Two exquisite extensions of TBA:09 visual arts programming are on view at Reed and Lewis & Clark Colleges respectively. If you are strictly looking at time as a historical marker (and as everything takes time) this makes sense, otherwise its basic cross-institutional networking. What’s contained inside these rooms is a whole lot of eye/ear opening, jaw-drop inducing masterworks by artists over centuries.

The Language of the Nude, Four Centuries of Drawing the Human Body is an exhibition of impeccable Italian, French, Dutch and other drawings from the collection of Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum. Upon entry there is a sense that you have left the building inside which one ordinarily finds the most cutting edge contemporary work. Here the Cooley has been transformed into a high museum-style space (ala Smithsonian) to great effect with dark evergreen walls, simple gilded frames and dim light. Drawings by the greatest master draughtsmen of the Renaissance (Dürer) and Baroque (Rubens) periods hang alongside images of goddesses, erotic scenes and the sumptious renderings of visceral musculature by François Lucas. This collection, curated by William Breazeale, was presented last year at its home institution but this is the first exhibition of its scale to travel from the Crocker since 1992. Lithe bodies, in reverence, stretching, lounging, solo and in group scenes - it’s a truly stunning body of work and a wonderful opportunity to have this treasure in Portland. The language, so to speak, is an eternal motif in the arts, the flesh. And here the figures bare all in pure light, and lines undulate around the lush curvature of thighs and return to the gaze, the eyes. An addendum/counterpoint titled Psychedelic Soul (curated by Stephanie Snyder and Kristan Kennedy) is also on sight though may have served better to be presented in the adjacent library. The visual context was hard to jump into given the flicker of monitors, though placed discretely, creating a slightly jarring effect to the wow factor of being in the presence of such awesome work in the gallery.

On view at the Douglas F. Cooley Art Gallery at Reed College through December 5.

Broadcast is co-organized by iCI (under new directorship by Kate Fowle) and Baltimore’s Contemporary Museum (Irene Hoffman, Director) and includes some of the leading innovators of the video medium from the 1960’s to the present including some of my personal favorites. Works by pioneers Dara Birnbaum, Nam Jun Paik and Chris Burden neatly mesh with newer sensations like Christian Jankowski and the team known as neuroTransmitter. I had just seen Jankowski’s Telemistica (1999) last week for the first time at SFMOMA as part of The Studio Sessions in a similar small installation set-up. In dealing with the medium of television and radio, however, seemed even more fitting here at the Hoffman Gallery. Authority and influence, voice and vulnerability. I enjoyed the collaborative work by Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter who in The Amarillo News Tapes (1980) worked alongside TV newscasters in an Artists-In-Residence program, taping an actual newscast with a completely phony script. Very unlike conceptual art guru Burden’s daring TV Hijack (1972), a piece hard-to-imagine in today’s climate of fear and surveillance. In it Burden pretty much hijacks a live cable broadcast, taking its interviewer hostage. Also included are some amazing short commercials that were made in response to governmental laws preventing individuals to broadcast such. The piece questions power and rights to free speech, of which he was also an early pioneer (some say brazen). Birnbaum’s video installation piece Hostage (1994) literally poses the viewer as target. The interactive laser beaming from the main monitor component aims at your chest as you view its contents while overhead ceiling-mounted monitors are shielded by front-facing targets, a six-channel broadcast depict news reports of international hostage situations. The show is startling with historical content, though feels much more open than most video-based exhibitions where one travels from darkened room-to-room. The various approaches to the medium are welcome as is the cellphone-audio tour which you could presumably ring up even before visiting, 503-205-0332.

On view at the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis & Clark College generously through December 11.

[ TBA:08 ] As part of the TBA Festival PICA’s Kristan Kennedy has curated an exhibition titled The New Absurdists. The provocation that there is a movement at work herein is a palpable one. Jacob Hartman’s wonderfully overdone _______Head is a great entryway into an exhibition that is otherwise a passage of time. Kennedy has most certainly captured an elongated aesthetic, ensnaring several artists within one bite. Most of the work here, while topical, may only be time-based as in its relationship to the fest, literally. In this light, what is captured is the essence of the moment, temporary expression via cheap, easy-access materials. Color is used blatantly, and in its wake comes a raw by-product in the attack of its own physical, material nature. This odd show downstairs at the Leftbank (240 N. Broadway, viewable most days 12-6PM) is perhaps a sight for sore eyes (though you’ll have to go into the beer garden to smoke). Call me old-fashioned, but as a whole it’s perhaps just too ‘right now’ for me. Granted, most of this work is presented in a well designed setting of video booths, accented by sculptural objects. The overall feel is playfully farse and downright absurd. Yeah, it makes its point, and then some - that’s the rub, the tension here.

Part of this exhibition includes the Mike Kelley film I reported on earlier. The highlight in the two large rooms below the performance venue is certainly Jeffry Mitchell’s California. It’s just pure kitcsh and the cloud orgasm wallpaper is over-the-top. Justin Gorman’s Results Under Action (on view in other citywide locations) is a close contender by offering short isms that speak of the conceptual context of place/placement. Neither of these artists are strangers to the local scene, where we’ve experienced their work in multiple venues in differing forms, but they each make a distinct comment on the breaking point of capitalism and/or the poker-faced urban experience. Otherwise I couldn’t consciously connect with the work of Corey Lunn, Harry Dodge/Stanya Kahn or Tamy Ben-Tor, they just seemed to play to an Audience for Dummies, and the haphazardness of the Lizzie Fitch installation left me wanting to add and subtract parts and pieces. Don’t get me wrong, it is a playground for the spirit, just not at all high art by any stretch - and doesn’t pose as such. It’s the frivolous factor, the hijinks and goofiness that I find off-putting somehow. But that’s just me (or is it?).

I didn’t get to see the Ryan Trecartin piece as a mini crowd formed a clusterf*ck in the small space. Other work in the show had some moments worth the trip - but there is something unique to be said about the instantaneous improv motivation/bastardazation of video art as funneled say, ala YouTube. Adding to this, The Yes Men at PNCA (an extension curated by Astria Suparak) takes to corporate America on overload. I loved the every detail covered donut breakroom. Otherwise it’s pretty self-serve, leaving you mostly on your own to deal with what’s left behind - not unlike the greasy stains from the cruellers and jellies! There are connected outdoor events and activities, something that may appeal to a multitude of sensibilities. Portland PDX Art captured some snapshots of the exhibition as well. Despite my edge of criticism, Kennedy has captured the spirit of the place like no other before, this is by far the most PORTLAND show I’ve ever seen. For those in the know, well, you know.