NW GALLERIES
Speakeasy is John Graeter and Chris Haberman’s collaboration, a lively interspersion of text and image. Graeter takes a calligraphic approach to alphanumeric characters, much in the way Margot Voorhies Thompson does at Laura Russo. He is interested more in text’s form than its content. Haberman’s well-developed figurative style uses words to add insight into the psychology of his subjects. It’s gratifying to see the pieces each artist completed on his own counterposed against the works they created together. While each artist has considerable merits, their fusion is greater than the sum of their parts.
325 NW 6th Ave., 224-5721. Live performance 7-10 pm Friday, Nov. 20. Regular show closes Nov. 30. Map
Jim Riswold.
Art People and a Cow is Jim Riswold’s affectionate skewering of the art world’s sacred cows. The artist presents Roy Lichtenstein as a yellow dot dressed in a suit and tie. He mocks Damien Hirst’s dissected formaldehydic cows by photographing a mold of Hirst’s face filled with hamburger. The piece’s title:
Hirst Tartare. Riswold has always had fun with titles—who can forget his photo of a Ku Klux Klansman posing by a cross, titled
Jesus Loves White People? But this outing, in addition to his witty titles, he has gilded the lily by over-explaining his in-jokes via explanatory texts, which accompany each title. A former marketing guru for Wieden & Kennedy, Riswold has a marketer’s gift for glib prose, but in this case, he should have trusted the viewer and let the images speak for themselves.
716 NW Davis St., 224-8182. Closes Nov. 28. Map
Trashed @ 35.
To help celebrate
WW’s 35th anniversary, we asked some of Portland’s hottest emerging and iconic artists to turn our newspaper covers into new pieces of art in their own unique styles. We got the idea from local artist Klutch (Vinyl Killers), whose “remixed”
WW covers caught our eye and inspired us to invite other artists to try their hand at using, well, us, as a medium. Trashed @ 35 features Klutch’s work, as well as WW-inspired art by Brett Superstar, Dan Gilsdorf, J. Shea, Alexis Mollomo, Josh Arseneau and Chris Haberman, among others. Come meet the artists, check out their kick-ass work, and toast WW at the crusty old age of 35 at the show’s First Thursday opening.
115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900. Opening reception 5:30 pm Thursday, Nov. 5. Closes Nov. 30. 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
Giles Bettison.
Australian glass phenom Giles Bettison is no longer a wunderkind—he is a mid-career master. He has both honed and extended his technique, which consists of turning tiny “murrine” blocks into immaculate sculptures that shimmer like rapturous patchworks. Twisting, bending and dissolving like a hundred surrealist clocks, the glass cubes congeal into vessels that evoke lace and woven tapestry. This is the work of a virtuoso who damned near magically imbues small-scaled vessels with big impact.
300 NW 13th Ave., 227-0222., 227-0222. Closes Dec. 29. Map
Ted Katz.
Ted Katz spent two months in Ireland and North Yorkshire earlier this year. When he came back to Portland, he couldn’t get the moody British landscape out of his head. It haunts his luxuriant show,
Never Trust a Full Moon, in abstracted forms that play variations on the theme of land and sky bisected by the horizon line. Katz indulges himself and the viewer in the sensuality of paint-qua-paint. A glistening magenta brushstroke in the middle of
Red Morning Sky rises out of the background and declares the artist’s love of painterly effects. His
Another Year Gone By is a hymn to turquoise atmospherics—vaporous mists rising from the ecru fields below. Katz never met a color or texture he didn’t want to bask in, bathe in, and make sweet love to. Lucky for him, and for us.
520 NW Davis St., 2nd floor., 248-9378. Show runs Nov. 5-28. Map
SW GALLERIES
One night only: Homeschool Art Shop.
Owning kick-ass art is great. Coming up with the cash to buy it is the tricky part. Enter Homeschool Art Shop, the brainchild of artist/galleristas Jacqueline Mention, Jessica Hirsch, and Emma Lipp. The trio wants to provide up-and-coming collectors (that means you!) with affordable art by up-and-coming artists. Some of these 25 artists are Portland-based, some are from out of town, and all will be in Homeschool’s self-described “coming-out party” group show at Ace Cleaners. Prices start at $5 and top off at $150. Is that affordable enough for you?
403 SW 10th Ave., One night only: 6 pm Thursday, Nov. 19. Admission free. More info at homeschoolartshop.com.
Map
Queer Gaze.
This is a gallery that regularly examines queer identity, as it did in this summer’s
Lesbian Art Show and does again in this month’s
Queer Gaze. Despite the ready-to-wear butch/femme polarization articulated in photos like Erica Beckman’s
Shannon and Reed, this show is less about queer identity than it is about the identity of youth coming of age and forging its own character. Tip O’Neill famously declared “All politics is local.” I would submit that all identity politics are local, too, whether your sexual identity involves women, men, neither, or both. The show’s strongest works bypass its wide-open theme. Brooklyn-based Sarah Baley’s
Boisroom is a Caravaggio-esque tableau of shadow play and honeyed light on naked skin that makes it clear, if it ever wasn’t to begin with, that aesthetics trumps sexual politics. Who are the women in this dynamically composed vignette? How are they related? What are they discussing? Baley offers few clues, yet her imagery and technique are so ravishing, the mystery only intensifies the piece’s allure.
205 SW Pine St., 274-7668. Closes Nov. 28. 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
NORTH PDX GALLERIES
NE GALLERIES
Heidi Kirkpatrick.
Cigarettes made out of the pages of old books. Ashtrays. Old wood. A naked woman’s butt. Er, huh? These and other unlikely elements make up Heidi Kirkpatrick’s multimedia sculptures and assemblages, grouped together under the title Gray Area. Using disparate found objects and her own photographs of female friends, she deconstructs gender roles to create post-feminist think-pieces that are whimsical and mercifully un-preachy.
623 NE 23rd Ave., 927-4409. Show runs Nov. 5-29. Map
Queer Gaze.
This is a gallery that regularly examines queer identity, as it did in this summer’s
Lesbian Art Show and does again in this month’s
Queer Gaze. Despite the ready-to-wear butch/femme polarization articulated in photos like Erica Beckman’s
Shannon and Reed, this show is less about queer identity than it is about the identity of youth coming of age and forging its own character. Tip O’Neill famously declared “All politics is local.” I would submit that all identity politics are local, too, whether your sexual identity involves women, men, neither, or both. The show’s strongest works bypass its wide-open theme. Brooklyn-based Sarah Baley’s
Boisroom is a Caravaggio-esque tableau of shadow play and honeyed light on naked skin that makes it clear, if it ever wasn’t to begin with, that aesthetics trumps sexual politics. Who are the women in this dynamically composed vignette? How are they related? What are they discussing? Baley offers few clues, yet her imagery and technique are so ravishing, the mystery only intensifies the piece’s allure.
205 SW Pine St., 274-7668. Closes Nov. 28. 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
Picture this: a life-sized tractor-trailer semi truck parked inside a trendy artist loft. That’s what Milepost 5 artists-in-residence Crystal Schenk and Shelby Davis have created out of two-by-fours and drywall. There’s an engaging dissonance between the idea of a monster truck, which we’re used to seeing barreling down the highway, and the materials used to make a house that is anchored into the ground. This is sure to be a memorable, gee-whiz installation—be sure to see it during its limited run.
900 NE 81st Ave., 729-3223. Open 6-10 pm Saturday, Nov. 21. Runs 6-9 pm Nov. 22-25 and Nov. 28-29. Map
SE GALLERIES
Alex Steckly.
Alex Steckly should be on your radar. He is one of the most gifted emerging artists in Portland today, as his self-titled debut show at Fourteen30 attests. In exceedingly elegant enamel and oil paintings, he layers luxuriant textures and patterns but has the good sense to restrict his color palette to white, with smudgy pentimenti of gray and plum buried underneath like archaeological relics. His white-on-white wooden sculptures riff on the layering motif, too, and comport themselves with a winning élan. This is one of the most exciting new talents we have seen on the local art scene in at least two years. Time will tell if Steckly, who is all of 22, has staying power and the conceptual fortitude to evolve his vision over the length of a career, but at this point, I’d be willing to bet good money that this kid is the real deal.
1430 SE 3rd Ave., 236-1430. Closes Dec. 5. Map
Jessica Skloven.
Local artist/curator TJ Norris named Jessica Skloven the winner of last year’s juried exhibition at Newspace, and this year she exhibits her solo show of recent photographs. The Bay Area artist’s photos give only intimations of the world rather than explications. Moody and elegant, they are as intriguing for what they do not yield to the viewer as for what they do.
1632 SE 10th Ave., 963-1935. Show runs Nov. 6-29. Map
Remedios Rapoport and Gustavo Rapoport.
Buenos Aires-born Portlander Gustavo Rapoport tackles "Tangomania" with digital color photos from one Saturday evening at local dance hub Tango Berretín while Remedios Rapoport shares both her own photography as well as traditional Argentinan
filete paintings. Opening reception 6-8 pm Saturday Oct. 3, $10 cover starting at 8 pm for tango dancing.
6305 SE Foster Road., 771-7470. Show closes Nov. 30. Map
ANKA GALLERY
