In her first solo exhibition at Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Michelle Ross presents a new group of paintings that further her exploration into reductive abstraction. They represent a logical trajectory from her previous, deeply formal work of interlocking geometric shapes that hover on planes of more expressive brushwork. The new paintings, on the other hand, are […]
John Motley
Posted inArt
Bindle Stiff
Matthew Rodriguez
It’s time for art to go grim again. Over the past few years, the popularity of artists such as Winnipeg’s Marcel Dzama and Portland’s own Chris Johanson has triggered an epidemic of work that situates itself within a decidedly inartistic tradition of cutesy cartoons and faux-naïf illustrations. But what actually makes Dzama and Johanson’s work […]
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Anna Fidler
Mistique
Analogizing artists as god-like beings, who have imagined realms into existence through their work, is a conceit as old as art itself. But looking at Mistique, the new body of work by ex-Portland artist and musician Anna Fidler, that romantic conception of the creative act seems less bankrupt. Fidler, who received her MFA from Portland […]
Posted inMusic
Impossible Music
A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s Controlled Chaos
When Ben Daniels, the mastermind behind Philadelphia’s A Sunny Day in Glasgow, began tracking for his band’s debut, he was guided by a simple principle: “I suppose the only thing I try to avoid is writing boring songs.” The resulting album, Scribble Mural Comic Journal, and the forthcoming tour-only EP, Tout New Age, are full […]
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Jacinda Russell
Strange and Mundane Objects
With Reed College’s Cooley Gallery closed through August, the campus’ focus on art has shifted to Hauser Library’s Case Works exhibitions. This summer’s installment presents Jacinda Russell’s Strange and Mundane Objects. Formally, Russell’s project is easily described: She has photographed a number of objects, printed the images on canvas, and encased them in a variety […]
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The Hook Up
For the year’s fourth guest-curated show at the New American Art Union, Bay Area transplant Jesse Hayward has selected work by eight local artists that explores how installation art has impacted traditional wall-based presentation. Throughout The Hook Up, the work occupies a gray area between painting, sculpture, and installation. Jenene Nagy’s “Meadow” typifies the investigation: […]
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Dan Graham
Although he has exhibited widely throughout Europe and Asia, the New York-based artist Dan Graham is best known as a writer and art critic in the United States. This is odd, considering how entwined his life and artistic career have been with the development of contemporary art. In the ’60s, he photographed New Jersey with […]
Posted inMusic
Radio Waves
Beach House’s Dreamy Pop
In pop music, it’s seldom that the age-old adage “less is more” actually earns its keep. But Baltimore’s Beach House practically revel in restraint. The band’s name might have you thinking its music is stuffed with Beach Boys-style multi-part harmonies or spiked with staccato surf guitar. In fact, the album’s nine sullen sketches undeniably conjure […]
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Kehinde Wiley
In the few years since the Los Angeles-born painter Kehinde Wiley received his MFA from Yale, he has pursued a narrowly focused and inimitable style. Fusing the worlds of baroque art and contemporary hiphop culture, Wiley’s oil paintings subversively insert young black men into an art historical tradition from which they are otherwise absent. So […]
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Will Rogan and Bob Linder
Hear the Wind Sing
That Will Rogan and Bob Linder have been close friends and collaborators for more than a decade is immediately evident in Hear the Wind Sing, their first two-person exhibition. The work is diverse, but so entwined that it could easily be mistaken for the product of one mind. Both Rogan and Linder, who shared studio […]
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Dinh Q. Lê
Born in Vietnam and educated at the School of Visual Arts in New York, the works of Dinh Q. Lê typically investigate cultural representations of the East. But they do so in a way that is inextricably entwined with the West. In a world rapidly shrinking at the hands of technology and an increasingly globalized […]