The past week has included a few more visits to the cinema. In fact, though all three movies that I witnessed had a certain charm, I seem to be more compelled by thicker drama these days. I saw Brideshead Revisited, adapted from the 1945 novel by Evelyn Waugh. I was only sweet sixteen when I first saw the original series on PBS, a very impressionable guy. Jeremy Irons‘ performance as Charles Ryder was etched in my head for years after. It’s your basic (w/a slight twist) love triangle cross between the classes. The story portrays the delicate intimacies and intrigue of a dysfunctional family, when everything comes to a head and comes apart slowly. The acting is all superb, especially roles played by Patrick Malahide (as dad, Edward Ryder) and Emma Thompson as the foil, Lady Marchmain. It’s playing at the Hollywood (& elsewhere, check your listings) until the 4th.

For a tinge of lighter faire I took in Bottle Shock with the fantastic actor Alan Rickman. His British fine wine snobbery is a perfect balance of spice for the Californian blond and blue-eyed valleys he put-puts about. This was the adaptation of a true story of the birth of wine country in Napa Valley. With a great supporting cast, they go from ‘hick’ to hip when their fruit of the vine is discovered in a blind test against French vino on the soil across the pond. It’s funny, sweet (if not a bit formulaic) and styled in the bicentennial era.

Lastly, Elegy, based on Philip Roth’s short The Dying Animal is devastating on a few levels. The leads (both Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz) are impossible to take your eyes off - Kingsley is so earnest and believable as a 60+ year old school teacher and oft cultural critic who falls in love with his student/muse in the face of “old age”. Cruz plays an MFA student who is striking against the Goya’s in which she’s compared, elegant and articulate, it is her deep dark eyes that do the acting - more than most body doubles. The story is about love in its various dimensions, how it can be forcibly stunted for the sake of preordained circumstances. I don’t really care to say more about this film (except see it), save that it came close to home after a relationship of very similar, unrequited quagmire. I may head to Powell’s for a copy of the pages that preceded it. Strong stuff with a small ensemble cast that includes the gorgeously angular Patricia Clarkson, veteran Dennis Hopper and only too briefly, Deborah Harry.

[ TBA:08 ]

Antony + the Johnsons make haunting music. Songs like You Are My Sister and Hope There’s Someone are lovely consciousness-etching elegies that only get better upon playback. And they are back in Portland (9/5, 8:30PM) for the first time since PICA’s TBA:05, the same year the band won the coveted Mercury Prize. In concert with the Oregon Symphony this will surely be a special evening to see one of the great independent voices of our time. This is the band’s only North American performance during the month of September before they leave for Milan and just prior to the release of their new EP, Another World, on Secretly Canadian (10/7). Also out soon is Bjork’s (*) latest single (a duet w/Hegarty), The Dull Flame of Desire, (9/29) with several remixes in the works (Modeselektor, Mark “Spike” Stent)!

I’ve been a fan since their Durtro days when they performed concerts with Current 93 and friends. I got my ticket last week, you may want to grab one while they last ($20-75, or included w/Patron Pass). This event will be quite a sneak peek, and a wowzer opener to all things TBA!

* If you’ve never experienced the unofficial Bjork remix site, it’s a must.

LISTEN: Now 21!

MIAMI: Those who attended the 2006 Oregon Biennial may recall the romantic burst of light in the portraits and images of Federico Nessi. At that point he had just graduated from PNCA. Now based in the same town that brings us Art Basel|Miami Beach,  the 26-year old former Venezuelan is about to embark on his first solo show with his new gallery, Spinello. Entitled Emotional Response Can be Deconditioned (Opening 9/13) the exhibition, according to White Hot Magazine “takes its name from a controversial statement in the 1970’s defending the practice of aversion therapy [including shock therapy] the exhibition questions the notion that feelings can be controlled”.

Back in July of ‘06 I wrote “Recent PNCA grad, now Wieden + Kennedy designer, Federico Nessi shows his latest ‘heroic’ work in the form of c-prints mounted on aluminum. The imagery is quite interesting, the outcome a bit lack-luster. My favorite was a lightburst heavy image of an archer and another of a shoe-gazing, deer-in-the-headlights meets Caravaggio-androgynous nod to Manet’s The Dead Toreador…And while this is the little league version of what we’ve flipped through Art Forum’s pages to see for years, they are related to film stills in the vein of Catherine Opie or Jeff Wall. His work does conveniently have an afterbite in the ilk of Biennial colleague Holly Andres, so see Gately (and other major dealers) for a better reading of what appeals in this particular genre of sedate work that delivers tales of nymph-like stoicism. There is nothing bad about this work, really, it’s just too influenced at the moment. One can easily see his vision broadening into the future, so maybe he’s on the cusp of something.”

Maybe now it the time?…..as the exhibition intends to “exercise unexplored aesthetic versatility by completely altering the interior of the gallery, will also be venturing onto the street for a special performance”.…

This video appeared on BlueOregon, now you can view it too.

Daniel Duford‘s work has come a long way from the Art Gym and other local venues. He is the subject of a major performance piece by Lawrence Goldhuber, formerly with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co. I won’t soon forget how simply amazing Goldhuber was to behold in Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin back in ‘90 - pushing the boundaries of what a big guy could do on stage, and nude to boot! Tomorrow marks the World Premiere of Sleeping Giant (The Myth of America) at the prestigious MASS MOCA’s Hunter Center in western Massachusetts. The collaborative work (w/Janet Wong, and Tin Hat) is built from a stage set installation and comics developed by Duford over the last several years. I am not going back to my former hometown until November, so I will be unable to see this but hope it might tour to our coast.

Back when I was curating grey|area for Guestroom Gallery I was privileged to have a sneak peak of many of the amazing pages that went into the process that’s become this theatrical presentation. In that show the genteel artist, who had just had a major bicycle accident, included three pieces from his other work, Naked Boy, which was recently presented at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. I also think it’s cool that this garnered a straight guy a write-up in a major glbt publication. Since this time he’s become a proud daddy, and still resides in our backyard even though he’s taking the show on the road. Duford is also an established art critic who has penned for ARTnews, Art Week and other national monthlies. He is also at work on a new Green Man project for Trimet’s new downtown rail, watch for it in the coming moons…

September is the time (and the record, of the time) to freshen things up just so for back to school and all that good stuff. This year on Portland’s independent gallery front a quirky cup trick of sorts is taking place. Chambers Fine Art is moving to a yet unofficially announced site in the Pearl (speculators gather that it will be across from Pulliam Deffenbaugh, and perhaps opening in October) and Fontanelle Gallery (yay Leslie, and Jess!) will pop up in its former location (once occupied by Elizabeth Leach).

Their first show will be All I Can Do Is Dream which opens on September 4 from 6-9PM with champagne and cupcakes!

Reported earlier, fourteen30 Contemporary will also open a lil’ later in September, in the space (1430 SE 3rd) that was small a projects who are now setting up shop on Broome St (as in zip code 10002). The space also formerly held one of Portland’s better known galleries of the past, Savage. With Jeanine Jablonski at the helm, their first outing will include a solo show by LA-based Devon Oder called Breaking Light. These folks will keep us on our toes while we sharpen our pencils for Fall.

Info

Art Civic is a new online arts journal based here in the northwest. They took some time to interview me for their inaugural issue and here are the results.

NO FRILLS: Here we are in subtle shades of midweek gray. But it seems somehow fitting after today’s visit to the Portland Art Museum. This was prompted by the two paintings by Ed Ruscha presented by the Miller-Meigs Endowment for Contemporary Art. These pieces, Azteca and Azteca in Decline, together form a diptych (each triptychs abutting each other) extend along the entire length of the upper quadrant of the Jubitz Center and are peculiar for two reasons. First the canvases are naked of a signature word within the frame. And more than ever Ruscha drives home a near tribal angst declaring the end of painting. By using a flag, or minimalism itself as subject, he’s contorted rites of passage with self referential twists by adding grafitti motifs. In flaccid gesture, trompe l’oeil holes and faux wear marks the great shift to technical painting, balancing a nod and poking fun at process rich super-realism at the same time. While this will not be referenced as his most important work, the statement and scale are grande in the use of focal point and blank stare. On view through September 21.

SEARCH + FIND: Also at PAM is a cluster of stitched letters by thirty-seven year old Tacoma artist Marc Dombrosky. This APEX show is also his first solo museum offering. These interest me in the same way some Joseph Cornell work does (PAM has a fine one currently on view, of at least four in the collection), with a known sense of intimacy, and a delicate relationship with materials. There’s also the disparate history of men working within the scope of embroidery to consider. What I got from Ruscha’s work translated into this much younger artist’s ouevre today. I guess he filled in the blank. It’s connection to the street, urban cries of homeless signage, scrawled notes and receipts. Singularly these may seem somewhat twee, but en masse there’s the white noise of any main street, most days of the week. These declarations, playing on the brute calligraphic, seize the found materials as the artist follows the hand of the anonymous scribe. He’s captured the voice of something passing, often forgotten in communication, the human hand in the written word. Quite beautiful actually. If Found hasn’t featured him yet, they soon should. On view through October 26.

Currently on view in the gallery tucked alongside the Feldman at PNCA is a small, yet wonderfully dramatic exhibition of photographs. This is the first post BFA work I’ve seen by Sarah Meadows, who I had the chance to meet and discuss her work during thesis reviews. Here she is well teamed up with Miranda Lehman who was last seen in Newspace’s Annual Juried Exhibition (which I had a hand in, nudge). These young women both have a way with light and inferred narrative, capturing simple moments and gestures. The show is a lovely reminder that photography can sometimes capture what often falls outside the lens to great effect.

If you’re like me, a foodie, and care about where the ingredients come from when you go out (like our own backyard) check this episode of Dave Does….commercials are free (!!).

PS: Just so you early risers know, there is a new book coming out very soon called “Breakfast in Bridgetown“. Now, that’s something to savor!

Outtakes from my new urban series Double|Exposure will be available starting this month at New American Art Union. These are singular images excerpted from the same body of source material (2003-present). A new book is in the works that includes a much larger series of relational images pairing architecture with nature, reflections, and the poker-faced everyday. You can get a sneak peak on Wooloo.

Speaking of NAAU, don’t miss Orbis Viridis Obscurus, the new camera obscura work by Ethan Jackson which opens this Wednesday (6-9PM)!

…and so does White Hot Magazine!

The annual festival alongside the Willamette, now in its 3rd year, Scratching the Surface, is presented by Gallery Homeland. Described as “a series of scheduled lectures, installations, performances and events” most work made for this event has dealt directly with topics related to the river that separates the City of Portland from itself. It has definitely attracted some of Portland’s finest, not to mention outsiders who have been here as part of their residency program. For more information go here. This year an accompanying exhibition is on view at the Ford Building (through August 31) called Surface Tension which showcases nineteen artists (yours truly included). The show is a flashback of new and older pieces that represent the many installation pieces, objects and detritus originally presented along the Eastbank Esplanade. The Portland Mercury had this to say.

[Image courtesy Gabriel Liston, 2006]

[From OpenwidePDX, 'Cracked Compass' performance objects - Norris/Middendorf, 06]

There is a hot wind blowing, it moves across the oceans and into every port. A plague. A black plague. There’s danger everywhere. And you’ve been sailing. And you’re all alone on an island now, tuning in. Did you think this was the way your world would end? Hombres. Sailors. Comrades.

There is no pure land now. No safe place. And we stand here on the pier, watching you drown. Love among the sailors. Love among the sailors. There is a hot wind blowing. Plague drifts across the oceans. And if this is the work of an angry god I want to look into his angry face. There is no pure land now. No safe place. Come with us into the mountains. Hombres. Sailors. Comrades.

©1994, Laurie Anderson

In my opinion, one of the most exciting and original pop bands of the last three decades, The B-52’s just keep it froogin’. To be a fan since about “1980″ (when you couldn’t go to a party without hearing this one) and to only now discover this video gem is sublime. Bless YouTube!

The new(ish) disc Funplex kicks it with a fresh Summertime spin. Songs like Hot Corner, Pump and the title track are pure bliss! (not so sure about the back-up dancers…)

YOU’RE INVITED: I’m so proud to have participated in this exchange about live/work space for artists, which is part of the evening of final projects to be screened tonight from 6:30-9PM at the White Stag Building (70 NW Couch St). The Northwest Institute for Social Change has made an impression on me. “Each summer, the NWISC hosts an academic program that educates and inspires undergraduate students how the media and arts can bring about progressive social change. Through coursework and hands-on projects, the Northwest Institute helps mature students’ passions for arts and media into critical thought skills and careers in the public sector.” You can listen to some audio clips of other related projects here.

PS: A discussion about these projects popped up on Portland Mercury’s Blogtown USA. For the record - I made the comment about 82nd Street that was quoted. In actuality the street is known for the three P’s: porn, pawn shops and prostitution. But what was edited from the ‘big picture’ (hey they only had about 5 minutes from 2.5 hours of footage), was that I suggested that was a good thing to keep the area from becoming gentrified and later pricing artists out. It brings up lots of great dialogue.

PECHA KUCHA
Masked Men + Virtual Reality

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Event photo ©Richard Schemmerer

Infinitus by TJ Norris. Soundtrack by C. Renou.