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Portland art blog + news + exhibition reviews + galleries + contemporary northwest art
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Tuesday 08.31.10 First Thursday Picks September 2010  Danny Treacy, "Them #17" Bluesky is turning 35! To inaugurate their 35th-anniversary celebration, they're exhibiting Wisconsin Tavern League by Carl Corey and Them by 2009 Man Photography Prize-winning Danny Treacy. Wisconsin Tavern League is Corey's effort to document Wisconsin taverns as culturally important communal gathering places. For Them, "London-based artist Danny Treacy searches his surroundings for discarded clothing to construct suggestive, haunting costumes. Treacy then dresses himself in what he creates and, by making striking life-sized self-portraits, he becomes 'Them.'" Opening reception • 6-9pm • September 2 Blue Sky Gallery • 122 NW 8th • 503.225.0210 (More: Justine Kurland at Elizabeth Leach, Adam Sorensen at PDX Contemporary, Eva Speer at Charles Hartman, Damien Gilley at PNCA, Arcy Douglass at Chambers@916, Brooklyn artists at Froelick.) Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 31, 2010 at 12:11 | Comments (0) PermalinkMonday 08.30.10 like smoke and holy water  Kartz Ucci Linfield presents Kartz Ucci's like smoke and holy water, "a site-specific response to the architectural grandeur of the natural light that fills the Linfield Gallery...Through the singular use of highly reflective mirrored surfaces and the absence of video and sound - like smoke and holy water as text/image and as object/sculpture is an attempt to isolate and elevate the viewer's psycho-physiological response to the architectural space of the Linfield Gallery." The show will run through October 9, 2010. Opening reception • 6-8pm • September 1 Linfield Gallery • 900 SE Baker St., McMinnville, OR Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 30, 2010 at 17:31 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 08.27.10 Kertesz and Waselchuk exhibitions Though this August has been littered with weakish summer group shows two excellent
solo photography exhibitions next door to one another should not be missed, it is
their last weekend. At Charles Hartman Fine Art there is a fantastic museum level
exhibition spanning the entire career of master
photographer Andre Kertesz. Next door at Blue Sky Gallery it is the sobering
prison hospice care documentation of Lori Waselchuk.
 Andre Kertesz Washington Square, Winter (1966) At Charles Hartman the roughly chronological display covers classic Kertesz images like Lovers (1915) taken in Budapest to the iconic Mondrain's Glasses and Pipe (1926) from his Paris years to the fantastic Washington Square, Winter (1966) Taken in New York City. Kertesz is a master of geometric composition as Mondrian's Glasses and Pipe demonstrates with its asymmetrical table corner forming a tense pyramid on which the ascetic circles of the bowl, pipe and glasses rest in a seemingly offhand repose. Those three elements form... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on August 27, 2010 at 9:17 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday 08.26.10 The Radiant Child  The NW Film Center is screening "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child," a 2010 Basquiat documentary directed by Tamra Davis. "Combining never-before-seen interview footage with commentary from friends and contemporary art world luminaries, Davis offers a compelling introduction to a singularly driven creative personality, an artist who could paint masterpieces in an hour (earning him Andy Warhol's extreme jealousy) and find endless inspiration in the oversaturated culture from which he emerged." Film screenings • 7pm • August 27 & 28 NW Film Center @ PAM • 1219 SW Park • Whitsell Auditorium Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 26, 2010 at 14:51 | Comments (0) PermalinkWednesday 08.25.10 Collateral Matters, please & thank you  Kate Bingaman-Burt and Clifton Burt Starting tomorrow, the Museum of Contemporary Craft presents Collateral Matters, selections by Kate Bingaman-Burt and Clifton Burt. "MoCC invited graphic designers Kate Bingaman-Burt and Clifton Burt to craft a response to the museum's collection. Naturally drawn to museum ephemera - invitations, posters, receipts and correspondence - the designers create an installation that uses printed materials from the archive to examine how institutional identity is constructed. The exhibition is part of an ongoing series of curatorial strategies that engage contemporary ways of looking at the collection." Exhibition • August 26, 2010 - January 8, 2011 Museum of Contemporary Craft • 724 NW Davis • 503.223.2654  Half/Dozen +Projects presents please and thank you, "a performative exploration of hum drum." This one night only performance (happening twice in one night) features movement by Bonnie Green, Danielle Ross, and Robert Tyree, and installation by Bonnie Green. Performances • 7pm & 9pm • August 27 Half/Dozen • 625 NW Everett #111 • 503.512.9079 Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 25, 2010 at 18:27 | Comments (0) PermalinkTuesday 08.24.10 heads up! last minute call for submissions Blue Sky is calling for submission for its Northwest Photography Viewing Drawers program. This is an excellent opportunity for photographers from Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia, and the deadline is August 27 (this Friday). Read more about the Drawers and submission guidelines on their website / blog.
Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 24, 2010 at 21:44 | Comments (1) PermalinkLast Thursday Picks August 2010  At the Alberta alley spaces: Appendix presents Laura Hughes, In the Space of an Instant. The installation "articulates and enhances fleeting instances of light through applications of phosphorescent and iridescent paint. The work is an exploration of how light, space, time, and architectural form shape one another to produce the visible by amplifying the imprint of the peripheral to the forefront of our perception." Opening reception • 8:30pm • August 26 Appendix Project Space • South alleyway b/w 26th & 27th off Alberta Little Field presents new work by Midori Hirosi, "stemming from her interest in combining geometric and loose facets. Her interest comes from an investigation into the dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian idea culled from reading The Birth of Tragedy. She has a predilection for order and chaos and for this series of sculptures, tries to achieve the genera principle using wood, foam and paint to convey a form of balance between structure and disorder." Opening reception • 7pm • August 26 Little Field • North alleyway b/w 28th & 29th off Alberta  Rebecca Shelly False Front presents Rebecca Shelly's The Seed Olympics. "Through the use of stop motion animation, Rebecca Shelly documents the growth of starter plants with an exploratory theme of Olympic games under the theory, 'survival of the fittest.'" Opening reception • 6pm • August 26 False Front Studio • 4518 NE 32nd • 503.781.4609 Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 24, 2010 at 10:36 | Comments (0) PermalinkMonday 08.23.10 Phun with Phonemes  RECESS presents Phun with Phonemes©, an exhibition exploring text and communication. "Through investigating memory and writing, text as spectacle, logo confusion, and conversational attention spans, Phun with Phonemes© will be a platform for engaging with language in new and exciting formats." Performances at the reception start at 7:30pm. Opening reception • 6pm • August 25 RECESS • 4315 SE Division (ground level of Artistery) Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 23, 2010 at 13:51 | Comments (0) PermalinkSaturday 08.21.10 Drake Deknatel's Small Paintings at Elizabeth Leach  Drake Deknatel at Elizabeth Leach Gallery As a relative newcomer to the greater Northwest art community, I am often at a loss when discussions arise regarding all but the most prominent of local artists. The upside of this situation is that it is still possible for me to be surprised... (more) Posted by Patrick Collier on August 21, 2010 at 15:07 | Comments (0) PermalinkFriday 08.20.10 PAM artist talks On the second Thursday of every month, the Portland Art Museum "offers visitors the unique opportunity to explore the Museum's permanent collection through the inspired lens of notable Portland artists, writers, and curators." The talks are great, but we haven't posted the last several since they've been selling out way ahead of time. So I thought I'd share the list of upcoming talks in 2010 for those who want to jump on the ticket bandwagon early:
•September 9: Stephanie Snyder (SOLD OUT) •October 14: Ethan Rose •November 11: Matt McCormick •December 9: Chas Bowie Read more about the artist talk series on PAM's website. Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 20, 2010 at 10:04 | Comments (0) PermalinkWednesday 08.18.10 Art Spark: TBA:10  This month's Art Spark features the "inside scoop" on TBA:10 with PICA at Mississippi Studio's new BarBar patio and a sneak preview performance by Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. Art chat • 5-7pm • August 19 Art Spark @ BarBar • 3939 N Mississippi Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 18, 2010 at 7:36 | Comments (0) PermalinkTuesday 08.17.10 Kelly Rauer's Shaping Sequence at NAAU "There is a point where in the mystery of existence contradictions meet;
where movement is not all movement and stillness is not all stillness; where the
idea and the form, the within and the without, are united; where infinite becomes
finite, yet not" - Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Prize for literature 1913)
 Kelly Rauer's Shaping Sequence at NAAU Consisting of numerous isolated videos of slow moving body parts Kelly Rauer's Shaping Sequence at NAAU is a fleshy tribute to kandinsky's compositional technique of having convexities answering concavities. It's even more even more obviously related to Georgia O'Keeffe, another Kandinskyite. Even more related is the work of O'Keefe's husband, Alfred Steieglitz, whose incredibly loaded photos of O'Keefe's hands set up a dialogocal art historical conversation between both photography and video art here. In fact Shaping Sequence acts quite a bit more like an installation of photographs rather than a single video piece or a dance performance... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on August 17, 2010 at 13:48 | Comments (0) PermalinkMonday 08.16.10 The Essentials, a discussion  Steve Karlik,"Flip" Tension and Compression Series, 2010 Glass sheets and enamel paint "18" x "24 x "1/4 Alright, alright... yes Portland's curators have inadvertently conspired to drown the city in abstraction, considering; Donald Judd, Mark GrotJahn, Sol LeWitt, Reed's upcoming Abstract and my M5 show up right now... deal with it. Fact is Portland has been obsessed with abstraction and hard edged or reductionist work for years (even before acquiring the Greenberg collection) and it's why I curated M5 as aa classic summer group show. Considering that Mark Rothko is from Portland, I never want to hear another person say that the Northwest is just about figurative work, though the discussion today isn't the same old will to abstraction we saw back in the 40's-60's. In attempts to further the discussion PNCA and I have put together The Essentials... August 18, 6:30 pm PNCA Main Campus Building, Room 201 1241 NW Johnson St. The M5 exhibition sets the stage for The Essentials—a study of what ideas are crucial to the active abstract and hard edge/perceptual art community in Portland. The Essentials is a JPEG jam, asking a number of reductive, abstract and perceptual artists in Portland to choose and present 3 essential images of their own work, while listing what three ideas or concerns accompany them... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on August 16, 2010 at 13:51 | Comments (1) PermalinkFriday 08.13.10 Clyfford Still Museum final design video  lobby view still (from video) of the Clyfford Still Museum In late July they finalized the design and now Denver's Clyfford Still Museum has released an excellent virtual tour of the building by Portland's own Brad Cloepfil. It's looking like it could be Brad's best design since the W+K headquarters and it doesn't hurt that Still is one of my favorite painters. Overall, Cloepfil seems to have balanced both light and heavy massings of concrete texture to produce a serious building designed to... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on August 13, 2010 at 11:03 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday 08.12.10 Learning Salons  Anissa Mack, "Almost Arrowheads" PICA's 8th annual TBA festival is ramping up. This weekend, artist-in-residence Anissa Mack will speak with Sarah Miller Meigs of the lumber room and PICA visual arts program director Kristan Kennedy about her residency at the lumber room and the collaboration between artist, curator, and patron. The talk is part of PICA's "ON SIGHT Salons." Artist chat • 3-4pm • August 14 lumber room • 419 NW 9th  The Research Club is offering an ongoing class, "What Philosophy Can Do For Art," taught by University of Oregon doctoral student VA Carter. Meeting each Saturday over the course of 9 weeks, the class "will use plain language and clever pictures to give you a broad and thorough history of the important thinkers in western thought." As related to art making, presumably. Cost is $5 / $10 per class, with price breaks for a bundle of them. Art Phil • 11am-12:30pm, Saturdays • July 31 - September 25 Research Club • 215 SE Morrison Suite 2020 • Portland Storage Building Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 12, 2010 at 13:09 | Comments (0) PermalinkWednesday 08.11.10 Wearable Art  Worksound presents Wearable Art, featuring (wearable) projects by Alex Dolan, Abraham Ingle, Hoyun Son, Aaron Terry, Deanna Bredthauer, Katie Behel, Palma Corral, Devon Maldonado, and Iris Stevenson. Opening reception • 7pm • August 13 Worksound • 820 SE Alder • mojomodou@gmail.com Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 11, 2010 at 14:25 | Comments (0) PermalinkTuesday 08.10.10 Solar Decathlon  The American Institute of Building Design's annual convention is happening this weekend in Portland. In conjunction with the convention, the AIBD presents an exhibition of the finalists for the 2011 Solar Decathlon: "Since the first Solar Decathlon in the fall of 2002, the program has unleashed the creative power of architecture and engineering students to rethink the role of energy efficiency - and solar power in particular - in home design and raised public awareness on the topic. The Solar Decathlon challenges student teams to integrate reliable and efficient solar power with excellent design, resourceful engineering, and affordable systems...AIBD President Dan Sater II will open the exhibit, which will feature models of solar homes, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10:00 a.m. Thursday morning, August 12, 2010." Art-Science-Architecture Exhibition • August 12 & 13, 2010 AIBD Convention @ the Marriott • 1401 SW Naito Parkway Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 10, 2010 at 12:08 | Comments (0) PermalinkMonday 08.09.10 No Fake: An Interview with Ai Weiwei  AR: Is the trend of distilling information down to 140 characters impairing society's ability to craft refined ideas? Ai: No refined ideas should be longer than 140 characters. AR: It is said that Duchamp lived as if he was dead. And that Warhol lived without individuality. How do you live? Ai: I live through awareness of my surroundings. ...(more) Posted by Alex Rauch on August 09, 2010 at 1:43 | Comments (2) PermalinkMonday Cinema Tonight at Grand Detour: Evan Stewart's poetry video chapbook/ experimental music video collage ###. This is Stewart's third chapbook, following Balls (2004) and Issues Souffle (2006). It is about something changing three times before it dies.
Film screening • 8pm • August 9 Grand Detour • 215 SE Morrison Suite 2020 Thursday at Grand Detour: Stephen Slappe's Peel Back and See: "Sifting through the wake of the mass media deluge in order to make sense of its psychological and social effects, Slappe is interested in adapting the massive archive of existing images and sounds through recombination..." Film screening • 8pm • August 12 Grand Detour • 215 SE Morrison Suite 2020 Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 09, 2010 at 0:25 | Comments (0) PermalinkSaturday 08.07.10 PAM announces Laing-Malcolmson as new Curator of NW Art  In case you haven't heard the Portland Art Museum announced today that Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson has been appointed as the new Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art. She's considered by most in town to be sharp, fair, caretaker type with strong people skills. The position does need stability, as another short term appointee like her predecessor would reflect very poorly on the whole program, which is endowed by the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer. The position is necessary as she will be the museum's main interface with the arts community... one where the artists themselves are frequently of higher international profile than any of our institutions. Congratulations, you are much needed. Still, Laing-Malcolmson is a curious choice as she is better known to the region as an administrator, having just retired as the President of The Oregon College of Arts and Crafts. She apparently has some curatorial experience (in Montana) but nothing as contemporary as her predecessor Jennifer Gately (who stepped down after less than two years) in what would have to be considered a politically difficult post. It is one poised both historically and yet succeeds or fails in the very active present. For example, for the past 10 years + video and installation art have formed a huge part of the Northwest scene, with very little representation in PAM's collection. This is especially true of the popular hybrid, video installation. The point being, we expect a lot of this curator and there is a lot of backlog. The scene will expect excellence both historically and on the contemporary front. Let's just say... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on August 07, 2010 at 1:38 | Comments (3) PermalinkFriday 08.06.10 artist opportunities Tri-Met's Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Project is seeking public art: "Up to seven professional, established artists/artist teams will be selected to create major works for new light rail stations, adjacent station areas and at other significant locations along the alignment. Emerging public artists from the Pacific Northwest are also encouraged to apply to be short listed for future additional opportunities. A budget of over $3,000,000 has been established for public art commissions on the project." Applications are due August 20. More details can be found on their page on the Call for Entry service website.
The Arteles Residency Program in Finland is seeking "open-minded creative participants from all disciplines such as music/sound, fine art, photography, contemporary research, film/video, multidisciplinary arts, installation, painting, new media etc." Residency would be in Winter 2010 or Spring 2011. Applications are due September 17, and you can get the scoop on their website. Cravedog's loft gallery is seeking submissions for Unnatural History, a "collaborative 'natural history museum' that will encompass the flora, fauna and history of the Portland area- past, present and future." Deadline September 13. Read all about it on their blog. Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 06, 2010 at 12:07 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday 08.05.10 First Friday Picks August 2010  Oregon Painting Society Nationale presents Nightwave Catalog, "an exhibit of artifacts generated and uncovered by Oregon Painting Society. Each item has a past, present, or future role in our unfolding sequence of experiments. These artifacts have been plucked from their respective temporal-zones and translated into our own dimensional manifold. They are memories of future encounters, pulled up in a net from a dream. What you see are 3-D snapshots taken by the mind's eye from the window of a speeding car heading toward the ocean at dusk." Opening reception • 6-9pm • August 6 Artist presentation • 6pm • August 8 Nationale • 811 E Burnside Suite 112 • 503.477.9786 (More: Kelly Rauer at NAAU, 5 year anniversary show at Gallery Homeland, Julie Perini at Pushdot, Laundromatte 2010 at the Troy Laundry Building.) Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 05, 2010 at 15:46 | Comments (0) PermalinkThursday linkage Via Portland Architecture,
Randy Leonard, continues to threaten the Memorial Coliseum. Look, tearing
down a perfectly good major league venue with serious architectural significance
for a minor league baseball team reaffirms City Commissioner Randy Leonard's
drive to turn cutting edge Portland into a bustling minor leauge backwater.
No Offense but isn't this exactly what Beaverton and Troutdale are for? I support
the MLS in PGE park idea but minor league baseball cmon? Look, if we say... turn Weiden + Kennedy HQ's into an old time soft serve ice cream parlor etc. we aren't really living up to our potential. We need bigger ideas not smaller FFA,4H level ones RL.
Looks like Denver is getting a new Calatrava airport extension. Check out this Cy Twombly time lapse install. Posted by Jeff Jahn on August 05, 2010 at 14:18 | Comments (0) PermalinkTuesday 08.03.10 First Thursday Picks August 2010  André Kertész, "Satiric Dancer, Paris" 1926 Charles Hartman presents André Kertész: Photographs. Kertész came to American from Hungary via Paris in 1936. After settling in New York, he became one of the "most influential photographers of the twentieth century...refining his art of avant-garde design and gentle observation of the human condition." Opening reception • 6-9pm • August 5 Charles Hartman Fine Art • 134 NW 8th • 503.287.3886 (More: Lori Waselchuk at Blue Sky, Ethan Jackson & Jerry Wingren at Chambers@916, Drake Deknatel at Elizabeth Leach, M5 at PNCA, Maggie Casey & Zachary Davis at Tractor.) Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 03, 2010 at 12:12 | Comments (0) PermalinkMark Grotjahn at PAM 
Grotjahn's Dancing Black Butterflies originally installed at Gagosian Definitely head over to the Portland Art Museum asap, we finally have a Marc Grotjahn exhibition in town. (fellow triangle enthusiasts ...triangulate?) Now on view in the fourth-floor Miller-Meigs galleries of the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, the exhibition of Mark Grotjahn's Untitled (Dancing Black Butterflies) is presented in conjunction with the Museum's Summer of Drawing (along with Sol LeWitt, works from the Crocker and R. Crumb). Exciting to have such programmatic coherence... Grotjahn's work on view is a drawing in nine parts that takes his recurring preoccupation with "the butterfly" to its formal and... (more) Posted by Jeff Jahn on August 03, 2010 at 9:28 | Comments (1) PermalinkMonday 08.02.10 Monday Cinema This week at Grand Detour: Hannah Piper Burns (Tuesday, August 3) and Dan Gilsdorf (Thursday, August 5).
Posted by Megan Driscoll on August 02, 2010 at 14:15 | Comments (0) PermalinkSunday 08.01.10 Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing at PAM The wall drawings of Sol LeWitt, though dated by more than a decade, still resonate with the current artistic community. Sol LeWitt was a courageous artist with powerful insights as to both the workings and processes of art. He questioned drawing, painting, and sculpture unabashedly and directly with explorations of simple geometric form, color, and line. He also had the foresight to create work that would continue to spawn beyond his own lifespan, leaving us with gifts like Wall Drawing #304 currently on view at the Portland Art Museum.
 Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing #304 ...(more) Posted by Jascha Owens on August 01, 2010 at 15:40 | Comments (0) Permalink |
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Site Design: Jennifer Armbrust | • | Site Development: Philippe Blanc & Katherine Bovee | |