Room 208

UPDATE: Milepost 5 (the “Community for Creatives”) deemed the just-opened exhibition Blue “inappropriate” and chose to move the “Funny, Dirty, Wrong” portion from the 2nd/3rd floor hallways into Unit 208 where it will remain on view into November. The ring of wrong faces what’s controversial full-frontal. An unexpected, yet situational outcome that welcomes observations. A majority of the work was curated by artist Victor Maldonado (w/intervention by Todd Johnson). Perhaps this move reserves that it is best viewed within the context of the white box, or I also offer that as work done by students in Maldonado’s PNCA class called Art, Ethics and Transgression it may just be “too cool for school”? The exhibition statement is below. Exhibition hours are listed as Saturday and Sunday, 3-5PM.

Two Halls—One Statement: Viewer Discretion Is Advised
“curated” by Victor Maldonado

Blue Humor: Funny, Dirty, Wrong is a multi-hall installation organized around notions of power, incongruity and ritual release of social etiquette and the polite terrorism associated with bazaar entertainment. For the 2nd Floor’s curatorial intersections between the shows that make up the exhibitions organized around the Lofts’ Blue theme, Todd Johnson’s commissioned gathering of Blue Velvet inspired pieces and Matthew Haggett’s sublime solo endeavor SphereLab/Blue, I asked students from my Art, Ethics and Transgression class to pen funny, dirty or politically incorrect jokes on blue note cards. The resultant products of academic inquiry on race, gender and class mix the tame and crude jokes of our time installed along the floor of the hallway. Experimental in nature this curatorial intervention is designed to negotiate the unexpected, often inappropriate confrontations with what we are conditioned to learn through over exposure and to sticky broadcast culture. The blue nature of the jokes are intended to facilitate laughter deploying the working components of an edgy stand up comedian’s craft in the service of cultural anthropology and uncovering of our dependence on jokes as entertaining coping mechanism. Situated in the nooks and crannies, where wall and ground meet, paced one at a time—making legible every color of ism and strip of phobia; in some cases all at the same time.

Each of the five artists on the 3rd floor exhibition presents work positioned within a sophisticated spectrum of comedy creating not only moments of guttural response but also of tragic insight and cultural criticism. Name-calling, linguistics and the ability to harness and manipulate language is at the center of Sarah Johnson’s “just kidding” visual and performance practices. Johnson’s text-based wall work, crafted in collaboration with artist Derek Franklin in his signature post-minimalist aesthetic, jumbles and mocks my name in a manner that ruptures the discreet, unspoken, relationship between curators and artists. In other words Johnson is making fun of me as a curator. Reading through the list of recombinant slips, substitution and mispronunciations Johnson flips the script and makes a subject of the “curator” creating an expanded form of tongue twisting tug-of-war between venue, curator, artist, art and viewer. The exhibited object becomes know-it-all examiner.

Building on his practice merging fine art and conceptual concerns, Walter Lee’s latest project DIRT literally mocks the value usually ascribed to gallery walls by soiling it. Intruding and embedding itself for the first time for this exhibition DIRT was originally conceived as a soil and water stencil tag for the exterior walls of some of Portland’s Blue-Chip galleries. Placed strategically as silent, hidden-in-the-open, rumination on seeming divides between art classes and classes of artists. Animation plays an important component in Lee’s back-and-forth interventions often enacting the uncanny through the accessibility of story telling and drawing. Alicia Gordon’s post-funny photographs are built with the residue of libidinous fantasy and open edge, on-line, social-networking sites. By enacting as scripts for her compositions Craigslist posts Gordon brings to life the unlikeliest mix of mainstream popular culture with seedy sexual deviancy. Recognizable acts, players and personas of our grand collective digital unconscious richly printed and poorly framed, images of images, serve up the most pent up or gluttonous of desires.

Town crier of what not to say, Sean Joseph Patrick Carney, Portland’s bete noire performance artist, actor, player, hater, lighting rod—speaks for himself. Carney’s edited anthology of essays, lessons and projects Social Malpractice: A Practical Guide to Making Socially Irresponsible Work builds on the irascible style usually allotted public airing through his alter ego Tanner Dobson. The xenophobic and obscene, run-a-muck, quality of his prose and performance reaches at the moral and ethical codes that design our social interactions and perceptions. As a political cartoonist Carney aligns and assails the powerful and the common in a mix of James Gillray and Jose Guadalupe Posada-like graphic characterizations: free for the taking and reading on your own time and in your own space in your own words. Stepping into the third dimension for the first time, playing MC within humor’s cutting spectacle, jD White’s costumed beer bottles stage and enact prank exchanges in what can be described as Ikea-shelf/stoop-and-corner-scenarios. Mixing Jerky Boys prank-style audio with cast glass and paper sculptures White mixes issues of class struggle/stagnation and the ability to borrow and create forms that can transcend aesthetic positioning though co-option and cultural tourism. Each of the three scenes situates themselves in front of green backdrops as contextual reminders to their unreality and talismanic forms as ultimate jokes of an underlying menace to society.

Blue (Velvet) curated by Todd Johnson and Matthew Haggett’s SphereLab: Blue will both remain situated on the first floor of the Lofts building at 900 NE 81st Avenue. Johnson asked a few colleagues from art school to respond to the David Lynch film Blue Velvet in a series of works on paper. The dark and disturbing film is sexual and violent, intensely visual and surreal in its use of bizarre and haunting symbolism. How would a group of artists go about interpreting such an interesting and significant subject in their own unique language? Artists include: Marty Ackley, Bridget Irish, Jessi Johnson, Philip Miner, William Patterson, Douglas Struble, Ryan Suther, Eric Trosko, Aaron Turner, & Phil Wagner.

Just in case you have yet to be introduced to Frieze Magazine podcasts I thought it be wise to point out two stellar talks of late, one a conversation between artist John Baldessari and curator Matthew Higgs (also an artist/writer) - the other is with philosopher (and author of Art Power) Boris Groys on The Aesthetic Responsibility where he discussed how design now functions as a medium of self-positioning in public space (read more @ e-flux). In many ways this discussion relates heavily to the layout and potential outcomes of something like Blue at MP5. In the ways that we use and re-purpose space, and how details are sublimated to infiltrate a line of dialogue between people and place.

Scenes from Matthew Haggett’s Spherelab
Now at Milepost 5 through December 27

BLUE

October 24 - December 27, 2009

PEEK-A-BLUE: Come to Milepost 5 this Saturday (7-9PM) to unveil the complete picture posed by artist/curators Victor Maldonado (Froelick Gallery) and Todd Johnson (Augen Gallery) and by Butters Gallery artist Matthew Haggett (SphereLab). Festivities are free and breaks down as follows:

FLOOR I
Blue (Velvet)
curated by Todd Johnson
Artists: Marty Ackley, Bridget Irish, Jessi Johnson, Philip Miner, William Patterson, Douglas Struble, Ryan Suther, Eric Trosko, Aaron Turner, Phil Wagner

FLOOR II
Blue :: A Curatorial Intersection

FLOOR III
Blue Humor: Funny, Dirty, Wrong
curated by Victor Maldonado
Artists: Sean Joseph Patrick Carney, Sarah Johnson, Alicia Gordon, Walter Lee, JD White

MP5 is located at 900 NE 81st Avenue in the Montavilla neighborhood.