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Well this will likely go down as one of the more epic vis arts weekends in Portland history with the already announced Reed Arts Week lineup and the must be there to support Blake Shell's short-sightedly cancelled but much lauded program at The Archer Gallery on Saturday night. Here are my other picks in a roughly chronological order:

@ Slow Invisible drama of Madonna

Friday night's must see is collaboratively presented by Ajna Lichau Studio and Gallery Homeland and is titled, Slow Invisible Drama of Madonna. With a title like that it needs to deliver and it promises to be a interactive sculpture + light and video show. Curated by the ever on the move Modou Dieng the show features Daniel Long, Mary T Brossman and Val Hardy Jr. in the venerable Ford Building's second floor above Gallery Homeland.

Opening Reception 7:00 PM till ???
Ford Building 2nd Floor | 2505 Se 11 Avenue Portland Or

Avantika Bawa at H/D

We like Avantika Bawa, she's smart... in fact smart enough to move here after years of passing through town. Here's the PR: "Half/Dozen is pleased to present About Framing by Avantika Bawa. This exhibition stretches out in response to the architecture, scale and location of the gallery while exploring a dialogue between drawing and sculpture.

While thinking about the traditional role of frames, Bawa is addressing the tension between containment and dispersal. In doing so, she is redefining frames, not only as carriers of art, but as art objects in their own right. Drawing on the legacy of Minimalism and its emphasis upon reductive form, modularity and literal scale, this work questions the functional and compositional standards of drawing, sculpture and framing."

Samantha VanDeman's Green Room

Juried by Black Box Gallery's proprietor Todd Johnson, Color: The Visual Spectrum looks like a fantastic group show of contemporary photography.

Opening Reception: Friday March 2, 5-8:30pm
Black Box Gallery | 811 East Burnside Street, Suite 212
Hours: Thursday - Friday 12-5 pm

Ralph Pugay's Chicken Pox Orgy @ Rocksbox

Rock's Box is easily Portland's most irreverent and hard hitting alternative space, glad the programming has returned for Spring. Here is the agitRockprop: "Night-tide Daytripping at Rocksbox Contemporary Fine Art features works inspired by the progressively darkening atmosphere that is produced by the present-day state of our political, social and economic systems. A struggle towards brightness is evidenced in many of the works—embodying a need for clarity with regards to the ways that language, mythology, and belief influence the current condition of our lived realities. Ralph Pugay creates visual works that are formulated through the mash-up of ideas mined from philosophical inquiries, themes of the everyday, and binary thought processes. The groundwork for Pugay's practice is rooted in the hybridization, mistranslation, and over-literalization [sic], of various meanings and symbols; leading to the creation of absurd situational propositions. His appropriation from a multiplicity of sources such as popular media, game theory, proverbial sayings, and art history; result in works that attempt to convey deeper humanist concerns. Born out of introspection, Pugay's work is an investigation of empirical truth's influence on the perception of lived experience -- a depiction of the psychological gridlock that results when collective conviction goes on a highway rampage, resulting in a head-on collision with man's search for a purer form."

ROCKSBOXCONTEMPORARYFINEART | 6540 N. Intestate
March 3, 2012 - April 22, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3, 2012, 7-11 p.m.
Performance: Saturday, March 3, 2012, 7-11 p.m.