Flying Under the Radar
Derli Barroso and Elise Wagner sneak up on Portland gallery-goers.
September 3rd, 2008
Ed Ruscha at the Portland Art Museum | An edgy elegy to youth from a pop art original.0 comments
August 13th, 2008
History Versus Nostalgia | Two shows offer differing takes on the swingin’ ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.0 comments
July 30th, 2008
Something To Believe In | With Immaterialized, Disjecta scores a direct hit.0 comments
July 23rd, 2008
From Seattle, with Gusto | Kinga Czerska and John Dempcy show Portlanders how it’s done.0 comments
July 16th, 2008
A Summer Serenade | At New American Art Union, Jacqueline Ehlis shines in one of the year’s best shows.0 comments
June 25th, 2008
Heart Of Glass | Henry Hillman Jr. explores Relationships—in art and life.0 comments
June 18th, 2008
Lowbrow Writ Large | The Contemporary Northwest Art Awards capture the zeitgeist—too well.0 comments
June 11th, 2008
Divine Phantasmagoria | Tilt’s group show is simply...Divine.1 comment
May 21st, 2008
The Aftermath of Experience | Multimedia virtuoso TJ Norris conjures 1980s Manhattan, even as he embalms it.0 comments
May 7th, 2008
(Im)material World | Two artists break on through— the fourth wall.0 comments
![]() DERLI BARROSO’s The Woman and the Sea |
[August 29th, 2007] Not every local artist blazes forth with an eccentric personality (Tom Cramer) or dramatic stylistic shift (Joe Thurston) or political agenda (Arvie Smith) that demands immediate attention. Some artists fly under the radar, their impact registering cumulatively only after they reach a certain critical mass. Derli Barroso and Elise Wagner are two such artists.
Barroso is a talented Brazilian-born photographer now living in Brooklyn, New York. Of his four solo shows at Ogle in as many years, his current outing is his strongest, combining his enamorment with tropicalia, his inherently sexy viewpoint, and his facility with computer manipulation in the service of neo-surrealist de- and reconstructions of his chosen medium. The artist digitally manipulates images such as Near the End of the World (taken in Patagonia), outlining the fjord and mountains in a way that hightens the drama of this almost alien landscape. Barroso takes a similar tack in The Woman and the Sea , in which he ennobles the work’s eponymous beachcomber in a digital nimbus, transubstantiating waves into froths of painterly white. The beach (specifically Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana) is the setting for the show’s tour de force, a multi-photo installation recording a day in the life of the famous strand. The broad panorama terminating in Sugarloaf Mountain yields on closer view to voyeuristic vignettes of hundreds of Carioca frolicking in the surf en masse. Careful eyes are rewarded with the unexpected appearance of a nude sunbather cavorting on the strand, a sort of “Where’s Waldo” moment tarted up with T&A. Barroso has a fine conceptual modus operandi and a Brazilian’s innate sense of sun-drenched sensuality, well showcased in this superb show. 310 NW Broadway, 227-4333. Closes Sept. 1. For years, Elise Wagner has produced reliably well-executed encaustic work. Arguably, she is still awaiting a breakout star turn, but with each show she gets closer. At Butters Gallery ’s 19th anniversary group show, her Initializing Barcode series riffs on subatomic particles, with motifs shot through them that vaguely resemble musical notation marks. Wagner says that these enigmatic abstract pieces are her response to the war in Iraq, a claim that somewhat strains the imagination—and yet, what artist’s explanation of their work’s genesis doesn’t strain the imagination? Wagner is a gifted painter who is at her best when, as in the Barcode pieces, she counters the encaustic process’ obfuscating sfumato with a focus on concept, composition and a resulting congealment of liquidities. 520 NW Davis St., 248-9378. Closes Sept. 1.
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