Ryan Dirks

Bubble Speak Haze Gallery, 6635 N Baltimore, Suite 210, Closing Party Friday Oct 29, 8pm For Chandra Bocci’s generation–which is also my own–childhood reality was defined by G.I. Joe action figures, Rainbow Bright, and video games. We believed sugary drinks would imbue us with secret powers and that happiness was just a plastic-encased toy awayÉ […]

…Because Cynicism Left Yesterday Disjecta Gallery, 116 NE Russell, Sat-Sun 1-5 pm, through October 31 Disjecta will close its doors November 4, but its final visual art show takes it to the grave with a shout, not a whimper. Portland artist/photographer Liz Haley and New York photographer John Vitale teamed up to create ÉBecause Cynicism […]

The Bambi Effect Savage Art Resources, 1430 SE 3rd, through November 30 You and some friends are in a haze of TV viewing, flipping from game shows to soap operas. You pause on a nature program where a rabbit hops across the screen. Someone sighs about it being SO cute and then, suddenly, it is […]

The Affair at the Jupiter Hotel 800 E. Burnside Friday-Sunday, Oct 1-3 Organizer Stuart Horadner appears surprisingly calm–considering. Seated across from me at a café table, this marks the fourth time his cell phone has rung in 20 minutes. He pulls it from his pocket, takes a deep breath, and silences it. “The world may […]

Pacific Switchboard Re-Opening 4637 N Albina, opening party Friday October 1, 6pm-10pm Your T-shirts are rotating to the back of your closet and your friend with Seasonal Affective Disorder hasn’t left her studio apartment for a week. Mervyn’s back-to-school advertisements are outnumbered only by the frowning children who trudge down your street, strapped to scoliosis-inducing […]

Andrew Brandou and Anna Weber Motel Gallery, 19 NW 5th (on Couch, between 5th and 6th), through Oct. 2 The only phenomenon that matches humanity’s ability to feel pain, love, and anger is our ability to bury these emotions under layer after layer of lottery tickets, low fat ice cream, and Oprah reruns. Throughout history–from […]

The Locals Blackfish Gallery, 420 NW 9th, through October 1 The Blackfish Gallery is an artist cooperative that has been around since 1979, but September marks a temporary invasion by outsiders like Vladimir, M.O.S.T., Chandra Bocci, Bryan Suereth, MK Guth, and Matt McCormick. Aptly titled The Locals, the show is a collection of installation, music, […]

Portland is a good place to live, but it’s often dismissed as quaint, pretty, or friendly. It’s a nice town to walk your dog or cultivate a caffeine addiction, but everyone here is haunted by phone calls from some far off metropolis. You know the call. Your old roommate rings from New York and tells […]

Savage Art Resources, 1430 SE 3rd, Friday September 3, 8 pm, FREE Chris Johanson’s paintings, drawings and installations are candy-coated social critiques in which playful line constructions reveal swastikas and cartoonish figures blurt word bubbles like, “Did I plan far enough ahead?” He rose to international prominence as a figure in San Francisco’s Mission District […]

Scratch Haze Gallery, 6635 N Baltimore #211, closing party with the artists Saturday August 28, 8 pm My friend makes me brilliant mix tapes. The thematic and aesthetic unity of their construction maps their respective chronologies. They segue from Neus’ “Negativland” to Eno’s “Music for Airports” and I can hear Bowie’s “Sound and Vision” before […]

Ken Aptekar A Personal Public, showing at Reed College’s Cooley Gallery, 3203 SE Woodstock, August 20 – November 18 The Late Baroque and Rococo periods conjure visions of shell-shaped soaps and prints of plump nymphets that hang in grandmothers’ bathrooms. Ken Aptekar wants to change that. He bolts 18th-Century paintings behind sheets of glass, then […]