NW GALLERIES
John Wiley Howington.
Photographer John Wiley Howington’s latest show,
High Hopes—Low Expectations—Trusting the Process, captures a neighborhood approaching the intersection of its present and future. Specifically, Portland’s Chinatown. Accompanying images of its people and decaying structures with audio interviews, Howington hopes to create a living record of the district as it is today before it becomes “the Pearl East.” “Can we preserve our past while moving forward within the process of change and modernization?” Howington wonders. Forget it, John, it’s...well, you know the rest.
325 NW 6th Ave., 224-5721. Closes Sept. 25. Map
Karen Esler, Jim Riswold.
Paunchy senior citizens, the pets they cuddle and the mobile homes they all live in provide the subject matter for Karen Esler’s charcoals and pastels. There’s a self-aware, tongue-in-cheek quality that makes this banal material mildly amusing, although the world is in no danger of being set afire by this show. A more intriguing set of pieces is in the gallery’s back-room group show. Photographer Jim Riswold is the droll force behind a quartet of framed portraits showing not a real person, but a Marie Antoinette doll. In each succeeding piece, the doll rather nonchalantly progresses from headed to beheaded. Ouch.
716 NW Davis St., 224-8182. Closes Sept. 26. Map
Carol Benson.
Painter Carol Benson’s semi-abstract paintings are sinuous verging on flat-out curvaceous. In the biomorphic
Melville’s Temple, smooth, bonelike forms interact with choppy, textural dashes. The whimsically titled diptych
The Internet is the Devil showcases the fragmentation endemic to the artist’s technique: A form resembling a rose is surrounded by frenetic black lines, segmenting space into slices. It is a malarial fever of a painting: kinetic, schizoid and deliriously compelling.
420 NW 9th Ave., 234-2634. Closes Sept. 26. Map
Interior Relations.
Modern-day South Africa is still haunted by the specter of apartheid. That is the thesis and subtext of Ian van Coller’s affecting show,
Interior Relations, a series of portraits of nannies and maids who, post-apartheid, are still living somewhere between indenture and liberation. Immaculately printed, strikingly composed, the images are hard to forget.
122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210. Closes Sept. 27. Map
The phenomenon of swarm intelligence—the way birds flock and fly, dive and rise and migrate together—is fascinating to Catharine Newell. In her show,
Interstice, she explores the ways in which instinctual group dynamics affect the behavior of birds and, by inference, human beings. Newell’s understated mastery of the kilnformed glass panel is evident in these misty, milky and enigmatic works.
300 NW 13th Ave., 227-0222., 227-0222. Closes Oct. 24. Map
Jessica Loughlin.
In
Expanse, Australian phenom Jessica Loughlin continues her career-long fascination with the eternal horizon. While the show includes many of the stratified horizontal studies we have come to associate with her, it also incorporates a newer tactic and technique, as seen in works such as
Awash 3. Its vaporous wisps, rising like fingers of fog from a river, speak less of strata, more of ascent; less of stasis, more of fluidity. This piece and several others light up the room with a near-blinding bluish white, lending visual drama to an exhibition already aglow with allegory.
300 NW 13th Ave., 227-0222., 227-0222. Show runs Sept. 29- Nov. 21. Map
Bernd Haussmann.
Bernd Haussmann is a talented painter, but his solo show at Butters is all over the place. Three paintings in his
Mountains & Oceans series illustrate this inconsistency. The semi-abstract mountains in
1898 sit, lumplike and torpid, next to the sparse, noncommittal ripples of
1899. The series is redeemed only by
1894, a luscious gem of crackly, crinkly topographies and assertive colors. What gives? Which artist painted this show, the milquetoast or the dynamo? Will the real Bernd Haussmann please stand up?
520 NW Davis St., 2nd floor., 248-9378. Closes Sept. 26. Map
Hayley Barker.
Chimeras, the mythological creatures from which Hayley Barker’s show takes its title, are fearsome hybrids of different animals. In Barker’s works on paper, loose, colorful splatters offset illustratorly fangs, eyes, wings, snouts and furry ears. Her creatures look like they just hopped off the set of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. More whimsical than scary, they exude a cuteness that stops just short of preciousness.
134 NW 8th Ave., 287-3886. Closes Oct. 10. Map
M.K. Guth.
MK Guth’s
Terrain Change does change the terrain, both in the way its expansive installation redefines the cavernous Leach Gallery and in the way it redirects the artist’s focus away from the preciousness to which she is sometimes pulled. The cascading Rapunzel braids for which she is best known left a slightly cloying aftertaste. Not so with the current show, which counterbalances existential bleakness with bravura touches such as modified chandelier sculptures and oversized umbrellas bedecked in thrift-shop scarves, gloves and coats. This Liberace-meets-Goodwill aesthetic is bracing and original. Guth’s video allegory of possible hopes and fears,
I Will See You on the Other Side, stars artist David Eckard (who displays the presence of a born actor) as a dejected lumberjack trudging through a scorched-earth landscape and happening upon a stranded mermaid played by Ruth Waddy. The wordless interplay between these characters is haunting. Guth has risen to her highest callings in this energizing triumph of a show.
417 NW 9th Ave., 224-0521. Sept. 3-26. Map
Sherrie Wolf.
One of the most consistently inventive still-life painters in the Northwest, Sherrie Wolf creates sumptuous, sprawling compositions that marry hyper-realism with playful illusion. With their vibrant bouquets backdropped by over-the-top cherubs, urns, pheasants, fowl, and hunting hounds, these works wink, then wink again, in a remarkably sustained exercise of spot-on technique and ironic self-awareness.
805 NW 21st Ave., 226-2754. Sept. 3-26. Map
Jiseon Lee Isbara.
Like an springtime rain shower, Jiseon Lee Isbara’s installation,
Accumulated, evokes tranquility and reflection. We see 365 silk threads hang from the ceiling, each terminating in its own hand-stitched silk-and-polyester box. The boxes are different sizes and the threads knotted at different heights, imparting an organic, improvisatory quality that offsets the regularity of the grid in which the work is set up. As you walk past the threads, they seem to move in moirélike patterns, giving the piece a vibratory kinetic energy. It’s a hushed, pristine work, charming and poetic.
122 NW 8th Ave., 227-7114. Closes Sept. 27. Map
Mike Bragg.
In Mike Bragg’s installation, Pulled from the Ground, the artist focuses on roots, encasing gnarled specimens in jars mounted on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. His multichannel video installation shows roots in dizzying close-up, suspended in viscous liquid, pulsing and floating. The extreme organicism of the imagery suggests the relationship between roots and branching human veins, contributing to an atmosphere of queasy pseudoscientific exploration.
310 NW Broadway., 227-4333. Closes Sept. 26. Map
You know people have lost all trust in the government when they’re willing to believe a race of intergalactic lizard men secretly control the world. Robert Boyd draws on this and other popular delusions for
Conspiracy Theory, a video collage splicing together Internet clips, movie scenes and the ramblings of professional conspiracists like Alex Jones. Boyd doesn’t judge: He is simply showing, in stimulating fashion, what kind of paranoia the lies of our leaders has birthed.
1241 NW Johnson St., Closes Oct. 24. Map
Nell Warren.
At 31, Nell Warren is an artist of substance with a long and promising career ahead of her.
Storied, her sophomore outing at PDX, represents a profound stylistic evolution for the painter. In obsessive acrylic paintings such as
Sturgeon Ball, she evokes Tibetan thangkas and Japanese ukiyo-e paintings. Other highlights include the expansively horizontal, dynamically composed
Whorl and the hot desert colors of
Kaskela. An installation of exhaustively catalogued paint chips confirms the rigor and invention of Warren’s blossoming vision.
925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063. Closes Sept. 26. Map
Joe Macca.
MellowDrama is an apt title for Joe Macca’s latest outing. He has abstracted animals and insects into color fields that slowly grade from one side of his wood panels to the other. The results are exquisitely sensitive meditations on color as the essence of all things.
925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063. Show runs Sept. 29-Oct. 31. Map
Joy and Reffry.
For their purposefully misspelled collaborative show, Joy and Reffry, artists Roy McMakin and Jeffry Mitchell each produced a suite of 12 artworks. Then they paired each work with a found object culled from second-hand shops in Centralia, Wash. On a first-come, first-served basis, local collectors have picked and chosen one original work by each artist, plus one found object, to create a personalized triptych. It’s a slightly complicated, out-of-the-box idea for curator and gallery owner Rod Pulliam, but the risk has paid off—at press time, six of the 12 suites have sold at $3,600 apiece, which is not chump change in this depressed art market. Furthermore, the show succeeds beyond its gimmicky premise, challenging the viewer to discriminate between created artwork and artful bric-a-brac such as squirrel-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers and a cutting board that has all the weathered character and charm of Sean Connery’s face.
929 NW Flanders St., 228-6665. Closes Sept. 26. Map
True to its name, L.A.-based artist Julia Sherman’s multi-city
A Room-A-Loom project transforms galleries into giant weaving apparatuses and invites visitors to pick out fabric or bring other personal artifacts to intertwine, creating a true community tapestry. Naturally, Portland’s contribution is already looking a bit weird, with people leaving behind doll heads, computer disks and the box for a VHS copy of the ’80s slasher flick
The House on Sorority Row.
625 NW Everett St., No. 110., seagallery.wordpress.com. Closes Sept. 27. Map
SW GALLERIES
What’s our relationship to the channels of broadcast television and radio? Is the medium really the message, as Marshall McLuhan famously observed, or just a conduit for the dominant power structure?
Broadcast is a traveling exhibit spanning four decades’ worth of artists’ interactions with mass media, including June Paik’s manipulation of television news, Chris Burden’s infamous 1971 hostage-taking of a TV host at knife point and the burgeoning movement of pirate FM radio stations popping up in basements across the country.
0615 SW Palatine Hill Road., Opening reception 5 pm Tuesday, Sept. 8. Exhibit open 11 am-4 pm Tuesdays-Sundays, Sept. 9-Dec. 13. Map
Josh Arseneau.
Nervy, lowbrow and packed with sociopolitical subtext, Josh Arseneau’s paintings and drawings never fail to engage the viewer’s eyes and conscience. The artist’s written statement grimly explains that the show is about “tragedy, helplessness, and death.” That may be true, but never has existential angst come off with such springy, bitchily subversive energy.
1825 SW Broadway, 2nd floor., pdx.edu/art/exhibitions. Show runs Sept. 3-23. Map
A Year in the Long Life of Forest Park.
Portland photojournalist (and science education Ph.D.) Bruce MacGregor has spent two years documenting the landscape of Portland's "crown jewel," Forest Park, as part of a larger photo-essay examining the narrowing boundary between cities and the natural environments they're set into. This exhibit features 45 of his most evocative Park photos.
4033 SW Canyon Road., Closes Sept. 27. Map
NORTH PDX GALLERIES
Donal Mosher.
The flourishing nonprofit Disjecta presents a multimedia installation entitled
October Country, featuring photographs by Donal Mosher. The show also features film and narrative writing and presents a slice-of-life portrait of the artist’s multigenerational family. The show is curated by Red 76 founder Sam Gould.
8371 N Interstate Ave., 286-9449. Closes Oct. 25. Map
British artist Mary George offers a gonzo performance and installation titled
Camouflage Party. Themed around the classic TV show
The Twilight Zone, the show will delve into the mysteries of cultural memory.
6540 N Interstate Ave., 971-506-8938. Show runs Sept. 26-Oct. 25. Map
NE GALLERIES
You Are What You Eat.
Ever wondered what your neighbor keeps in her fridge? So did San Antonio artist Mark Menjivar. His Ampersand show takes a peek at the larders of eaters across the country. The show’s opening reception will feature an artist talk with Slow Food Portland focusing on the relationship between Menjivar’s work, national hunger issues and urban agriculture, followed by a Slow Food potluck.
2916 NE Alberta St., 805-5458. Opening reception 6-10 pm Wednesday, Sept. 23. Closes Oct. 25. Map
Diane Archer.
You may have encountered Diane Archer’s mixed-media work in past shows at Guardino and Ogle, or at any number of art-and-craft fairs across the state. Using found objects, textbooks, anatomical drawings and beeswax, she creates haunting, intimate curios that speak softly but eloquently about identity and connection.
2939 NE Alberta St., 281-9048. Closes Oct. 27. Map
What’s our relationship to the channels of broadcast television and radio? Is the medium really the message, as Marshall McLuhan famously observed, or just a conduit for the dominant power structure?
Broadcast is a traveling exhibit spanning four decades’ worth of artists’ interactions with mass media, including June Paik’s manipulation of television news, Chris Burden’s infamous 1971 hostage-taking of a TV host at knife point and the burgeoning movement of pirate FM radio stations popping up in basements across the country.
0615 SW Palatine Hill Road., Opening reception 5 pm Tuesday, Sept. 8. Exhibit open 11 am-4 pm Tuesdays-Sundays, Sept. 9-Dec. 13. Map
Live Debris.
A globe-trotting show bent on creating “installations and interventions about garbage and social inclusion” lands in Portland this weekend after stints in Beirut and Rio de Janeiro, boasting everything from refuse-related live performances and sewing stations to “interactive garbage weaving.”
Show takes place on between East Burnside Street and Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Southeast Water Avenue and Hawthorne Boulevard., Show runs Sept. 19-26. Free. Map
SE GALLERIES
Bobbi Woods.
Los Angeles-based artist Bobbi Woods makes her premiere West Coast solo exhibition here in Portland. With a series of pieces culled from popular culture, she recontextualizes found cultural relics such as movie posters from the Emmanuelle soft-core pornos of the 1970s. What do such objects have to say when ripped out of their original settings and reconfigured? A lot, turns out.
1430 SE 3rd Ave., 236-1430. Closes Sept. 26. Map
Where do we live, a house? Hmm-mmm.... an apartment? No, think more basic. Our body—that’s where we live. Finnish artist Johanna Ketola has teamed up with Jan Wolski to produce a multichannel video installation that removes furniture, lighting and all other background props we use as our personal infrastructure. What’s left is an eerily vacuumlike void with bodies floating in midair as they did in the 1970s novel and film
Coma. It’s dark, disturbing and thought-provoking.
531 SE 14th Ave., Reception 8 pm Thursday, Sept. 3. Exhibit open noon-6:30 pm daily Sept. 4-13; noon-6:30 pm Thursday-Friday, noon-4 pm Saturday-Sunday. Sept. 17-Oct. 18. Free. Map
Ma Qiusha.
Spilling your guts in front of a video camera is a little like talking with a razor blade on your tongue. And that’s exactly what Ma Qiusha does in this confessional video installation. The twentysomething Chinese artist talks about dealing with her parents’ expectations, the need to prove herself creatively and professionally, and other issues hitting home with her as she tries to make a name for herself as an artist. All the while, the razor blade sits on her tongue, making speech difficult—and dangerous—and providing a Marina Abramovic-like edge that’s unsettling to the viewer.
531 SE 14th Ave., Reception 8 pm Thursday, Sept. 3. Exhibit open noon-6:30 pm daily Sept. 4-13; noon-6:30 pm Thursday-Friday, noon-4 pm Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 17-Oct. 18. Free. Map
Brody Condon.
Brody Condon insists his film
Without Sun is a musing on “the projection of self,” but really it’s just 15 minutes of people tripping on acid. Culled from clips uploaded to the Internet, the base voyeurism detours the Mexican-born artist’s loftier ambitions. But as it progresses, the piece does have the effect of stripping away the romanticism of the psychedelic experience, showing human beings reduced to little more than frightened, incoherent animals.
531 SE 14th Ave., Closes Oct. 18. Map
Stephen Slappe.
A costume is worth a thousand essays on American culture, according to 2009 Couture Award winner Stephen Slappe. His oddly compelling
We Are Legion is a side-scrolling roll-call of children dressed up on Halloween, including himself as Gene Simmons. The repetition of certain outfits suggests we’re all plugged into the same matrix, but what does the kid made up like a Muslim suicide bomber say about us? Slappe encourages people to contribute by uploading costumed photos to his website (welcometothelegion.org).
531 SE 14th Ave., Closes Oct. 18. Map
BLACKFISH GALLERY
