CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

First Thursday April

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Apr 01, 2010 at 09:23AM 0 Comments

LESS
Victor Maldonado
Froelick Gallery
714 NW Davis
Reception April 1 5-8 PM

Recently back from showing at EAST/WEST BERLIN, Maldonado has been thinking about border crossings, the immigrant experience, and growing up as an indigenous man, a Mexican-American man, and assimilation. For Maldonado these “Green Screen” paintings—each representing the exact dimensions of one of the televisions that have been in his life—speak to his experience of learning English from watching American television and what that means for the process of acculturation with Maldonado a case study of a broader immigrant experience.

Higher Ground
Karl Burkheimer
DOPPLER PDX
625 NW Everett Street #109
Reception April 1 5:30-9 PM

Burkheimer goes vertical, investigating “his interest in the space, real or perceived, between the object of contemplation and the object of utility. Using the gallery as his architectural reference, Burkheimer created objects within the space as points of exchange with the public.” Department Head at OCAC, Burkheimer in the last year was curated into the Call + Response exhibition at MoCC and co-curated the one-night exhibition Open House Opening.

New Work
Julia Mangold

Selected Drawings
Donald Judd

Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th

Leach shows Julia Mangold’s wax and graphite-coated sculptures with a group of related graphite and wax drawings on paper and board. It will be interesting to see how these works have a conversation with a selection of drawings by Donald Judd also on show.

The Great Recession
Michael Mandiberg
Feldman Gallery at PNCA (1241 NW Johnson)
Reception April 1 6:30 PM

Exploring the psychic implications of the current economic difficulties as well as “late Capitalism, gold hoarding, and the end of an empire.” He says of his work: “I am an a appropriationist at heart. I derive visual inspiration from the internet, conceptual art, design, the end of print, and the dying American empire.”

EXPO
Colin Matthes
IGLOO
625 NW Everett #102

For his first solo exhibition in the Northwest, Milwaukee-based artist Colin Matthes is doing a short-term residency at Igloo gallery, culminating in a site-specific installation of scavenged scrap wood and found objects with high tech gizmos and survival gear to “create a lighthearted, yet poignant installation referencing stage sets, flea markets, unrealized innovations, and trade work. The installation will focus on creating an environment that invites the viewer to imagine small victories in hostile locations while encouraging reflection of how our own lifestyles contribute to creating these dynamics.”

working with doubt
Josh Smith
Manuel Izquierdo Gallery at PNCA
1241 NW Johnson
Reception Thursday April 1, 6-9 PM

FOG: A Spring Group Show
Artur Silva, Calvin Ross Carl, Grant Hottle, John Berry, Laura Mackin, Lisa Berry, Lisa Kowalski
Half/Dozen Gallery
625 NW Everett #111
Opening Reception April 1 6-9 PM

“A fog-laden photo by Lisa Berry (the show’s namesake), the repurposed home videos of Laura Mackin and the playful use of interior/exterior spaces by Grant Hottle all welcome the new season with hesitant, but open arms. Whether it is the vaguely familiar mountains mirrored in new work by Calvin Ross Carl, the scribbled paint strokes by Lisa Kowalski, or the playful assemblage by Artur Silva, this show will make you want to go outside and breath a chest full of fresh air. John Berry’s subtly crafted linocut may be the quiet kid in the corner not yet ready to venture out and greet the season.”

Empirical Geodism
Chelsea Lynn Linehan and Nathanael Thayer Moss
Tractor
328 NW Broadway
Opening April 1 6-10 PM

“A sensory experience of visual and sonic stimulations,” with new paintings, paper sculptures, drawings, and a collaborative light/sound sculpture.

[caption id=“attachment_5415” align=“alignleft” width=“430” caption=" Toshiko Okanoue, Noon Song, 1954. Photolithographic collage."][/caption]

Drop of Dreams
Toshiko Okanoue
Charles A. Hartman Fine Art
134 NW 8th
Reception April 1 5:30-8:30 PM

A show of original surrealist photolithographic collages from the early 1950s by the Japanese artist, Toshiko Okanoue. "Okanoue’s collages, created when she was in her mid-20s in post-war Japan, were constructed largely from American picture magazines such as Life and Vogue. Mining these rich visual sources of American popular culture, Okanoue’s beautiful surrealist imagery expresses the dreams of a young female artist in Japan standing at the crossroads of events and movements of enormous historic significance.

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Tags: Portland Art, First Thursday

First Thursday March

too much good

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Mar 04, 2010 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Portland has come out swinging in the field of art for 2010 with strong shows right and left, from regional masters to intriguing visitors, excellent group shows…and March looks just as good. Here are some shows you might hit.

Marker
Marie Watt
PDX Contemporary Art
925 NW Flanders

Show of new work by Watt including “Trunk,” this incredible, sinuous cedar sculpture.

Clouds
Lucinda Parker
Laura Russo
805 NW 21st

Regional abstract expressionist powerhouse and longtime arts educator Parker with a show of new paintings inspired by the weather. Parker gives a talk Saturday, March 27, at 11 AM.

Letters from Switzerland
Melody Owen
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th

“For Letters from Switzerland, using the tools and media of the Swiss-originated Dadaists, Owen created a precise and strange group of collages, examining feelings of dislocation and disconnection. Featuring bisected animals spilling flowers from their guts, and hotels sprouting roots that can’t find purchase, these works allude to the deracinated experience of the contemporary traveler.”

Laurie Danial
Froelick Gallery
714 NW Davis

Abstract paintings by Danial that feature tracings, structures, transparencies, the built and the organic.

Grassland Alphabet
Seth Nehil
In House Gallery
625 NE Everett St. #106

“…calligraphic exercises – letter-forms constructed from waves and clusters of marks. I imagined a field of wheat attempting to form itself into words, a mute landscape swelling in the wind, blades of grass arranging and aligning themselves.”

Constrain to Vertical
Brenda Mallory
DOPPLER PDX
625 NW Everett Street #109

Fabric wall pieces inspired by stacks of UPS “end-of-day” barcodes + Agnes Martin.

GRIP, GRASP, GROPE, AND FONDLE
Lucas Murgida
Autzen Gallery
2nd Floor PSU Neuberger Hall, Room 205, 724 SW Harrison

SF artist Murgida makes work through (and addressing) his work … conducting “research” while employed as cabinetmaking, restaurant work, locksmithing, and now yoga instruction. Artist talk/performance at opening.

Wrecking Crüe
IGLOO
625 NW Everett #102

Titled cute, this is a group show of work by Jordan Tull, Josh Smith, Salvatore Reda, Joshua Pavlacky, and Jeff Jahn (like the j-alliteration…should Salvatore change his first name?). Bullet points from the quite poetic statement:

+ constructed space
+ structural invention
+ half-made/half-undone
+ hypershapes
+ blueprints and Outer Space
+ rendering philosophical material from impulsive architecture

3X_PWN_TRANZ
Future Death Toll
Tractor
328 NW Broadway

sometimes when you pick up the pwn, you don’t know who is on the other line.
sometimes when you pick up the pwn, you do all the talking.
sometimes when you pick up the pwn, the pwn does all the talking for you.

I’m into the idea of “evidence of a past or future mission to transmit” as well as the machines of communication.

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Tags: Portland Art, First Thursday

First Thursday February

it’s a knockout

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Feb 03, 2010 at 12:00PM 0 Comments

This is a month that promises a wealth of remarkable exhibitions including sharp-looking group shows at both Elizabeth Leach Gallery and Half/Dozen, Oregon Painting Society at Manuel Izquierdo at PNCA, plus new work by Jaq Chartier (Leach), Bean Finneran (PDX Contemporary), and something intriguing from Lindsay Aucoin at Tractor. And that’s just the exhibitions opening on Thursday! Receptions generally start at 6 or 6:30 PM. Websites have details. Stay tuned for Friday openings.

SuperNatural
Jaq Chartier
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th
The gallery, as I do, calls Chartier’s work both lush and minimal. Like test strips or views through a microscope, this is work that is quietly beautiful.

Re-Present
Pat Boas, Adam Chapman, Isaac Layman, Joe Park, Xiaoze Xie
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th
According to the gallery, “the artists in Re-Present consider the differences between representation and perception.” Boas’ work I respect very much, recontextualizing the everyday info-stream via excision, and Layman I was introduced to by the recent show at the Archer Gallery. I’m perhaps most interested to see Chapman’s video drawing portraits.

Shadowgut
Oregon Painting Society
Manuel Izquierdo Gallery
825 NW 13th
I don’t know much about what this arts collective is doing for this show, (Derek Franklin says its the dark opposite of their Autzen show) but their recent exhibition at Autzen was widely lauded. They’re adventurous, smart, and surprising.

Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now
The Philip Feldman Gallery + Project Space
1241 NW Johnson
Sweeping exhibition of posters, photographs, ephemera capturing over 40 years of international social activism. Graphically powerful reminder of stakes and role that art/design has played in agitating for social change.

The Quadratic Logogram of Almost Everything: The Democracy of the Contemporary Art Object
Half/Dozen
625 NW Everett St. #111
Excellent group of artists, smart curator, and interesting premise, I’m going to dig into more fully in short order. I wouldn’t miss this group show curated by Derek Franklin with work by David Corbett, Alex Felton, Kristan Kennedy, Sterling Lawrence.

Incidence and Pattern
Bean Finneran
PDX Contemporary Art
925 NW Flanders
“For the past seven years I have been working with a single elemental form, a curve as a meditation upon multiplicity in nature."

T9
Lindsay Aucoin
Tractor
328 NW Broadway
“I’m interested in word play, idea play, picture play- anything that interrupts the way we normally see things. … T9 is an abstract look at technology as a means of communication.”

Inland Empires
Tyler Kohlhoff
Tribute Gallery
328 NW Broadway #117
“Inland Empires focuses on the transitional habitats of the Interior West. In a series of two studies, the artist leverages anti-narrative to explore space as found artifacts of the abandoned." It’s a first PDX show for this artist of what look to be lovely , moody photos.

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Tags: Portland Art, First Thursday

First Thursday January

Posted by: Lisa Radon on Jan 07, 2010 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Marco Buti, from the Ficar series, mezzotint, 15.5″ × 11.75″, 2002. image via Froelick Gallery

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Marco Buti, from the Ficar series, mezzotint, 15.5″ × 11.75″, 2002. image via Froelick Gallery

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Megan Murphy, INEFFABLE, 2009. digital transparency, mirror, glass, acrylic, and oil paint. 22.5″ × 36″. image via PDX Contemporary Art

View Slideshow » Illustration:

John Mann, Untitled (sea level), 2009. digital c-print, 24″ × 30″. image via PDX Contemporary Art

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Scott Wolniak, Improvised Grass (detail), 2008. Sculpture – Paper, junk mail, studio debris, glue, wire, and tape. Dimensions variable. image via Chambers Gallery

Interiors: An Invitational Group Exhibit
Froelick Gallery
714 NW Davis
First Thursday Reception: January 7, 5–8 PM

Interiors here means both shelter and psyche, with selected works by artists including Vito Acconci (photo documentation of his “Seedbed” performance), Marco Buti’s remarkable prints, and work by Isabelle Scurry Chapman, Joe Deal, Matthew Dennison, Raymond Depardon, Walker Evans, Benny Fountain, Jeremiah Goodman, Shelley Jordan, Kevin Kadar, André Kertész, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Susan Seubert, Jeff Stuhr, Lli Wilburn, “and a selection of very odd vernacular photographs.”

Glass House, an interactive installation
Jennifer Jacobs
Tractor (328 NW Broadway #114)

Exploring a city is like walking through a hall of mirrors. The surfaces of the urban environment are tuned to reflect elements of your personality back to you with varying degrees of distortion. Observation is central to the flow of power in the city; It feeds into our personal vanities and controls us through our awareness of a detached surveillance. Our modified reflections cause us to engage in a form of self-evaluation and censure. There is a paradoxical relationship with the urban image of ourselves in that we wish to be observed, yet we are conscious of the control this observation exerts over us. Glasshouse examines the contention between narcissism and self-imposed surveillance. The piece itself is an interactive projection of glittering structures resembling city skyscrapers. As the viewer explores these structures, they impose a distorted portrait back upon them in imposing scale. The city’s movement responds to the flow of people throughout the space. The longer the viewer progresses through the city, the more their image is echoed around them. After the viewer leaves, their presence remains, gradually fading to be replaced with the images of others who follow through their own path of exploration. The audience is caught between self-spectacle and self-consciousness, uncertain of their control over the space, but implicitly aware of their presence within it.

John Mann, Untitled (sea level), 2009. digital c-print, 24″ × 30″. image via PDX Contemporary Art

Folded in Place
John Mann
PDX Across the Hall (925 NW Flanders)

Meanwhile, at PDX Across the Hall, John Mann deals with exteriors or landscapes through a series of photos of map-based constructions/deconstructions that look sensational in their low-res online glory so I can’t wait to see in real life.

The photographs in this series are informed by the varied ways that photography, mapping, drawing and sculpture have each tried to describe the landscape. By incorporating each of these methods, Folded in Place highlights the abstraction of the landscape traditionally offered by these means, while creating a tangible photographic “place” in each image that is occupied by a mapped construction. The images therefore provide precise photographic and mapped information while at the same time offering an abstraction of the landscape itself.

Megan Murphy, INEFFABLE, 2009. digital transparency, mirror, glass, acrylic, and oil paint. 22.5″ × 36″. image via PDX Contemporary Art

Porcelain
Megan Murphy
PDX Contemporary (925 NW Flanders">

In Porcelain and Other Works, Megan Murphy uses historical events and locations to construct an understanding of how our contemporary selves and culture are informed by the subjectivity of recorded history. From photographs that she has taken on location—places that are often remote and imbued with dramatic, emotional histories—Murphy produces a transparent image that she then mounts between a mirror and a sheet of glass. Then begins a process of building up and removing dozens of layers of paint and text, imbuing the paint with an internal luminosity while replicating the effects of time: actions once taken and now remembered by how they are revealed through the progression and reflection of time.

Scott Wolniak, Improvised Grass (detail), 2008. Sculpture – Paper, junk mail, studio debris, glue, wire, and tape. Dimensions variable. image via Chambers Gallery

Patterning
Scott Wolniak
Chambers Gallery (916 NW Flanders)

I’m fascinated by number, rhythm, pattern especially those naturally occurring (closet Pythagorean that I am). And so I’m interested in Scott Wolniak’s Patterning at Chambers.

Patterning unites several projects by Scott Wolniak that utilize repetition and rhythm to examine structures found in studio art practice and everyday life. Exhibited projects include two sculptural installations built from found items and household debris entitled Weeds and Grass, the intricate graphite drawing series Untitled Tie-Dyes, the bright Simulated Sunprints, and the single-channel video installation Musical Notes in Harmony with the Attuned Healing Colors. Together, the series explore patterns – found or created – as concept, system, and compositional template.

Play for Keeps
Group Show
Tribute Gallery (328 NW Broadway #117)

Guest curators Elizabeth Lamb and Chloe Gallagher have pulled together works on paper by a national roster of artists to explore “the often underrated importance of play.”

Featured artists include Jon MacNair from Baltimore, MD whose playful yet eerie works of ink on paper have earned him a national following. Joshua Witten, hailing from Fort Collins, IN, works in a variety of media and possesses an impressive mastery of his bold, graphic style. Mixed media artist Patrick Haemmerlein from Los Angeles builds arresting urban images from the ground up using his own photography and source material. Ashley Sloan, a local Portland artist, will be exhibiting clever, thought-provoking graphite works. And, Max Kauffman, hailing from Denver, CO, whose colorful, folkloric works have been exhibited at a number of prominent national galleries, will also be featured. The exhibit will also include works by Brett Anderson, Huy Nguyen, Garric Simonsen, Angela Dawn, Breanne Rupp, Megan Marie Myers, Brian Costello, Jackie Bos, Karri Dieken, Stephan Ferreira, Mark Colman, Heidi Elise Wirz, Coco Papy, Sally Gilmore, Mark Olwick, Louise Krampien and Cara Tomlinson.

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Tags: Art, Portland Art, Galleries, tribute gallery, tractor, froelick gallery, First Thursday, chambers gallery,