http://www.portlandart.net/ PORT is an online visual arts publication dedicated to critical discussion as lensed through Portland, Oregon. en Copyright 2008 Mon, 12 May 2008 11:45:23 -0800 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.16 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
Current installation at the DIVA space

Eugene's Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts (DIVA) is seeking submissions for its January - June 2009 exhibition season. The arts center, billed as the "visual arts hub of downtown Eugene," has six galleries. They're seeking submissions from Oregon artists and artist groups who are presenting "innovative approaches" on "relevant and meaningful" topics. The submission deadline for proposals is June 7. For more information, you can download their application here (PDF).]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/diva_call_for_p.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/diva_call_for_p.html Calls for Artists Mon, 12 May 2008 11:45:23 -0800
Cloepfil's Anne Sachs building in NW Portland

Tonight, local starchitect Brad Cloepfil will be the guest for Portland Spaces' bright lights discussion series. It all goes down at 6:00 at Jimmy Mak's, no cover... Doors open at 5:30 (get there early). Will Cloepfil and Gragg jam out? ....on kazoo's? ...or at least have a drummer for wise-ass rimshots?


Latest (completely design deficient) image of I-5 replacement bridge crossing

Let's hope the increasingly bleak design outlook for the I-5 interstate bridge is addressed. We need a serious architect to shepherd this increasingly penny-wise pound foolish project... the only way to insure the billions of dollars spent on the largest new bridge project on the west coast doesn't simply become a XXL overpass. How about UN, Hadid, Foster, Piano, Gehry or even local boy? Any architect would LOVE a project like this and when you've got a 6-10 billion dollar project there's definitely room of design. Sadly they are trying to make it cost only 4 but that is an idiot's game... it has to have light rail, great pedestrian and bicycle friendly access and strong design to insure it will suit those using it 60 years from now. Besides the Columbia river deserves a great bridge (current one doesn't have the capacity or even safety in a major earthquake).

More on the talk tonight here. ]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/cloepfil_jams_o.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/cloepfil_jams_o.html Openings & Events Mon, 12 May 2008 10:05:28 -0800 Social Practice classroom on Alberta. An innovative project, the structure will be designed to be moved from site to site, interracting with the various neighborhoods that Portland is famous for.


Nan Curtis at Linfield (detail)

It's that last weekend for The Dancer at PAM (an excellent scholarly effort) and Saturday is the last day for Nan Curtis' show at Linfield College, always worth the drive and extra fun if you work in some wine tasting in the area.

Roberta Smith chimes in on the 55th Carnegie International... her complaint is its lack of teeth. Tyler Green seems to have seen a different show, partly because the Vija Celmins did something for him. (Celmins usually delivers but what about the newer names?) The elephant in the room is this question, "are all these international shows the same uninspired show created through a preapproved list of familiar names and or ideas? Has brand, inclusivity of various practices and global ubiquity trumped the shock of the new?" Look, it's a change election year and similarly I suspect many people simply want a different art world... the Carnegie is proabbly allright but when they went to Mars it looks like they brought the same old artists. All of the biennials are suffering from a fatigue of the overly familiar (brought on by a smaller world and a lot of shows). Artblog also has some nice coverage.

Oh and in case you missed it Jerry Saltz wrote about a restaging of a seminal Dan Flavin show... back when real ground was being broken. ]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/something_to_ch.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/something_to_ch.html News Fri, 09 May 2008 17:04:51 -0800
Harry Widman, "Mother and Daughter"

PCC's ArtBeat Week starts next Monday. The annual festival, which has run since 1989, boasts over 80 events on PCC's five campuses, all of which are free and open to the public. This year's featured artist is internationally recognized painter Harry Widman, whose work Mother and Daughter (above) has been added to PCC's permanent collection.

The festival runs May 12 - 16 on the Cascade, Rock Creek, Southeast Center, and Sylvania campuses. For a list of artists and activities and a schedule of events, visit the ArtBeat website.]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/pccs_artbeat.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/pccs_artbeat.html Openings & Events Fri, 09 May 2008 11:50:14 -0800
TJ Norris, "Infinitus" (still)

The next Couture exhibition opened this week at NAAU. TJ Norris' Infinitus, the third and final component to the installation series Tribryd, is a "multimedia video lounge" that asks you to experience "the entire globe manifesting itself through interconnected man-made mini malls." The show runs May 7 - June 22, with an opening reception this weekend.

Opening reception • 6-9pm • May 10
New American Art Union • 922 SE Ankeny St. • 503.231.8294]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/infinitus.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/infinitus.html Openings & Events Thu, 08 May 2008 13:53:34 -0800
Jess Collins

Reed's Cooley Gallery presents an exhibition of work by seminal Beat Generation artist Jess Collins, known simply as "Jess" (1923-2004). Originally a chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project, Jess abandoned science and became an artist to protest nuclear weapons. Jess: To and From the Printed Page explores his relationship with printed materials, "as food and inspiration for his literary, esoteric vision." The traveling exhibition was organized by iCI.

Exhibition • Tue-Sun 12-5pm • May 9 - July 20
Cooley Gallery • 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd. • Reed College


Also: Don't miss the artist talk by Margot Voorhies Thompson at Laura Russo, in conjunction with her Inventing/Adapting exhibition.

Artist talk • 11am • May 10 •
Laura Russo Gallery • 805 NW 21st AVE • 503.226.2754 ]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/jess.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/jess.html Openings & Events Wed, 07 May 2008 13:15:57 -0800 this, this and this possible as well as our constant stream of news, openings and other events. Portland is a busy art city, that has only gotten busier and more serious in just the last 6 months, even our list of new sponsors tells that story.

Portland Art Focus is a coalition of for profit and non profit art exhibitors (PAM, PADA, Reed, MoCC, PICA, OCAC, Lewis and Clark, PNCA etc.) dedicated to increasing Portland's profile as visual art destination on the international stage. You'll be seeing ads in the New Yorker and Art in America shortly and you might have already seen ads in Art Ltd. Also, important is PAF's connection to Travel Portland bringing package deals to The Rose City. Cultural tourism is a major and growing industry for Portland (and a little known fact, Portland's weather is incredibly nice from mid May-mid October).

Art Media and Utrecht are two of the most popular art supply stores in Portland (a city full of artists) and we are proud to have both of them on board as sponsors as well. Not just businesses, they are often where artists neighborly run into eachother.

Thanks to all of our sponors, you make PORT possible... check them out at the right of the screen. ]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/new_sponsors.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/new_sponsors.html Wed, 07 May 2008 10:47:05 -0800
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, it absorbs, it transforms itself according to the pressures that are exerted on it. This is why I was surprised to see it used in a raw, industrial material for Judy Cooke's Splits + Divisions at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery.


Judy Cooke Bolt, 2007,rubber, aluminum and oil on wood 36 x 22 x 2"

When you take a close look at Bolt, you can see that both rubber and the aluminum sheets had other lives before they were joined. The aluminum plates look like the printing plates for hospital forms. The rubber was most likely some sort of the rubber inner tube. After having out lived there original purpose, they were probably discarded and might have been straight to the landfill. Bolt's materials work best when they are used in their semi-natural industrial state. The rubber still records the diagonal indentations left by an industrial press. The aluminum has been sanded to remove most of the text of the plate although you can still see bits and pieces if you look closely. The composition is a straight forward as the materials, a vertical line that cleaves the two materials. One side reflects light the other side, while the rubber absorbs light and we are caught somewhere in the middle in a post-industrial Barnett Newman.


Installation view

Cooke's new work is as rough and as straight forward as the materials that she uses. In Oil, you can see that the aluminum plates were attached to the frame with staples. The means of attachment are as direct as the materials. The aluminum plates are left with most of the text although they have been painted over with black paint probably to change the reflectivity of the aluminum but also to relate in to the rubber on the opposite side. The rubber is laid down so that it creates a dynamic diagonal that adds tension to the composition. You can still read the Firestone stamp that forms a broken line mid way across the rubber and of course, there is the spray painted text along the top of the panel "36X5." You get the feeling that Cooke is using industrial materials but she wants to accept it as art with a little intervention. She is willing to accept the natural characteristics of a material up to a point but it is important for her to craft her own solution.

At the bottom of Oil where there is a black line that connects the upper aluminum panel and rubber panel to the lower offset painted panel, I was surprised to see that the black line which looks so natural was actually very carefully placed. You can see the slight indentations of the ridges of where the line was carefully taped, painted, the tape was removed and the line was painted over again. It reminded that everything in the composition was very carefully thought out and planned. Every step was deliberate. Things that look spontaneous but are actually carefully thought out have a precedent in the combines of Robert Rauschenberg.


Rauschenberg's Factum I & II, 1957

In Rauschenberg's combines of the 1960's, the materials were were improbable and used in impossible ways to decipher, that is what makes them so good. You are never sure whether it was an accident or what was intentional. When you look at the combines, he is using every piece of trash, left over light or stuffed animal that he could get his hands on. To his credit, all of the raw materials that he used were transformed into something else in the final piece. They retained their identity and they became something more than what they were which is why they make such exceptional works of art. But as Factum I and Factum II clearly show, the spontaneity although it might not have been contrived, it was not really spontaneous either. Everything was planned and controlled just as much as it is in Cooke's work.

Cooke's new work is a deep collaboration with industrial materials that society once had a use for and now has thrown away. The aluminum plates and the rubber give her new work a rougher quality than the plywood pieces. The overall feeling is more industrial and perhaps more important, it is harder to figure out what was intentional to her process and what was just part of the materials as she had found them. It is interesting that the more the materials are allowed to have their own voice and are allowed to keep their own character, the stronger Cooke's work becomes.


Amanda Wojick After, 2008, house paint on wood with rubber bands 134 x 128 x 58"

In the front room of the Elizabeth Leach Gallery is Amanda Wojick's Sight Line show. My favorite work is After, which consists of bundles of multi-colored wooden dowels that are drawn together to create a series of interlocking tetrahedron like shapes. It was a nice idea to paint the dowels different colors because it gives each of the legs of the tetrahedron a randomness that makes the sculpture surprisingly painterly. Each leg of the tetrahedron looks like they are tightly bound with the rubber bands. The bands also allow each leg of the tetrahedron to extend beyond the connection point so that the viewer is very aware where each dowel starts and stops. The result is that each dowel retains its own identity while being part of a larger composition.


After (Detail)

The fun part is when the bundles of naturally straight dowels begin to sag under the weight of gravity at the top of the each tetrahedron. Each of the bundles creates a shallow catenary curve as reaches toward the top. The sculpture becomes a collaboration with gravity. The curve reminds you of the fragility of the dowels individuality but at the same time its inherent strength when multiple dowels are bundled together. Each material that Wojick chooses to use is expressed naturally and directly. The result is not only playful but a very complex experience from very simple parts. ]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/amanda_wojick_a.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/amanda_wojick_a.html Reviews Tue, 06 May 2008 09:46:05 -0800
Leigh Ledare

Opening this week at Small A: Every Picture Tells a Story... Or At Least is a Picture, curated by Jo Jackson and Chris Johanson, featuring the work of twelve contemporary artists.

Opening reception • 6-8pm • May 8
Small A Projects • 1430 SE 3rd • 503.234.7993]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/storytelling.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/storytelling.html Openings & Events Tue, 06 May 2008 09:06:20 -0800
Justine Kurland

Photographer Justine Kurland is lecturing at PNCA this week. Kurland became well known after her participating in the 1999 group show Another Girl, Another Planet, in which she displayed "large tableau pictures of neo-romantic landscapes inhabited by teenaged girls." Her work continues to explore issues of feminine identity, including her PICA exhibition in 2005. We're lucky to have Kurland around these parts quite frequently.

Artist lecture • 12:30pm • May 7
PNCA • 1241 NW Johnson St. • 503.226.4391


Also: Roger Ballen is lecturing in conjunction with his exhibition at QPCA.

Artist lecture • 7pm • May 7 • $5
PICA • 224 NW 13th AVE ]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/lectures.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/lectures.html Openings & Events Mon, 05 May 2008 17:26:56 -0800 P.S.1 will be like without Alanna Heiss? As of late the institution has been morphing into more of an establishment venue with the Greater New York shows etc. and a connection to MoMA... it's the way things tend to go. Really anything that isn't a fusty musty academic institution will tend to fall victim to its own successes (see MoMA, Dia, Guggenheim) and it's why Judd took to Marfa and even that outpost has become a fetish of remoteness. Look, if Walter Hopps could somehow mellow and take on an old sage-like patina in his last years anyone and any institution can...it's just part of the metabolism of culture.

Speaking of Judd, Tyler Green is still in the running for Judd head of the month, both bits are interesting, especially the bits on why Smithson was more favored in the academy.

Kim Davenport of Rice University has 10 bits of sound advice regarding installation art. You definitely have to take a greater leap of faith and trust the artist more for site specific projects.

Lots of local discussion of Roger Ballen is going on in concordance with the show at Quality Pictures. It's a wonderful show even though this sort of odd storyteller photography often feels too contrived to me in the same way that professional wrestling, reality TV and the Jerry Springer show do. Yet, Ballen pulls it off. The show fares well under repeat visits, though it feels too convenient in the same way Arbus that Arbus and Cindy Sherman do. Basically it's just not my thing, but as a viewer it is interesting to explore how I respect it.

The Oregonian did a big getting to know you story on Brian Ferriso. As one would expect it is more human interesty than PORT's recent 1 year checkup it but gets points for finally pointing out his curatorial and architectural background (and touching on the fact that the Milwaukee situation makes Portland's problems look rather more pleasant by comparison). Looks like a story they've had sitting around for a while and used because something else fell through though.


One of Tom Sachs' Animals, not one of the lame bronzes

I like Tom Sachs but working in bronze is just a bad idea. Sure, there is too much foam based art these days but there's got to be another way to escape the casual Fridays dress code for sculpture he has helped to create. ]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/looking_around.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/looking_around.html News Mon, 05 May 2008 11:38:51 -0800
Paul Sutinen 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.



The show consists of a simple perimeter wire armature floating in space and a more performative wire supporting the building in the distance. It evokes a host of pregnant spatial, social and conceptual associations from buildings on the electrical grid to anxiety over property values and or redevelopment… the list is endless.

With its succinct, poetic and spare execution... it's the best thing I've ever seen from Sutinen, a longtime Portland fixture (a one-time critic, installer for the PCVA and now head of Marylhurst's art department). Also, it is partly the intensity of debate surrounding of Sutinen's most favored iconography… generic buildings… that gives this work so much of its charge. Still, it's how he treated this particular installation that made it sing.

For example the decision to suspend the entire tableaux at chest height in the room gives it a sense of impermanence and gut level urgency. Yet the tabula rasa emptiness of the room keeps the viewer self conscious (not the work). In this artist's hands the Nine Gallery is a space with few if any distractions from its subject matter and its singular yet inaccessible focal point make this Sutinen's conceptual masterstroke.


(detail)

The anxious state conveyed by this installation is something most home buyer/sellers and owners can probably relate to and what Sutinen presents is a charged conceptual cauldron of doubt and desires that the viewer can fill with their own projections. Questions like; Will I ever own my own home? Are the building materials sustainable? Where's the earnest money? How is the neighborhood? Is the counter offer too low? Where did the surveyor put the lot line? What did the inspection reveal? Will this house hold its value in these uncertain markets? Is my variable rate mortgage financially sustainable? Etc… are all entertainable here.

I particularly like how the install keeps the focal point of the exhibition effectively out of reach and still in the realm of ideas. The building is not a monopoly hotel, is related to Judd and Carl Andre's work and it looks nothing like Jennifer Bartlett's dull 80's houses or even a real-estate development model. Instead, it's precariously attached to a meandering line in a remote way and the other houses in the settlement are its invisible phantom limb.

In the end, home might be where the heart is but shelter will always be an existential necessity that breeds a constant need for reevaluation and company. Here in the Nine Gallery Paul Sutinen has created a wonderful forum for exploring the philosophy of dwellings as an external contruct within the hive.


Show runs through May 30th
Yes, the promised essay on spatial art in Portland is still coming... everything in it's own good time.]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/paul_sutinen_at.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/paul_sutinen_at.html Reviews Fri, 02 May 2008 14:37:55 -0800
Heejung Kim, "Karma"

This Monday, two exhibitions curated by Midori Yoshimoto are opening at OSU's Galleries. The combination of Heejung Kim's series The World Between and Sarah Pucill's video installation Stages of Mourning creates "an unexpected, cross-cultural encounter of two women artists." Kim's sculptures and handmade books, in the Fairbanks Gallery, use unusual materials to create objects that explore Buddhist symbolism and Kim's own meditations on the great questions: meaning of life, meaning of death, meaning of existence... In the adjacent West Gallery, Pucill's video installation takes a Western approach to the symbolism of death, exploring the depth of psychological anguish one experiences when trying to cope with the loss of a loved one.

Opening reception • 11:30-1:30 • May 5
Fairbanks Gallery • 106 Fairbanks Hall • OSU Campus

Curator lecture • 6pm Reception 7pm Lecture • May 7
LaSells Stewart Center • 100 LaSells Stewart Center • OSU Campus]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/a_cross-cultura.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/a_cross-cultura.html Openings & Events Fri, 02 May 2008 10:55:23 -0800
Joe Glasglow

Newspace presents Peripheral Vision by the Inner Light Group. Founded in 1986 by Shedrich Williames, the photography group now includes over 20 members working in a wide variety of styles. This exhibition explores the physical and metaphorical possibilities when considering our visual periphery: "Does it exist only in the mind of the photographer? Or is seeing with peripheral vision a physical process that keeps one alert to all that may be happening in the corners and around the edges of an image."

Opening reception • 6-9pm • May 2
Newspace Center for Photography • 1632 SE 10th AVE • 503.963.1935



Chris Bennett, "Ruby Ranch"

Chris Bennett is exhibiting his new series Broken Cinema at Pushdot this month. The dark, melancholic images are his "private internal response to [his] external experience, moving across lonely unpopulated American landscapes."

Opening reception • 6-9pm • May 2
Pushdot Studio • 1021 SE Caruthers St. • 503.224.5925



J. Otto Siebold

Well known children's book illustrator J. Otto Siebold is coming to Grass Hut this month. He's been working inside the gallery, utilizing spray paint, brushes, graffiti pens, cameras, and... "a crappy old drum set to thrash around with." The work will definitely be interesting, but the question remains: Can his independent work compare with the quality of his illustrations?

Opening reception • 6-9pm • May 2
Grass Hut Gallery • 811 E Burnside • 503.445.9924



John R. Stahl, "Conversation Series"

A 1971 graduate of PAM's Museum Art School (which has since branched off and become PNCA), John R. Stahl has been exhibiting in and outside of the NW for nearly forty years. This month, he is showing Three Decades, a selection of work that goes all the way back to his earliest Portland shows.

Opening reception • 6-9pm • May 2
12x16 Gallery • 8235 SE 13th AVE Suite 5 •l 503.432.3513




Small A will be hosting a one night video screening, curated by Israel Lund.

Screening • 7pm • May 2
Small A Projects • 1430 SE 3rd AVE • 503.234.7993]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/first_friday_pi_15.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/05/first_friday_pi_15.html Openings & Events Thu, 01 May 2008 11:45:03 -0800
Werner Herzog film still

During the month of May, the NW Film Center will be featuring A Quest for the Sublime: The Films of Werner Herzog. A central figure in the 1970s New German Cinema movement, Herzog has risen to prominence with acclaimed films from his early Aguirre to the more recent Grizzly Man. His films are characterized by his "disregard [for] the distinction between narrative film and documentary in pursuit of a more profound truth."

The series begins on Friday, May 2nd with his 2007 film Encounters at the End of the World, an exploration of Antarctica in "all its stark beauty." The film airs at 7pm in the Whitsell Auditorium.

For the full schedule and ticket purchasing information, visit the NW Film Center site.]]> http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/04/werner_herzog.html http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2008/04/werner_herzog.html Openings & Events Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:05:18 -0800