Portlanders, the election is over and we need some new information to fill our head. I suggest these experiences:



Needless to say immigration is going to be veritable forest fire of disputes in the next 4 years, so check out Jose Carlos Tassara's Amigos Imaginarios at Worksound. Curated by Jesse Siegel, "Amigos Imaginarios explores the relationship of facial features and the socio-economic disparities in Latin American culture. The public perception of predominantly caucasian features as more commercially viable, a reality which is broadcasted via social media, billboards and television featuring mainly white men and women to a largely non-white population. Tassara subverts this ideology by creating concrete representations inspired by his own native features and repeating them to create patterns reminiscent of ruins, mutation and mixing."

Perhaps Tassara's show is what I'm talking about when I recently called for contemporary art needs to stop treating groups as monogenic with the kind of very surface deep moderate liberal way of looking at things. Edgier and more rigorously detailed art is needed because there has been a wake up call.

Amigos Imginarios | November 11 - 18
Opening reception: November 11 6 - 9PM
Worksound International
820 SE Alder St.




The most promising talk this weekend will be at the U of O's Portland campus as part of the Connective Conversations Lectures (unfortunately half the contemporary art talks are named "connective" something or other). The featured speaker is Rhuba Karib who is curator at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City. Her talk titled, Sculpture as Substance discusses the way she follows, "artists who explore the malleability of materials and their implications —from the scientific to the social and political"... and the "emergence of new material concerns in current art, grounding the discussion in the works of a key group of historical and new artists who use active substances in their works. The inclusion of living materials and sensory elements in contemporary artworks reflects a blurring of boundaries within the field of sculpture that challenges its definition in terms of site and scale, and focuses less on the subject depicted or content engaged, and more on the potential of its material makeup." I co-curated a show at the same building earlier this year, which explored many of the same interests.

Ruba Katrib | November 13, 2 - 3PM
University of Oregon (Portland Campus)
70 NW Couch