James Ewing at Newspace


Whitney Hubbs at Newspace

Newspace puts on a good-looking show of work by James Ewing and Whitney Hubbs. Ewing exhibits a body of work shot while on a yearlong Fulbright fellowship to Tunisia in 2004. He documents the tension and syntheses between three distinct cultural forces at play within the country; Arabic, European colonial, and contemporary globalization. Whitney Hubbs uses a highly personal visual vocabulary to interpret everyday experience.
Opening Reception • 7-10pm • Jan. 5-28
Newspace • 1632 SE 10th Ave. • Tel. 503.963.1935


Roberta Aylward at Grass Hut

Grass Hut exhibits Spaces and Places, new mixed media works by Roberta Aylward and Lisa DeJohn.
Opening Reception • 6-9pm
Grass Hut • 811 E. Burnside • Tel. 503.445.9924

Small A shows Dave McKenzie's Tomorrow Will be Better."Dave McKenzie's work explores attempts at communication, and the humorous, heroic, touching and sometimes sad moments that define these attempts. His sculptures, videos, installations and performances are motivated by the desire to imbue mundane objects and gestures with deeper emotional or cultural significance." For Tomorrow Will Be Better, McKenzie exhibits several new sculptures and two videos that span the last seven years of his career.
Opening Reception • 5-8pm • Jan. 5-Feb. 10
Small A Projects • 1430 SE 3rd • 503.234.7993


Paige Saez at Moloko Plus

Paige Saez exhibits new paintings at Moloko Plus. Says Paige's PR, "She is convinced that mark making itself, and the process of making art is mimicry--an exploration of living with her hands."
Opening Reception • 7-10pm • Jan. 5-Feb. 1
Moloko Plus • 3967 N Mississippi • 503.288.6272

run for the hills!
run for the hills!
the rip offs are comming!
the rip offs are comming!
apparently in this town that type of painting is fair game to be reappropriated as long as you don't copy the "exact" brush strokes. SAD.
SAD. SAD.

Similarities always pop up.

For example both Rauschenberg and Warhol used the silkscreen technique on the JFK subject matter... etc... but the details are what matter and just seeing some 72 dpi pics on the internet doesn't really provide those kind of details.

Hi There,

I would like to submit the argument that Paige Saez is, above all things, no copyist. The painting that has been used within this post is representative of many years of work - I would say, roughly, the last 5 - in which a stylistic change can be easily seen to come about. She has consistently, though, been accused of being derivative - specifically in Portland, in comparison with the work of James Bolton. Interestingly enough though, the two collaborated within one another years ago, and Bolton's style seemed to fully develop only after that very collaboration.

For some time now I have been greatly disturbed by the complaint of Saez's supposed derivative work, which has come up in a variety of ways over the years. In the end, it always tends to be that she isn't a man. Male painters tend to get away with a lot more. I've seen plenty of lesser artists do work that one may find similarities in towards hers, though I have never seen them get the flack that she does.

HT, I have to agree with you and all painters tend to engage the history of painting... Paige has a lot of ability, as a painter, conceptualist or an installation artist. Overall Im not certain specifically whom BS is referring to?

The similarities between Saez and Boulton are too pronounced to write off. If Saez had instead been selected for the 2003 Biennial and subsequently championed by Pulliam Deffenbaugh and every local media outlet, it would be up to Boulton to push his work to a place where it wouldn't be mistaken Saez's. Or conversely, to push it in a way that makes Saez's work look easy and irrelevant. But, it didn't happen this way. For better or worse, It's now up to Saez to do something about it if she wants to keep the attention of the viewer familiar with Boulton's work.

Funny thing is this latest group of paintings don't look like Boulton's at all. They do look a little like Per Kirkbeys. I also think Paige and James got a lot of flack because they are rather good looking individuals... for some very stupid (but understandable) reasons that seems to matter. Here and everywhere else.

Paige's video work is really interesting too. All this fuss simply means she can command attention and I think she's ready for a bigger more multi-media solo show.

"In the end, it always tends to be that she isn't a man"
:
HA!
:
good point, but come on! that is like al sharpton playing the race card for the sake of the race card-it is true, and 100% real, but only as a generalization.
to me it seems your publicly shared opinion in this public forum is more a representation of how you interpret what you consider to be reality, and what you think other people should think and believe than something that has anything to do with these specific artists, and this situation.

several people had a problem with this artists(MALE) work
i.e. static# 1 and static# 2
http://www.taborrobak.com/

for similar reasons but probably didn't write about it publicly because he is a 20year old college student and not someone who has been out of school for several years presenting herself to the public as a career artist...

I've been looking at her work a long time, maybe around the same time I discovered James' work. We'll never know who made the first piece in such a style. Yes, there are similarities but no one can paint that well on just a copycat lark. Also, why the assumption that she is the copycat? James could have his own influences too and it would be impossible to not have them. Does this mean that she'll have to stop her style? Sounds like it, but considering how long she has been at it, it can't happen overnight. You can't envy such a position because it means that she has to listen to all of this. We keep hearing how meaningful a dialogue is.... If you look at art history, plenty of artists mined similar territories at the same time. They are both into a traffic of sorts.

Let's make this more than a witch hunt shall we? Painters work in clusters and often very closely togther. Picasso and Braque's cubist paintings are very difficult to tell from one another from 25 feet away... and that is actually pretty interesting.

As for mr. Tabor... static #3 truly is indebted to Boulton's earlier work but that is OK people copy styles to get their bearings. Notably, Static #3 looks nothing like anything in Paige's current show. Also, to me Paige's current work looks a lot more like Per Kirkeby than Boulton. It's related to aboriginal art too.

As for Mr. Tabor...these things happen. When Picasso and Braque invented cubism there were suddenly a host of copyists... some who have been remembered and entered into museum collections.

Kahnweiler (P & B's dealer) took great pains to indicate who the true cubists were... it will all get sorted out in the mix.

Paige is due for a devoted solo show that shows off her many sides as a cohesive whole. I saw this show as a little warmup for her... the paintings are 6 months old. I can't get too worked up about this show, it's nice but it is obviously a warmup.

This discussion has brought up what I believe to be a significant problem with contemporary art. As Double J astutely pointed out, painters have worked "in clusters" throughout the history of art. This is how ideas and/or concepts are put through their paces. A more recent example could be the Bay Area Expressionists (Diebenkorn, et al.). If this process did not occur, and artists did not take the risk to be called derivative for the sake of pushing ideas to their limits, then most art would be superficial, unrealized, and cliche.

This conversation is a complete worthless cause. These are obviously not "copies." That's like saying anyone that has ever painted a portrait before is copying Da Vinci. This kind of banter is more deconstructive than constuctive.

And I know Tabor, and he will be an amazing artist if he pushes himself hard enough. His work is great.

I'd take Andy Kaufman over Sascha Baron Cohen, Truman's Water over Pavement, Douglas Huebler over Yoko Ono, Michael over Jermaine, Law & Order over Law & Order: SVU, SNL over MADtv, RC over Pepsi but not over Coke, Bruce Conner over Bob Rauschenberg, Cady Noland over Wade Guyton, Will Cotton over Wayne Thiebaud, Screamin Jay Hawkins over Jerry Lee Lewis, and Marilyn Manson over Alice Cooper.