For South African artist William Kentridge, the drawings he makes should not be taken as typical art objects. Rather than ends in themselves, they are stopgap documents of a greater process. Namely, Kentridge uses the drawings, recorded at various stages of development, to create the mise en scène of his video works. In this way, […]
John Motley
Posted inArt
Oliver Boberg
For Oliver Boberg, who lives and works in Fürth, Germany, the most vital and transporting aspect of a good story is setting. In the six enormous multi-image panels from his Seiten/Pages series at Quality Pictures, that’s literally all viewers get. With no hint of human existence save a few lit windows in the distance, these […]
Posted inMusic
Headphone Trip
Caribou Whisks Listeners off to Andorra
A year ago, Dan Snaith—who records and performs as Caribou—planned a trip to the tiny country of Andorra. Nestled in the upper reaches of the Pyrenees Mountains on the border between France and Spain, Andorra, Snaith thought, would fit the lush and romantic new material he’d been working on “down to the ground.” “I kind […]
Posted inBooks
Learning to Love You More
by Harrell Fletcher and
Miranda July
When Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July founded learningtoloveyoumore.com in 2002, the idea was born out of their observation that “our most joyful and even profound experiences often come when we are following other people’s instructions.” They began to issue regular assignments for anyone who cared to participate and published the scattershot results on the site. […]
Posted inArt
D.E. May
Testbeds
For decades, Salem-based artist D.E. May has been creating thoughtful and understated art that is equally indebted to minimalism as it is to architectural drafts. Testbeds, his most recent body of work on display at PDX, reveals the artist entranced as ever by the sheer formalism of clean geometric lines. In these new grids and […]
Posted inArt
Matthew Picton
New Work
London-born artist Matthew Picton, who lives and works in Ashland, Oregon, is best known for his spidery sculptures of the cracked surfaces of alleys and roads. In those works, Picton traces the cracks’ forking contours, creating material representations of the pavement’s splits and gaps—literally, sites of absence. Of his work, Picton has said, “In many […]
Posted inMusic
True or False
Never Trust Liars
If there’s one thing Liars have taught listeners since their 2001 debut, it’s that they’re not to be trusted. So how should one take it when Angus Andrew frantically howls the line “I want to run away” over and over at the beginning of the band’s new self-titled album? Is it a straight-faced admission to […]
Posted inArt
Marcy Adzich
Still Life with Wolves
That Marcy Adzich hails from the Great White North (Edmonton, Alberta to be exact) begins to explain why sweeping, majestic landscapes seem to worm their way into her work. It’s as if Canada’s dense forests, towering mountain ranges, and arctic expanses have become a permanent lens through which she views the world. In her new […]
Posted inMusic
Emerging from Smog
Bill Callahan Stars as Himself
Over a career that has spanned nearly two decades and a dozen albums, Bill Callahan has been many things. If the hundreds of songs he has recorded as Smog—and briefly, (Smog)—are to be believed, he has been a stranger, a teenage spaceship, even Star Wars. But never has he simply been himself. On this year’s […]
Posted inArt
Dianne Kornberg
Field Notes: 1992-2007
The work of Northwest photographer Dianne Kornberg is singularly committed to documenting the natural world, from moths and beetles to animal bones and fetuses. But looking at the nearly 100 images in the retrospective Field Notes, a viewer’s attention on this consuming focus is distracted by the images’ masterly composition and conceptual heft. This is, […]
Posted inArt
Dana Dart-McLean
Stop Signs and Memories
Since Dana Dart-McLean’s first solo show at small A projects last summer, the Portland artist has received some deserved attention outside the city. In addition to a sprawling solo exhibition at Southern Oregon University, her work was featured in two high-profile international shows: the Chris Johanson-curated Solo Show Solo Soul at Galleri Nicolai Wallner in […]
Posted inArt
Ursula von Rydingsvard
Lining two walls of the Portland Art Museum’s recently opened exhibition of work by the abstract sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard are a series of new charcoal drawings. With titles like “Roman Lace” and “Clothes to Dry,” these delicate, almost ephemeral compositions seem to run counter to the monumentality of the enormous cedar sculptures she’s best […]