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BY KATE BONANSINGA |
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Christmas @ tidbit tidbit gallery 4631 N Albina St., 460-2882 Ends Dec. 31 Christmas @ tidbit is sheer visual delight. Gallery owner Ovid Uman carefully considered the design of the salon-style exhibition, a refined assemblage of works by 37 contemporary artists. The result is an exhibition that reads cohesively, escaping the feeling of visual overload that is characteristic of some large group shows. It also effectively juxtaposes art by Portland artists with that of artists from outside the region, many of them European-born. The show is housed in two discrete gallery spaces, with most of the more intimate pieces in a tiny back room. Among them are two drawings by Chicago artist Phyllis Lee. In each, she has centered a thick graphite scribble on creamy vellum so that it floats on a pale expanse. The rendered knots represent dervish-like activity in otherwise void arenas, and the drawings are thus simultaneously calming and unnerving. They seem to defy gravity, hanging in air just above the viewer's head, suspended about two inches away from the wall. John Fraser, who teaches at Northern Illinois University (where he met Lee, who received her M.F.A. there), is represented in the exhibition by No title (capital l). The piece reveals the artist's background as a fashion designer: An antique shirt collar mounted on wood hangs vertically, its spine imprinted in black with information about the shirt that was once attached. It insinuates the potential for dramatic shifts in personal identity--of detaching, securing independence and then reattaching to new pursuits. In another untitled piece, Fraser excerpted two printed words from an old book. Prologue is mounted on the left and epilogue on the right; the blankness in between is rest of the story, waiting to be experienced and written. Both of Fraser's pieces are meticulously crafted, as is the triptych of Portland artist Stephanie Speight. Three small boxes covered in blank newsprint, which is stitched and taped, sit on glass shelves. These directly address the holiday season, gifts waiting for their contents to be revealed. Though Uman's taste tends toward the minimal, he has made the front gallery visually more active than the back one. Here Marty Houston offers two wall-hung sculptures made from torn dollar bills. One is shaped like a small Santa Claus, the other like crossed candy canes, in a remark on Christmas consumerism. For Yawn, Vanessa Renwick and Rebecca Steele videotaped people yawning, possibly as a spoof on Andy Warhol's movie Sleep. The footage is boring, but that's the point. The Immortals is an ornately framed color photograph of a staged subject by Romanian-born Horia Boboia, who now teaches at Pacific Northwest College of Art. A banana sits on top of a small clock; a miniature plastic sculpture of a toga-clad man with a long Roman nose stands on one end of the banana, a blue robot on the other. These emblems of power from different historical periods hold precarious positions on a piece of fruit that seems benign but in reality serves as their base of support. Either human or machine could topple at any moment, but currently they hold each other in check. Dutch-born Nelleke Beltjens' two-part steel sculpture Open Door also involves balance. A cube and a larger T shape lie on a rough wood surface close to the floor. If the cube represents a home, the T might be a road leading to new horizons, with its share of turns and forks; the comfort of the known and the excitement of the unknown are in equilibrium. The Christmas Carol, by Portlander Sally Finch, also promotes a periodic redefinition of routine and tradition. An old copy of Charles Dickens' classic hangs open on the wall, its pages sliced and spilling out to the floor, as if the previously understood story of Christmas needs now to be reconstructed and redefined to become meaningful once again. Lee, Fraser, Speight, Houston, Renwick, Steele, Boboia, Beltjens and
Finch are just a few of the excellent artists Ovid Uman has attracted
to tidbit (there are 27 others in this show alone). Uman came to the
United States in 1983 and lived in Chicago, where he worked as assistant
pastor in a Baptist church. He relocated to Portland 10 years later,
owned a restaurant in Vancouver, Wash., for a few years and then opened
tidbit in May 1997. Uman is also a working artist. He seems to weather
transitions with ease, and his installation talents and aesthetic are
put to good use in the gallery. Like Fraser's antique shirt collar,
recontextualization serves him time and time again.
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