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Visual Art
Posted inVisual Art

What Lies Beneath Sean Christensen’s Mount Saint Helens?

And other reasons to sink into his Never Coffee show, Memory Foam.
Avatar photo by Lindsay Costello

Consider the sensation of memory foam beneath your hand, and the way a handprint slowly fades as the material returns to its original shape. On view at Never Coffee, Portland artist Sean Christensen’s new exhibition Memory Foam makes that feeling visual, thinking about the impressions left by memory.  The exhibition pulls inspiration from Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s […]

Posted inVisual Art

Your New Favorite Cat Painting Is Joseph Jones’ “Pink T-shirt”

On view at Adams and Ollman, Jones’ paintings and Carolee Schneeman’s video channel interspecies love.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

Images of cats tend to serve as landing pads for emotional projection. How you interpret them says something interesting about your inner landscape. In a new exhibition at Adams and Ollman, London-born artist Joseph Jones studies the curious humanity embedded in the feline image. Building composites from his extensive archive of cat photos—the artist estimates […]

Posted inSpring Arts 2026

Jessie Rose Vala Channels Ecological Grief Into The Pollinators

“They are kind of moth-like and plant-like. But they also have neon coming out of their eyes.”
Avatar photo Melissa Locker

When you walk into Jessie Rose Vala’s show at Chefas Projects, you’ll quickly realize: These aren’t your average ceramics. Instead of raku fired pots or pastel hand-thrown vases, Vala’s work transforms clay into mission statements about the state of the world. Combining sculptural ceramics with neon and metallics, Vala’s pieces feel chimeric, bringing in elements […]

Posted inSpring Arts 2026

Reading the Room at Cooley Gallery’s IF

The new exhibition unites three artists, including a former nun. 
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

What does it mean to write in space? At Reed College’s Cooley Gallery, new director and curator Derek Franklin thinks about it, bringing together three eloquent artists who take language into form. IF pairs serigraphs by Sister Corita Kent, a Roman Catholic nun who eventually left the order to devote herself fully to anti-war, pro-love […]

Posted inVisual Art

David Hockney Is So Changeable

Portland Art Museum’s new exhibition shows the artist’s evolving style across 60 years and 200 artworks.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

“David sees the world backward,” says Doug Roberts, a Los Angeles art dealer and longtime friend of David Hockney. Roberts was appearing on a panel about the artist, as part of Portland Art Museum’s (PAM) new exhibition tracing 60 years of Hockney’s work. He meant it as praise. Hockney, whose sunny California scenes somehow simmer […]

Posted inVisual Art

What Wanders Through a Body?

At curious Portland gallery Lumber Room, corporeal works by Louise Bourgeois and Isabelle Albuquerque converse.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

The myth of feminine hysteria didn’t start in a Victorian sanatorium. Long before Freud heard about it and thought it sounded super legit, ancient Greek doctors imagined the uterus as a restless “wandering womb,” traversing the body and wreaking emotional havoc. In The Wandering Womb at Lumber Room, Los Angeles-based artist Isabelle Albuquerque revives and digs […]

Posted inVisual Art

The Mercury’s Favorite Visual Art Shows of 2025: Calligraphy, a Lettuce Lamp, and a Salmon Cannon

New artists and art spaces made Portland feel like its old self.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

The most memorable exhibitions this year made a mess, rejecting pristine gallery walls in favor of fish skin, plastic bags, and lived-in spaces like a mall corridor and a home garage. Artists viewed art itself as inhabitable—Ginny Sims turned walls into spaces for dimensional scenes, and Lydia Rosenberg’s experimental lamps gave Society a chaotic, yet […]

Posted inVisual Art

Portland Art Museum Wants to Be Used

Once hidden galleries can now be found; Rothko Pavilion presents a new way to see what was already there.
Avatar photo Suzette Smith

“We always want to respect our donors,” says Julia Dolan, Portland Art Museum (PAM)’s senior photography curator. “But we’re trying to orient directionally.” Dolan was leading a tour group through the new Rothko Pavilion, walking us into the north wing, which happens to house the now more accessible rooms dedicated to photography. Like several of […]

Posted inVisual Art

Seeing Ursula K. Le Guin’s Many Sides

Oregon Contemporary’s tribute to the novelist and multi-practice artist gets in the weeds in the best way possible.
Avatar photo Lindsay Costello

A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin isn’t a typical exhibition. Ursula Kroeber Le Guin wasn’t a typical artist. Curated by her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, the new show installed at Oregon Contemporary is, by his definition, “nonobjective”—a sprawling love note unembarrassed by its devotion. Braiding her personal and creative worlds, the exhibition pulls together interactive […]

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