Brad Cloepfil’s Drawing Making at PDX Contemporary

NFS.

None of the work in Brad Cloepfil’s Drawing | Making Projects of Allied Works Architecture, 1997 – 2007 exhibition at PDX Contemporary Art (925 NW Flanders, Portland) is for sale. At glance one, the show is a window into the creative process of one of Portland’s most exciting architectural exports: quiet, poetic drawings on paper like shadows of their future brick-and-stick selves; mad drawings, messy, hurried…ideas coming out faster almost than the hand can capture; conceptual and rigorous bits like the one maquette that looks like it came from the studio of Sol Lewitt. One could imagine that these are the secret breakthroughs, the implausible brainstorms, the overthinkings, and the wild, late-night inspirations. And they’re beautiful.

There is more going on here, a story of ambition for both firm and city, as Cloepfil and Allied lead the charge of Portland talent to capture major projects elsewhere (and subtly here, require recognition for doing so), and a story of the intertwinings of the Portland worlds of art, design, and commerce in the very best ways. Cloepfil’s first gallery project was the original PDX Contemporary Art gallery in its former location on NW 12th and Allied also designed the current space. So it’s here that the retrospective (is this a PDX first for an architect?) takes place. The room for the reception last night was filled with folks from Wieden + Kennedy (from John Jay to artist Grace Luebke) because of course Allied Works did the acclaimed W + K building, from PICA (housed in the W + K building designed by Allied) like Luisa Adrianzen Guyer and Philip Iosca, and artists like Brad Adkins (a PDX Contemporary artist), Nat Andreini of Sincerely, John Head which will do a piece for the 2007 TBA Fest at PICA (housed in the…designed by…does this start to sound like the house that Jack built?). Also on hand were Stephanie Snyder of the Cooley Gallery at Reed College, David Cohen of the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Randy Gragg, formerly architecture critic for the Oregonian and a couple hundred others besides. That kind of gathering is Portland at its best with a broad swath of those who make Portland the kind of place we want to live in engaged in cross-disciplinary conversation surrounding art and architecture. Yum.

The exhibit features drawings of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Seattle Art Museum, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts & Design in New York, and the Wieden + Kennedy Building. Go see.

POSTED: June 7th, 2007 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: art | No Comments »

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