When Paul Middendorf and Paige Saez founded Gallery Homeland last October, one of the most intriguing aspects of their project was their plan to develop a residency program that would bring artists from across the country to Portland. The program has begun to take shape recently, with Harrell Fletcher and Stephanie Snyder serving as advisors. […]
John Motley
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Amy Ross
After a five-week hiatus, Motel has reopened its doors with a refined sense of purpose. Owner Jennifer Armbrust has recommitted the gallery to developing the careers of emerging young artists, opting to phase out the handmade goods that made up the boutique side of the business. Motel’s new direction can be seen in Unnatural World, […]
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Roxy Paine
By now, New York artist Roxy Paine’s interests in exploring the natural and the mechanical are a known quantity. Since emerging in the early ’90s, Paine has put together a body of work that includes hyper-real sculptures of leafless trees, mushroom fields, and an opium poppy garden—as well as a number of machines that “create” […]
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The Little Art Festival That Could
Reed Arts Week Lays Low, but Comes Out Swinging
More than any city we know, Portland loves to get its art fix in concentrated, multi-vitamin bursts of festivity. PICA’s Time-Based Art festival is the leading example, of course; it boasts two year’s worth of programming stuffed into barely more than a week, and draws a far bigger audience than PICA’s more traditional performing arts […]
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Josh Mannis
With Iron Eagle, Chicago artist Josh Mannis packs equal parts fairy-tale fantasy and paranoid voyeurism into his first solo exhibition. His storybook imagery—taken predominantly from a Time Life Books series on German cooking—includes swans, basket-toting grandchildren in the woods, and, okay, elderly Bavarians enjoying a traditional meal. But to contrast the innocence and wonder connoted […]
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Peter Burr and Ross Christy
With The Den, Carnegie Mellon grads Peter Burr and Ross Christy have turned in a meditation on the shrinking wilderness and its displaced inhabitants, exiled from their natural habitats. As such, “the den” is portrayed as a site of sanctuary and safety, where animals burrow to escape from encroaching civilization. And both concern through a […]
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John Divola
During a career that has spanned four decades, photographer John Divola has amassed a diverse body of work that can best be characterized by an impulse to document and preserve, while acknowledging the medium’s capacity to fabricate. This tension can be seen in some of his more recent works, such as a series of colorful, […]
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Stephanie Robison
Paper Fences Tilt Gallery and Project Space, 625 NW Everett, Suite 106, through Feb 26 The latest addition to the Everett Station Lofts is Tilt Gallery and Project Space. Opened last week by Josh Smith and Jenene Nagy, Tilt’s mission is to become a home for challenging work of all kinds. “We want to offer […]
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Hildur Bjarnadottir
Walking into Overlap, the new show by Hildur Bjarnadottir, you immediately encounter 16 framed pencil drawings. Depicting loops and balloon shapes that pinwheel around an originating point, these “Lasso Drawings” look like they could have been made with a primitive version of a Spirograph. Across the gallery, a silent, black-and-white video loop presents Will Rogers […]
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New Trajectories I: Relocations
Taking in the 30 pieces of New Trajectories I, is not unlike the experience of viewing one of its most arresting pieces. Composed of dense layers of sweeping arcs, inky smudges, and the rigid geometry of architectural drafting, Julie Mehretu’s “Untitled (Dervish)” forcefully drags the viewer’s eyes across its surface, refusing any single point of […]
Posted inArt
Hildur Bjarnadottir
Walking into Overlap, the new show by Hildur Bjarnadottir, you immediately encounter 16 framed pencil drawings. Depicting loops and balloon shapes that pinwheel around an originating point, these “Lasso Drawings” look like they could have been made with a primitive version of a Spirograph. Across the gallery, a silent, black-and-white video loop presents Will Rogers […]
Posted inBooks
100 Spinning Plates
With 100 Spinning Plates, Chicago-based writer Rob Christopher has created an experimental work that attempts to undo the mechanics that make most novels tick. The book’s title implies a precarious balancing act. Perhaps more aptly, it conjures records in a DJ mix that, once juxtaposed and re-contextualized, create a linear arc from disparate fragments—which is […]