James Lavadour & Storm Tharp 219 NW 12th (PICA’s old gallery), through April 30 James Lavadour and Storm Tharp are both represented by PDX gallery this month, but because of limited wall space, their large-scale works are on display together at PICA’s former gallery space in the Wieden + Kennedy building. The two artists seem […]
Ryan Dirks
Posted inArt
Surface Tension
Surface Tension Gallery 500, 420 SW Washington, through March 31 The medium of film has come to define our idea of narrative in art. Beginnings, middles and ends unfold with predictable pacing and perfectly timed orchestral crescendos. Still images flash faster than our eyes process them, simulating movement, emotion and violence in real time. As […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Handicapped Cinema
The Physically Challenged Rory O’Shea
Rory O’Shea Was Here dir. O’Donnell Opens Fri March 11 Fox Tower Films about physically challenged people are a tricky business. In the past, we would have called them films about the disabled or the handicapped, but the instability of those phrases suggests how uncomfortable we are with what that terminology represents. Aware of that […]
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R.A.W. Power
Reed Arts Week: A Festival of Fun!
These days, seems like any college you can think of has teeming festivals based on every theme imaginable. In the next few weeks alone, we’ve got Lewis and Clark College’s Gender Symposium (March 9-11), PSU’s International Women’s Day (March 6), and University of Portland’s “Peace Together” day of social justice and action activities (March 19). […]
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Three shows at Elizabeth Leach Gallery
Three shows at Elizabeth Leach Gallery: Amanda Wojick’s Cliffs and Waterfalls, Claire Cowie’s Village, Kristan Kennedy’s Valentine Field; 417 NW 9th, through Feb. 26 The day after Valentine’s Day, a few discarded valentines had blown through the schoolyard by my house. I found them piled up against a chain-link fence like a tiny red and […]
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Chroma
Chroma Gallery 500, 420 SW Washington, Fri-Sun Feb 11-13, 8 pm, free There are still amazing artists in Portland who don’t know of each other,” says Celestial Sipes, one of the co-founders of Telegraph. “There are visual artists who don’t know filmmakers, filmmakers who don’t know performers, and so on.” Telegraph–which also includes local musicians […]
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Dave McKenzie, Portrait as a Ghost
Dave McKenzie, Portrait as a Ghost Savage Gallery, 1430 SE 3rd, February 4 – March 19; Artist Talk and Screening at Reed College’s Psych Auditorium, Feb 3, 7 pm New York artist Dave McKenzie seems to understand that things can take on a deeper meaning when they stop working. He issued a run of ceramic […]
Posted inBooks
Chris Ware
Chris Ware by Daniel Raeburn (Yale University Press) In 2001, the UK’s Guardian newspaper awarded Chris Ware its First Book Award for Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth. For a brief moment, Ware was not only placed alongside more conventional literature, he was found to be superior. His work was compared to that of […]
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Ryan Pierce
Ryan Pierce showing at the Marghitta Feldman Gallery, 1102 NW Marshall, through January 29; Gallery 500, 420 SW Washington #500, through January 28 Ryan Pierce’s solo show at the Marghitta Feldman Gallery, Evidence: A visual indictment of the FBI, tackles the sordid history of FBI repression, creating a visual world of paranoia, forensics and espionage […]
Posted inBooks
Home Land
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte, reading at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside, Tuesday February 1, 7:30 pm The word is thrown around every day: “perfect.” But, real encounters with perfection are so rare they can take on a quasi-religious significance. And so, you’ll have to excuse the following if it sounds like the […]
Posted inArt
Walking Thru Jell-O
Walking Thru Jell-O by Claire Lieberman, PDX Gallery Window Project, 604 NW 12th, January 22 It is easy to miss Claire Lieberman’s Walking Thru Jell-O at PDX Gallery’s window project; most people do. White monitors display images of red Jell-O in the shape of water balloons as they are poked, pressed and crushed by a […]
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Black Panthers, 1968
Black Panthers, 1968 Reed College’s Cooley Gallery, 3203 SE Woodstock, through Feb 20 Walter Benjamin, one of the 20th century’s greatest critics, refused to think of history as an unbroken chain, each event leading to the next like a forgone conclusion. This linear view is how the winners see the past; it is history written […]