at 20:35 | Comments (0) PermalinkGlitter and Doom at the Met  Otto Dix Skat Players, 1920 Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz Before taking in Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s, I visited another of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's current special exhibitions, Americans in Paris............(more) Posted by Jessica Bromer on January 25, 2007 at 7:33 | Comments (1) PermalinkWednesday 01.24.07 A Distinguished Guest: Clyfford Still at PAM  On my most recent stroll through the Portland Art Museum I came across another distinguished painting on loan, Clyfford Still's 1947-R-no.1, which set the auction record for a Still late last year at a mere $21,296,000. Aside from gawking at the price (Im over it), which most certainly would have brought the ire of an artist famous for focusing on philosophical integrity rather than the art market, it's a great chance to see one of the few unrestricted Still's in private hands. He's one of my favorite artists and I absolutely respect his far-sighted convictions and principles. During his lifetime Still only sold 150 unrestricted paintings, which is why this work is so valuable. Still chose to keep the rest of his output in his estate, which will eventually be housed in the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver (Portland's Brad Cloepfil is the architect for the project). Now the important part, the painting...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on January 24, 2007 at 11:49 | Comments (3) PermalinkSunday 01.21.07 Mao Chairman Mao: Jim Riswold at Augen Gallery  Detail from "Mao Home and Garden" Exhibition, Jim Riswold 2006 What is Power? Where does it come from, and who really has it? What grants it to those that wield it, brandishing the formless, seething orb with the stealth of the keenest guru? The power of Grayskull? Good fashion sense? A dashingly short moustache and celebrity smile? The color red? What is it exactly that places the supposed powerful at the top of the power-hungry food chain, and when are they removed from said salty pedestal only to be replaced by another? It is an invisible battle of quite abstract yet very human ideas, yet Posted by Amy Bernstein on January 21, 2007 at 23:39 | Comments (2) PermalinkWednesday 01.10.07 Virtuoso Vindicated: Storm Tharp at PDX Contemporary  Eu De Toilette (detail) For years Storm Tharp has been haunted by his good reputation; nice guy, smart, worked for ad giant Weiden + Kennedy, ability to draw like the devil himself, etc. The problem was always the way his talent just spilled out in all directions and mediums at once. It was as of his supernatural abilities had come along with a supernatural dose of attention deficit disorder... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on January 10, 2007 at 16:30 | Comments (4) PermalinkFriday 12.29.06 See em before 2006 is gone A couple of quick reviews for shows that end this weekend:
 Absolutely do not miss Stephen Slappe's Chain Reaction at Tilt. This multi projector video installation of a menacing 60's style scientist and a couple of hapless humans being observed by him draws the viewer into the theatrical experiment. The music is classic B-movie sci-fi...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on December 29, 2006 at 10:42 | Comments (1) PermalinkFriday 12.22.06 Robert Colescott at Laura Russo Gallery  Haircut (detail) 1989 Artworks are judged in many ways but one of them, the ability to remain fresh, emblematic or poignant after standing the test of time seems to trump all of the others. Happily, time has not blunted the sting of Robert Colescott's irreverent and boldly direct work. Robert Colescott, a onetime Portlander, seems to be one of the few contemporary artists capable of achieving that feat, maybe because so many of today's young whippersnappers like Cecily Brown, Inka Essenhigh, Kara Walker, Daniel Richter or even cartoons like The Family Guy seem to be following in his iconoclastic "equal opportunity offender" footsteps. As the 1997 Venice Biennale representative for the US he took shots at everyone, whites, blacks, construction workers, salesmen, Coca Cola, sex, the priesthood etc, sometimes all at once. Colescott creates a kind of pantheon of human failings and there are no "sacred cows" for Colescott...(more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on December 22, 2006 at 11:50 | Comments (0) PermalinkMonday 12.18.06 Pierre Huyghe at Portland Art Museum  Pierre Huyghe, This is not a time for dreaming, 2004, Live puppet play and super 16mm film, transferred to DigiBeta. 24 minutes, color, sound, Photo: Michael Vahrenwald If the story of Modernism is in large part a story about progress, then its contemporary re-telling is necessarily about failure. Pierre Huyghe's This is Not a Time for Dreaming chronicles parallel stories about the creative process, at the same time giving form to the failures implicit in both narratives. Commissioned by Harvard University to create a work commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Carpenter Center for the Arts – the sole building by Le Corbusier in the United States and one of only two in the Americas – Huyghe delved into historical records and archival documents to provide source material. The resulting work took the form of a puppet show set to music, performed with a cast of custom-built marionettes and filmed in a pod-like stage that Huyghe constructed as a temporary appendage to the Center. The 16 mm film documenting the performance has been included in solo shows at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris and Tate Modern, and is currently on view as part of the Miller Meigs contemporary art series at the Portland Art Museum... Posted by Katherine Bovee on December 18, 2006 at 13:19 | Comments (1) PermalinkSaturday 12.16.06 POW! and Chris Verene's "Self Esteem" at Quality Pictures  Detail from Chris Verene's "Heidi in Her Renaissance Fair Dress" 2004 Heidi greets you at the door, resplendent in her full regalia of "Ren" Fair attire, beaming in all of her medieval maiden glory. She seems relaxed and proud amidst suburban fauna and flora, the portrait of someone living as closely as possible to a dream. POW! Pictures of Women confronts you immediately upon entering the door. Enter here, stage left, Quality Pictures, Portland's latest addition to the Pearl, and after experiencing the raw caliber of its first show, quite an addition indeed. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on December 16, 2006 at 10:58 | Comments (0) PermalinkMonday 12.04.06 Go Go: Green Light Green Light at Small A Projects  Detail from Anissa Mack's "Generic Fruit Cocktail" 2004 Small A Projects' current show, Green Light Green Light, is one of this winter's refreshing rarities. It holds fort on an island of wry, dry wit and irony, defending itself in the infinite, reverberating echoes of implication the works channel. For lack of effusive formal elements or the push of a gaudy craft, horror vaccui sufferers beware. The immediate impression. . .(more) Posted by Amy Bernstein on December 04, 2006 at 8:31 | Comments (1) PermalinkMonday 11.27.06 Doing A Lot Of Justice: Thom Mayne's Wayne L. Morse Courthouse in Eugene |