Antony + the Johnsons make haunting music. Songs like You Are My Sister and Hope There’s Someone are lovely consciousness-etching elegies that only get better upon playback. And they are back in Portland (9/5, 8:30PM) for the first time since PICA’s TBA:05, the same year the band won the coveted Mercury Prize. In concert with the Oregon Symphony this will surely be a special evening to see one of the great independent voices of our time. This is the band’s only North American performance during the month of September before they leave for Milan and just prior to the release of their new EP, Another World, on Secretly Canadian (10/7). Also out soon is Bjork’s (*) latest single (a duet w/Hegarty), The Dull Flame of Desire, (9/29) with several remixes in the works (Modeselektor, Mark “Spike” Stent)!
I’ve been a fan since their Durtro days when they performed concerts with Current 93 and friends. I got my ticket last week, you may want to grab one while they last ($20-75, or included w/Patron Pass). This event will be quite a sneak peek, and a wowzer opener to all things TBA!
Over this Summer I have worked with Hilary Pfeifer on a piece called Capture which will be shown at the Museum of Contemporary Craft opening on August 30th. As part of the ‘Collaborations‘ show organized by sculptor Greg Wilbur, we will debut this work that includes photography and objects. This is the second year running in which I have been included, last year w/Scott Wayne Indiana. We developed a piece that crosses into the realm of the performative on one level, questions the breaking point between art and craft on another. The work will only be on view through September 3 in the Museum’s Lab as part of Art in the Pearl. The show is also partly a fundraiser for Sisters of the Road Cafe. The MCC is on the North Park Blocks, in the Desoto Building.
MIAMI: Those who attended the 2006 Oregon Biennial may recall the romantic burst of light in the portraits and images of Federico Nessi. At that point he had just graduated from PNCA. Now based in the same town that brings us Art Basel|Miami Beach, the 26-year old former Venezuelan is about to embark on his first solo show with his new gallery, Spinello. Entitled Emotional Response Can be Deconditioned (Opening 9/13) the exhibition, according to White Hot Magazine “takes its name from a controversial statement in the 1970’s defending the practice of aversion therapy [including shock therapy] the exhibition questions the notion that feelings can be controlled”.
Back in July of ‘06 I wrote “Recent PNCA grad, now Wieden + Kennedy designer, Federico Nessi shows his latest ‘heroic’ work in the form of c-prints mounted on aluminum. The imagery is quite interesting, the outcome a bit lack-luster. My favorite was a lightburst heavy image of an archer and another of a shoe-gazing, deer-in-the-headlights meets Caravaggio-androgynous nod to Manet’s The Dead Toreador…And while this is the little league version of what we’ve flipped through Art Forum’s pages to see for years, they are related to film stills in the vein of Catherine Opie or Jeff Wall. His work does conveniently have an afterbite in the ilk of Biennial colleague Holly Andres, so see Gately (and other major dealers) for a better reading of what appeals in this particular genre of sedate work that delivers tales of nymph-like stoicism. There is nothing bad about this work, really, it’s just too influenced at the moment. One can easily see his vision broadening into the future, so maybe he’s on the cusp of something.”
Maybe now it the time?…..as the exhibition intends to “exercise unexplored aesthetic versatility by completely altering the interior of the gallery, will also be venturing onto the street for a special performance”.…
Daniel Duford‘s work has come a long way from the Art Gym and other local venues. He is the subject of a major performance piece by Lawrence Goldhuber, formerly with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co. I won’t soon forget how simply amazing Goldhuber was to behold in Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin back in ‘90 - pushing the boundaries of what a big guy could do on stage, and nude to boot! Tomorrow marks the World Premiere of Sleeping Giant (The Myth of America) at the prestigious MASS MOCA’s Hunter Center in western Massachusetts. The collaborative work (w/Janet Wong, and Tin Hat) is built from a stage set installation and comics developed by Duford over the last several years. I am not going back to my former hometown until November, so I will be unable to see this but hope it might tour to our coast.
Back when I was curating grey|area for Guestroom Gallery I was privileged to have a sneak peak of many of the amazing pages that went into the process that’s become this theatrical presentation. In that show the genteel artist, who had just had a major bicycle accident, included three pieces from his other work, Naked Boy, which was recently presented at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. I also think it’s cool that this garnered a straight guy a write-up in a major glbt publication. Since this time he’s become a proud daddy, and still resides in our backyard even though he’s taking the show on the road. Duford is also an established art critic who has penned for ARTnews, Art Week and other national monthlies. He is also at work on a new Green Man project for Trimet’s new downtown rail, watch for it in the coming moons…
September is the time (and the record, of the time) to freshen things up just so for back to school and all that good stuff. This year on Portland’s independent gallery front a quirky cup trick of sorts is taking place. Chambers Fine Art is moving to a yet unofficially announced site in the Pearl (speculators gather that it will be across from Pulliam Deffenbaugh, and perhaps opening in October) and Fontanelle Gallery (yay Leslie, and Jess!) will pop up in its former location (once occupied by Elizabeth Leach).
Their first show will be All I Can Do Is Dream which opens on September 4 from 6-9PM with champagne and cupcakes!
Reported earlier, fourteen30 Contemporary will also open a lil’ later in September, in the space (1430 SE 3rd) that was small a projects who are now setting up shop on Broome St (as in zip code 10002). The space also formerly held one of Portland’s better known galleries of the past, Savage. With Jeanine Jablonski at the helm, their first outing will include a solo show by LA-based Devon Oder called Breaking Light. These folks will keep us on our toes while we sharpen our pencils for Fall.
Art Civic is a new online arts journal based here in the northwest. They took some time to interview me for their inaugural issue and here are the results.
NO FRILLS: Here we are in subtle shades of midweek gray. But it seems somehow fitting after today’s visit to the Portland Art Museum. This was prompted by the two paintings by Ed Ruscha presented by the Miller-Meigs Endowment for Contemporary Art. These pieces, Azteca and Azteca in Decline, together form a diptych (each triptychs abutting each other) extend along the entire length of the upper quadrant of the Jubitz Center and are peculiar for two reasons. First the canvases are naked of a signature word within the frame. And more than ever Ruscha drives home a near tribal angst declaring the end of painting. By using a flag, or minimalism itself as subject, he’s contorted rites of passage with self referential twists by adding grafitti motifs. In flaccid gesture, trompe l’oeil holes and faux wear marks the great shift to technical painting, balancing a nod and poking fun at process rich super-realism at the same time. While this will not be referenced as his most important work, the statement and scale are grande in the use of focal point and blank stare. On view through September 21.
SEARCH + FIND: Also at PAM is a cluster of stitched letters by thirty-seven year old Tacoma artist Marc Dombrosky. This APEX show is also his first solo museum offering. These interest me in the same way some Joseph Cornell work does (PAM has a fine one currently on view, of at least four in the collection), with a known sense of intimacy, and a delicate relationship with materials. There’s also the disparate history of men working within the scope of embroidery to consider. What I got from Ruscha’s work translated into this much younger artist’s ouevre today. I guess he filled in the blank. It’s connection to the street, urban cries of homeless signage, scrawled notes and receipts. Singularly these may seem somewhat twee, but en masse there’s the white noise of any main street, most days of the week. These declarations, playing on the brute calligraphic, seize the found materials as the artist follows the hand of the anonymous scribe. He’s captured the voice of something passing, often forgotten in communication, the human hand in the written word. Quite beautiful actually. If Found hasn’t featured him yet, they soon should. On view through October 26.
Currently on view in the gallery tucked alongside the Feldman at PNCA is a small, yet wonderfully dramatic exhibition of photographs. This is the first post BFA work I’ve seen by Sarah Meadows, who I had the chance to meet and discuss her work during thesis reviews. Here she is well teamed up with Miranda Lehman who was last seen in Newspace’s Annual Juried Exhibition (which I had a hand in, nudge). These young women both have a way with light and inferred narrative, capturing simple moments and gestures. The show is a lovely reminder that photography can sometimes capture what often falls outside the lens to great effect.
If you’re like me, a foodie, and care about where the ingredients come from when you go out (like our own backyard) check this episode of Dave Does….commercials are free (!!).
PS: Just so you early risers know, there is a new book coming out very soon called “Breakfast in Bridgetown“. Now, that’s something to savor!
Outtakes from my new urban series Double|Exposure will be available starting this month at New American Art Union. These are singular images excerpted from the same body of source material (2003-present). A new book is in the works that includes a much larger series of relational images pairing architecture with nature, reflections, and the poker-faced everyday. You can get a sneak peak on Wooloo.
Speaking of NAAU, don’t miss Orbis Viridis Obscurus, the new camera obscura work by Ethan Jacksonwhich opens this Wednesday (6-9PM)!
The annual festival alongside the Willamette, now in its 3rd year, Scratching the Surface, is presented by Gallery Homeland. Described as “a series of scheduled lectures, installations, performances and events” most work made for this event has dealt directly with topics related to the river that separates the City of Portland from itself. It has definitely attracted some of Portland’s finest, not to mention outsiders who have been here as part of their residency program. For more information go here. This year an accompanying exhibition is on view at the Ford Building (through August 31) called Surface Tension which showcases nineteen artists (yours truly included). The show is a flashback of new and older pieces that represent the many installation pieces, objects and detritus originally presented along the Eastbank Esplanade.
