CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

Portland2010 Biennial Begins

openings tonight at Disjecta and Rocksbox Fine Art

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Mar 13, 2010 at 10:48AM 0 Comments

Here we go. Portland2010, a biennial exhibition of contemporary art curated by Cris Moss and organized by Disjecta kicks off this weekend with a double hit: new exhibitions with a powerhouse group of artists opening at Disjecta and Rocksbox Fine Art. Portland2010 is really a series of exhibitions in several Portland venues rather than a single venue/multiple artists. Eighteen artists were chosen from a field of 300 and shows will happen at venues ranging from established galleries like Elizabeth Leach to the Left Bank to the Templeton Building (hell, yes, bring back the Templeton Building!). All kicks off tonight, 6-10 PM at Disjecta and Rocksbox.

What I’m most interested in for this first round of openings is to see Are You Ready for the Country? by Springfield, OR’s Ditch Projects at Rocksbox Fine Art (6540 N Interstate). This artist collective runs a space in Springfield where they’ve been putting up what look like really strong shows for some time. And I’ve never been able to get down there. So I’m glad the mountain comes to Moses. I’ve seen great work by a number of Ditch members like Mike Bray (at Fourteen30) and Donald Morgan at the Hoffman Gallery at OCAC. The current members of Ditch Projects are: Julie Berkbuegler-Poremba, Mike Bray, Jared Davis-Haug, Damon Harris, Tim Meyer, Donald Morgan, Dave Siebert, Robert Smith, and Jesse Sugarman.

There exists a separation between the rural and the urban, a relationship of margin and center in which the urban assumes the position of primary focus. Are You Ready for the Country rejects this relationship, offering in its place an extraction of the phantom presence of the rural from within the facade of the urban. Finding inspiration in the apocalypse of vacancy that marks urban failure, Are You Ready for the Country identifies and celebrates the urban center’s sudden and full submission to the rural margin. Refusing the iconography of idealized naturalism, the members of Ditch Projects opt, instead, to frame rurality as the physical lack of constant urbanity. This expanded arcadia offers an alternate interpretation of provinciality, an opportunity for country objects and backwoods instances to be birthed from the crises of urban decay. Are You Ready for the Country displays the trappings of this neo-rurality, creating a buck hunter’s trophy wall of crude plaza monuments and high-tech folk art.

Bring it.

And at Disjecta (8371 N Interstate), Bruce Conkle & Marne Lucas further explore their trademarked(!) Eco-Baroque concept they’ve worked with before at The Art Gym and at PSU. The artists’ statement:

‘Eco-Baroque’ is a maximalist aesthetic approach and style based on natural forms in which magnificent opulence is created using ornate or decorative materials, and mixing in simple natural materials when possible or practical. Exploring this concept, the aim is to inform and amuse while questioning our consumption of energy, (tanning beds, grow lights, and by extension – nuclear fusion), resources, and humanity’s ever-changing relationship to the environment, drawing analogies between complex beauty as found in nature and the luxury goods with which mankind seeks in order to try and separate himself from the animals.

We draw inspiration from moss, lichen, crystals, minerals, honeycomb, coconuts, Native American culture, reflections, gold leaf, fountains, dioramas, chandeliers, most shiny things and psychedelic patterns found abundantly in nature. Our collaborative process is very spontaneous and allows us to push the boundaries of each of our individual oeuvres, often to absurd dimensions. We share a similar sense of humor, political, social and eco-based attitudes about the world and making art. Individually, we have produced work that explores Pacific Northwest regionalism with both humor and reverence for the place where we have been raised and live.

Also at Disjecta (8371 N Interstate), we’ll see work by David Corbett (who recently had work in The Quadratic Logogram of Everything show at Half/Dozen, Sean Healy, who most recently did a project with Joe Thurston at Gallery HOMELAND’s EAST/WEST Berlin, Crystal Schenk & Shelby Davis who I think are reinstalling West Coast Turnaround, their installation from Milepost 5, and dancer and choreographer Tahni Holt whose “Culture Machine (In Progress)” performance will be developed and performed over the course of Portland2010 (more on that shortly).

Ongoing are two exhibitions of work by PORTLAND2010 artist Melody Owen, Letters from Switzerland through March 27 at Elizabeth Leach Gallery (417 NW 9th) and So Close to the Glass and Shivering through April 9 at The Art Gym at Marylhurst University (BP John Administration Building, 17600 Pacific Highway).

Still to come: work by
Holly Andres
Corey Arnold
Pat Boas
John Brodie
David Eckard
Damien Gilley
Oregon Painting Society
Melody Owen
Jenene Nagy
Heidi Schwegler
Stephen Slappe
Kartz Ucci

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The 39 Steps

Alfred Hitchcock cavorts on the Armory stage

Posted by: Alexis Rehrmann on Mar 12, 2010 at 02:00PM 0 Comments

Run, dashingly handsome hero, run!

Oooooh, I have such a fondness for stage schtickery.

I mean many-hat-wearing, stage-gun-toting, I’m-driving-this-car-made-of-folding-chairs, and-yes-that-IS-an-overhead-projector-instead-of-live-feed-from-a-mac-book, kinds of capers. Ah, it makes me nostalgic, the old roar of the greasepaint, smell of the crowd.

The 39 Steps at Portland Center Stage is fluffy and diverting, and delivers enough schtick to butter all our bread. The play was adapted by Patrick Barlow and had a successful Broadway run last season. It’s an affectionate spoof on the Alfred Hitchcock ouvre.

Our handsome hero (who is repeatedly admired for his wavy brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and pencil mustache) is drawn into a web of intrigue, murder, and double-crossing spies after a mysterious woman takes cover in his shabby London flat. The tale that unfolds is full of beautiful women, dangerous secret agents, and the hair-pin turns of a good thriller.

The lively production is chock full of stage-folksy charm, with just enough story to hang a bits of actor business on. That’s really what makes The 39 Steps worth your while. The four cast members play 130 characters between them, with such a hilarious array of hats, and so many florid Scottish accents, that you will be breathless from laughing often enough to excuse the thin plot.

I especially loved a wonderfully silly scene on a train played out by Darius Pierce (Man One) and Ebbe Row Smith (Man Two) and a variety of hats: bobbie, newsboy cap, and train conductor.

*And just wait for the bagpipe parade. The staging is one of the oldest gags in the book, and there’s a reason that the classics endure. Just hilarious.

The stage and lighting, designed by Justin Townsend, is just as much fun as the acting. The low-tech projections in particular brilliantly evoke the black-and-white world of a Hitchcock movie, while never loosing the comedic touch of the play. And the use of window frames, to climb through, dive through, mime behind, and make great escapes, feels endlessly inventive.

What could be better for a cold rainy night, after a long week, than cozying up to a cotton-candy weight story full of inventive diversions? Stop by the Armory, buy a ticket, and then warm up with a fancy drink at Tear Drop , or a good brew at Deschutes. Shimmy on back to the theater for the 7:30 curtain.

See you there?

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Tags: Theater

Avantika Bawa’s yesterday. Yellow

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Mar 12, 2010 at 10:22AM 0 Comments

Opening tonight with a reception from 6-9 PM is a new installation, yesterday. Yellow, by current Milepost 5 (900 NE 81st) artist-in-residence Avantika Bawa (Atlanta/New Dehli). The artist uses “fragmented debris from foreclosed properties, abandoned spaces and close out sales” to “construct a landscape where the commonplace is glorified,” reinventing “the mundane, the forgotten, and the foreclosed.”

We’ve seen Bawa’s spare, architectural installations in Portland at Tilt Gallery and Project Space and recently as part of the Vantage show at Clark College, dealing with in part, as she puts it, “my relationship to the legacy of Minimalism and its emphasis on reductive form, modularity and literal scale.”

And artist and curator, Avantika Bawa is based in Atlanta, Georgia and New Delhi, India. She has an MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1998) and a BFA in the same from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India (1995) and has shown internationally with solo shows at Saltworks gallery, the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi, India, and in Mumbai at Gallery Maskara this past November.

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POV Dance and The Ford Building Project

dancing about and with architecture

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Mar 10, 2010 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

POV Dance is going to dance the Ford Building (2505 SE 11th), its stairwells, walls, windows, and rails. What’s the Ford Building you say? You know it as home of Gallery HOMELAND.

Mandy Christiansen, Noel Plemmons have choreographed an evening-length work called “The Ford Building Project” in which their nine dancers will move from one end of the building’s ground floor to another, making a moving landscape of architecture, bodies, light and sound. $15 at brownpapertickets.com

Note: The performance runs approximately 65 minutes with no intermission. Seating is extremely limited and options include sitting or kneeling on the ground, with the option of standing. All performances are ADA compliant.

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See ’em This Weekend

Remember how you totally meant to see American Buffalo? This weekend is your last chance.

Posted by: Alexis Rehrmann on Mar 04, 2010 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

I hate how these things creep up on me.

Sometimes I am distracted from the theater by drama of mine own (Parental Visit! Boyfriend’s Job Search! Massive Attack of the Blues! Netflicks delivers Battestar Galactica Season 3!)

I always get my act back together, eventually. Like right now, I’ve just poked my head back out into the cultured world, and realized that there are a bunch of plays I want to see, and this weekend is my last chance. Assuming I’m not alone in this predicament, here is a list of worthwhile shows that are wrapping up their stage runs this weekend. Go check one out!

American Buffalo at the trusty Third Rail Rep.

Before he raised four-letter words to an art form—and before the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross made him the irascible darling of the theater world—playwright David Mamet composed this dense, dialogue-heavy study of a heist gone wrong. First staged in 1975, it was only Mamet’s fourth play, but it contained the sturdy framework of what was to come: bawdy, brazen language; gallows humor; and men plotting, scheming, and struggling to break free from the soulless grind their lives had become.

King Lear at Mt. Hood Community College.

Veteran voice actor Sam Mowry from Willamette Radio Theatre tackles the title role in this, one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.

You Can’t Take it With You at Portland Actors Conservatory

(someone, perhaps, might have mentioned this to Lear) Future in-laws clash as the conservative, money-motivated Kirby clan and the free-spirited, highly eccentric Vanderhof-Sycamore family are forced to rub elbows. Things go downhill from there in this Pulitzer Prize winning comedy from George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

Entre Villa y Una Mujer Desnuda at Milagro Theater

Gina and Adrian have a relationship that’s primarily physical—and that’s good enough for Adrian. But when Gina seeks commitment elsewhere, her neglected lover summons all his inner resources, including the spirit of Pancho Villa, to win her back.

Go forth! See shows!

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Tags: Theater