Room 208

BLACK & BLUE : What Not To Do

Milepost 5
900 NE 81st Ave, Portland
Lofts Building, Unit 208
Opening Reception: 6-9PM, Saturday, November 21
Hours: 3-5PM, Saturdays/Sundays and by appointment
(503-729-3223 or info@milepostfive.com)

Statement: Trying to sell condominiums is impossible with inappropriate “art” inside its communal hallways – so its all been taken down and “moved” to room 208.  The show has been renamed from Blue Humor (Funny Dirty Wrong) to Black & Blue: What Not To Do, an exhibition about what wounds us. By appointment only with limited viewing hours for the extent of its run, difficult to access works of photography, drawing and installation riff on holy terror, economic meltdowns, beat down and broken forms and the unspecific objects that fuel our divisive ism and phobia cultures.  It’s difficult to leave your door and be confronted by things that are obscene and appalling.  This curatorial intervention also continues to experiment with Live/work residencies as ritual spaces that promise to create a critical nexus of all types from our creative economy for all types in our creative class. Sometimes the violence in the hall is so loud and physical that you can hear it in every room-even behind closed doors.  Managing and controlling the random forces in life can be difficult for some.  For some the difficult forces help manage random life. Two of the original artists that appeared in Blue Humor have asked not to be included in Blue & Black as a response to being censored.

-Victor Maldonado, Curator

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.

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.

INFO

My Fall Arts Preview is Just Out today.

The final two dozen artists have been selected to appear in the 9th Annual Northwest Biennial (from 543 entrants).  Two of these artists are included in my upcoming curatorial presentation .meta at Linfield College Art Gallery opening on October 15 and the timing is right to see new work by Stephanie Robison (Portland) and Jack Daws (Seattle) among others. The Biennial also includes Susan Robb who appeared in my very last curatorial venture, invisible.other (2007, NAAU). The full list of selectees are:

Rick Araluce; Gala Bent; Michael Brophy; Jack Daws; Eric Elliott; Tannaz Farsi; Sarah Hood; Denzil Hurley; Linda Hutchins; Robert Jones; Michael Kenna; Doug Keyes; Isaac Layman; Zhi Lin; Micki Lippe; Margie Livingston; Victor Maldonado; Debora Moore; Susan Robb; Stephanie Robison; Ross Sawyers; Susan Seubert; Chang-Ae Song, and Scott Trimble.

Sixteen from Seattle, five from Portland, two from Eugene, and one from Sammamish. The exhibition, held at the Tacoma Art Museum, opens in January 2009. More soon…

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.

After Jasper Johns’ recent MET exhibition, gray (in all its never-ending subtleties) has most certainly been on my mind again, even through the bright Summer we’ve had until the clouds just rolled back into town. As the hazy dawn of August awaits you can still catch a glimpse of a few things that kept July so cool including Things Turning by Ellen George and Jerry Mayer at the Nine Gallery (inside Blue Sky). Upon entry it is atypical for what you may have seen by either in the past, but that’s at first glance…second glances tell the whole story, and that shifting of energy from the nearby and frenetic city streets to the soft hush of near silence. The space is stark naked, save for two thin nearly touching lines drawn from steel rods, from floor to ceiling. These slowly mechanized arcs in neutral space re-enact a purely romantic dance in the shadows of Brancusi. Experience it before Sunday at 5PM.

Another must see in the DeSoto complex is at Froelick Gallery. The show entitled Line of Sight by Victor Maldonado includes the simply awe-inspiring beauty, Silver Lining. And that’s exactly what this work of ink and acrylic on canvas is. What appears as multiple impressions of an ornate curtain swag is repetitiously delicious in its symmetry across the 60″ that make up its surface dimensions. Images appear and vanish across its thick layers as you view it from varied angles. Maldonado uses printmaking techniques to build his work, so these hybrids often have delicate gestures that take time to relish each small nuance. Take the time.

BOX LIFE/TO GO: Five burly guys and I got me moved from Marquam Hill to the Hollywood District in just over one hour today (a record). That’s about 50 boxes of my wordly possessions, up seven flights (elevator), in five vehicles with three hand trucks. Pizza and brew ensued at the Blind Onion (mm, twisty crust). A special call out to Bryan, Diedrich, Kirk, Lyn and Scott for being my crew on this sun shining day. I’m more portable, but still would like to spend the Summer combing through my stacks and shrinking them moreso.

My exciting new bathroom has become an art shrine with small works by Jesse Hayward, Ellen George, Scott Wayne Indiana, Marie Watt, Abi Spring, Paul Fujita, Donna Avedisian, Rachael Allen, John Brodie, Joe Thurston, Rhoda London, Cary Leibowitz, Victor Maldonado, Amy Lyn Morrison, Baby Smith, Joe Biel, Brenda Mallory, Laura Fritz, Julie Orser, Michael Paul Oman-Reagan, and others. My bedroom has pieces by John Guthrie, Ty Ennis and Kirk Linder (soon a few others). Pulsing through me is a lightness of being, this was somehow a big step in my next chapter. Passing this stage makes the cool evening rain a simple, yet lovely dalliance.