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.
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!
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”.…
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.
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 Jacksonwhich opens this Wednesday (6-9PM)!
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.
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.
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.
Far from boring, yesterday, two friends whisked me off to the Singer Hill Trail in Oregon City, one of the region’s very oldest outlying areas by Portland (est. 1829). The city itself is complete with interpretive centers at the end of the Lewis & Clark Trail. I’ve been by, but this was my first trip to North America’s only municipal elevator (built in ‘52).
The retro space age site has retained a certain lost-in-time charm that could use a coat of paint, which actually makes for a more realistic sense of the forgotten. But it hasn’t been! It’s operational and the ride is complete with an actual live attendant who takes you the 90 feet up or down, connecting two neighborhoods. Its observation deck is complete with tens of lenticular images of the site during and after construction. After descending we took the roundabout staircase back up and discovered the water feature platforms, the former site of a mill, which must have been quite a beautiful sight in its earlier days.
Jeff Koons
Puppy Vase, 1998
White glazed porcelain vase
17-1/2 x 17-1/2 x 10-1/2 inches
Signed and numbered by the artist
Edition of 3000
$7500
From Gagosian
MY FIRST TIME: I was in Salem for 1st Wednesday this week (underwritten by Re/Max). I know what you’re saying - “first this + first that”, right? Well, I went with a friend who grew up in and around the Capital of our fair state, and it was an eye-opener for him since he’s now living in Denver. What a delight to see someone’s face light up seeing their hometown come alive with the arts for the first time in his eyes. It was kind of fun, and a tad bit old-fashioned to see dance troupes of pre-pubescent girls in spangly outfits dancing to Material Girl on one street corner, with seniors engaged in the doh-ci-doh of square dancing in hoop skirts at the next. There were musicians, a clown (yipes), and even tap aerobics. I didn’t see much visual art (except our destination) and no six foot high unicycles. Though, beyond the throw-back it surely was fun to be in a place celebrating creative energy. It sort of felt good not to know anybody on the ’scene’ - however strange that might sound. But being purely an observer was a nice change.
SPEAKING OF WHICH: My visit was prompted by Barry Shapiro, a photographer who was recently in the Newspace Annual Exhibition that I curated. His work was showing at Salem Art Association’s Project Space on Commercial Street right downtown. I really enjoyed meeting Shapiro and seeing his work, but moreso because we coincidentally grew up in and around the same hometown of Revere, MA (yeah, one if by sea…and all that). Our reminiscences include rough, local colloquialisms, the changing culture along the shoreline of our country’s first public beach, and a whole lot more about Italian food (Joe Rogan anyone?). To which he recommended Davinci’s in Salem, and knowing the potential palette of someone who grew up in a very Italian neighborhood, I felt like home, just 3K miles away. The faire was exceptional, and my buddy Jason got some type of homemade pasta with fancy mushrooms and marscapone which was a bite from the heavens.
WHAT’EVA AILS YA: Today, in preps for a few deadlines, I am absorbing a tincture of Men Plus King Power - Love Mengnan Ginseng Extract. We’ll see if it does the trick.
The Tacoma Art Museum has announced the 36 finalist artists (from 543 entries!) for the upcoming 9th Annual Northwest Biennial today. This is the first round so these folks will receive studio visits and then be considered for the final exhibition in January 2009. It’s a great mix of artists from the Pacific Northwest, and Portland did fare quite well in this roster:
Rick Araluce, Christopher Bennett, Gala Bent, Michael Brophy, John Calvelli, Tim Cross, Steve Davis, Jack Daws, Eric Elliott, Tannaz Farsi, Christian French, Sarah Hood, Mark Hooper, Denzil Hurley, Linda Hutchins, Robert Jones, Michael Kenna, Doug Keyes, Isaac Layman, Zhi Lin, Micki Lippe, Margie Livingston, Victor Maldonado, Debora Moore, Fred Muram, Richard Nicol, Jim Riswold, Susan Robb, Stephanie Robison, Paul Rucker, Ross Sawyers, Crystal Schenk, Susan Seubert, Rob Snyder, Chang-Ae Song, Scott Trimble
Selections were made by Alison de Lima Greene, Curator of Contemporary Art and Special Projects at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Rock Hushka, Curator of Contemporary and Northwest Art for the Tacoma Art Museum.
First Friday was actually quite a lot of fun. The night started with a bite at my old standby The Side Door with Christopher Brown (who is having a solo show in September at the PCC Cascade Gallery) and then off to my studio where there was something special going on. Storm Tharp was celebrating the completion of a new body of work with the locals before shipping them off to his gallery in Geneva opening in September! Just plain gorgeous, and such a nice thing to do for his circle back home, a full-on preview. And there were many familiar faces there topped off with a champagne, all blush. Storm’s technique continues to develop, and he has amassed quite a lot of new work, one after the next, capturing wonderful expressions, contortions, all of the visage. These combinations of ink and colored pencil are sized the same as his solo show of ‘07, but it’s like a dam burst open and he’s embraced it fully. It is also nice to see the whole crew of artists who work amid the Today Studios mostly in one place at one time. Maybe one day some smart curator will take us under their wing and show us as a group…I think there might be something quite interesting that would develop.
After this we headed toward Worksound, the still newish gallery on SE Alder. The show’s called ‘Face Value’ and includes seven artists with Josh Arseneau’s hooded figure watercolors which are a new turn for him - sorta hip and definitely a slightly more “amateur” aesthetic. Arseneau can actually paint with a keen and accurate sense of realism. Some of these images were modelled from adverts (for cosmetics perhaps) and he has captured of sense of elation in them. Also included is Vanessa Calvert’s Facebook installation. For this room which was exclusively built out for this piece, Vanessa has created a participatory lounge complete with pink vinyl upholstered sofas. Atop the surface are multiple throw pillows, very colorful, which were taken from images existing prior on the Facebook site. I didn’t know until we were exiting that I may have sat on my own face when the artist said - “did you see your pillow”? True.
It was then that we darted towards Jáce Gáce (does anyone know how to pronounce this place?), the wafflehaus cum art gallerie for a dose of Jesse Hayward’s ‘The Nursed Meeting of Fallen Renewal’, which may be something of a return to form for this artist with so many levels of (un)expectations. It’s a participatory piece where Jesse has placed a few of his eternally goopy and colorful sculptural works, just so, and provided hundreds of small sticks with pointy ends to add, in any way you wish, to the final composition in the space. Many people pierced the aorta-formed central floor work, and yet others tried to envision something Tuttle-esque upon the wall with light and shadow. I took two sticks and added my own touch, a pre-printed coffee card from Stumptown, the muscle guy is now holding up air. It was worth giving up my six pre-punches to be a part of this collected chaos. It’s the best thing I’ve seen from this artist since ‘Fresh Trouble’. Sitting just outside I spoke briefly with Jeanine Jablonski who will open a new venture in the former Small A/Savage Gallery space to be called fourteen30 Contemporary come September. Well done (as are the waffles!).
Last stop of the evening, before The Slammer (no kidding), was to Sellwood to the 12×16 Gallery, which had a congenial crowd when we arrived after 8:30PM. My buddy Diedrich Dasenbrock’s work ‘Inner Voices’ is on view, and as a group these photographs come together with a formal sensitivity to unusual textures and subtle color. His studies of surfaces are like aerial topographies which, though popular right now, have a rich feel for the shapes that end up in the frame. The more abstract and obscure the source, the stronger the images. And he has an accompanying catalogue available for sale which includes most of what is on view, and much more. It’s a perfect complement to this body of work in progress.
Today, the thrill-seeker in me is off to the Clark County Fair for as many rounds of tilt, twirl and spin until I can take it no more. I’m hoping my inner ear will withstand the tossing.
