In Other PDX News
HOMELAND NO LONGER HOMELESS: This past weekend Paul Middendorf and crew re-opened Gallery Homeland (2505 SE 11th Avenue) with its latest offering, a project called A NW Thang. It would seem that the new location could potentially become an actual physical rooting down of the oft mobile organization. The new space located in the Ford Building (12th and Division) is a fairly good sized, uncontained hallway-like space that travels through the main corridor of the first floor. The ceilings are high, the energy was too on Friday night. For the opening they also used a larger adjoining space located on SE Division for a live performance and video. The space is rumored to become a new restaurant which will beef up foot traffic in this neighborhood pairing the industrial edge with the residential. The varied works in this show come from Marc Dombrosky, Saya Moriyasu, Patrick Rock, Paige Saez, Cynthia Star and Jason Wood. I was particularly attracted to two of PNCA grad student Saez’s sewn collages of Art Forum on paper, and the enticing entry point with unusual wood carvings by Jason Wood. In the back room laid a group-made skeleton of various yarns, set upon a lit table, like an medical experiment in progress. They promise some strong programming in the form of upcoming artist residencies.
ZOOBOMB BECOMES “OFFICIAL” PUBLIC ART: Vanessa Renwick and Brian Borrello will become the first duo to officially christen this ongoing project in an official status as a public art work. To be unveiled in June ‘08.
“DIY, people power, pedal power, free fun, wildness, non-hierarchical community…if we can manifest that, it will be something people take notice of.” – Brian Borrello
Here There Nowhere: Over at Laura Russo Gallery are the latest works by Michael Brophy. Perhaps you could call these his ‘premonition paintings’. It’s kind of eerie to me seeing these very dark black and fiery pieces (Pallet Fire) that only hint at the light of day. With his recent studio tragedy it is more than a basic double take, it’s downright forethought of odd calm before the storm. One of the pieces looks like a completely unlit night with all left in sight being the charred detritus of a campfire in silhoutte, another of a truck’s rear (Night Truck) fading into the distance is solemn, staid and reminds me of the film Lost Highway. There’s something mysterious going on throughout the room, as if the paintings are more like apparitions of work in a state of mind, of delivery. They seem disconnected from his long body of work. It hit me like a ton of bricks, and I am sure I am projecting a little bit of the larger picture into these seven footers. I suppose he has always included a sense of the cognizant devastation brought on by man’s intervening with the due course of nature.