YOU MAY CALL TBA avant garde or outré, or really almost anything in French… but you can’t call it accessible. The guidebook claims a bunch of visual art exhibits are open daily from noon-6:30 pm at Northwest Portland’s Con-Way warehouse, this year’s location for TBA’s late-night program the Works—but it lies. Two exhibits (Lucy Raven’s Room Tone and Andrew Ritchey’s The Secret Society) stand unmanned ’til later in the evening, while one and a half are viewable. When I confess expecting more stuff onsite, my volunteer guide says, “Me too.”
Alex Mackin Dolan’s Puzzles as Sculpture seems to be about travel, use of time, and the rigors of self-preservation (specifically, hydration). There’s a floor-mounted close-up of a hotel nightstand; wall-mounted pictures of crowds and a tour guide; screen-printed tablecloths of shoeprints and suns. Empty water glasses are etched with scribbles, pictures of the sun, and chirpy reminders to drink three liters by the time the sun sets (though one glass inexplicably reads, “peace walk january”). Chinese checkers games set up on a table, hourglasses in place of pieces, suggest that time is the real element at play. An unzipped backpack spills a blank notebook with a “return 2” phone number on the front—which I dial, getting a Spanish voicemail box in Dolan’s name. A dormant Wii console and computer feel like a trap, so I leave them untouched.
Jamie Isenstein’s Infinite Disco Soft-Shoe is a black-and-white film loop of a synchro-dancing duo—a person and a life-sized puppet—in top hats and workout pants, jerking a cane to the right and jutting a hip to the left over and over forever to a lounge piano version of “Staying Alive.” The TV plays on the floor in the dark, Poltergeist-style. The rest of TBA’s visual arts are scattered across the Portland metro universe from Reed to Albina like so much post-bang stardust.
At PNCA’s Feldman Gallery, A.L. Steiner’s Feelings and How to Destroy Them sledgehammers a political premise, “the patriarchy is a pyramid scheme,” then meanders to a subversive sexual solution: ritual masturbation and lesbian fistfucking on the big screen. “We don’t need them,” it seems to say, “and here’s how.” Innocent interludes along this road-less-traveled are “Color Location Ultimate Experience,” an outdoor pas de deux clad in each color of the rainbow; and a montage of actor audition tapes for James Dean’s role in Rebel without a Cause.
PICA’s home base paradoxically offers the least TBA visual arts action, and their broken elevator means climbing three flights of stairs. Anna Craycroft’s space is less an exhibition than a collection of evidence that a summer lecture series transpired. What it looks like is children’s artwork: naive shapes and nonsense words drawn in crayon and marker on large newsprint, clipped up on the wall, classroom style. Kids, I appreciate that you name-checked 2 Live Crew and can correctly spell “trampoline,” but your handwriting needs improvement. Wait, you’re not kids? I’m confused. I guess, like the rest of TBA, you had to be there.
A few things.
Lucy Raven and Rebecca Gates installation / performance Room Tone: Variation is open all day, and most active at 1pm and 10:30 pm during the performances, these are clearly listed at the entry of the gallery and on all of the exhibition’s printed ephemera located the check in desk at Conway, and they are current on our web site – unfortunately we had not set performance times at the time of printing the TBA guide something that often happens because we have to send initial marketing publications to print so much in advance of the new and commissioned works making.
Andrew Ritchey’s Secret Society is open and “closed” at the artists discretion it is aptly named Secret Society… even when the room is closed there is something on display. You only need to look at the door. A sculpture of sorts hangs there, minimal but still present, still something to regard and consider, still art. Post-Festival Ritchey will host four different film screenings over five days of rare 16mm films made by Chick Strand, George Kuchar and others… all of info is on our website and on material available at the Conway venue, and is also on the sign in front of Ritchey’s gallery.
The abstract strategy games presented as sculptures in Alex Dolan’s exhibition are called TAMSK, they are not Chinese Checkers. The exhibition title is Cycle, Sun, Limit which is printed at the entrance of his gallery. “Puzzles as sculpture” is a paragraph intro in our marketing copy from the TBA Guide and was never put forward as his exhibition title.
Craycroft’s exhibition was the result of a summer long series of workshops. These workshops were also a result of the exhibition and were performative, generative works of art in and of themselves. Many of the artworks WERE made by children. You are right. You had to be there. Many of the artists on the festival, in the Visual Art and Performance program are asserting that the lecture, that the workshop or that the conversation can be or should be considered art works (or working art). These things are happening in the moment and indeed ephemeral , but, they are absolutely legit. I choose to listen to artists definition of what an artwork is. It is their form, they can shape it, they should name it. This is one of the core tenants of the group of Visual Art projects included in this years festival. The projects happen or don’t happen in many locations across the city and on the world wide web. Not one location is more important than the others. Not one form is more important than another. Visual Art “action” is not what I am after this year, it is not about spectacle. The work is quiet and deliberate. There may not be a show – there may only be showing up. I thank you whole heartedly for showing up !
I don’t think I would ever use the word accessible, something which you point out a word that makes me cringe and recoil. Accessible roads sure, accessible art, NO THANK YOU. I don’t believe art or this art is for everyone. It takes some work, it is about reciprocity, engagement, inquiry, workshop as exhibition, experiment as result, it is about moving around the city, it is about seeking out information and community. Sometimes this is obscure and challenging, sometimes it is totally inclusive and embracing. Sometimes it involves climbing the stairs.
– Kristan Kennedy, Visual Art Curator, PICA