Until this summer, the only work we’d seen in person (and loved) of Hap Tivey’s was that at Elizabeth Leach Gallery (417 NW 9th); in his exhibition there and his installation on the outer wall of the gallery, his work was color field painting executed with light (LED, canvas, acrylic). It’s rich, luminous color that makes us consider why art has been so fixated on paint on canvas (painting is dead, not dead, dying, lives) as a means of addressing color when light is so compelling. Light is pure, but is interestingly also a gateway drug to abstract video work which can also be so fresh and seductive.
Tivey’s Portland coup de grace this past summer, coincident with but separate from PICA’s TBA Festival, was the installation Building/White Eclipse. It was, in addition to being the most beautiful and immersive visual art experience we had in 2007, and in addition to being one of the most critically lauded visual art events of the year, our introduction to the approximately 40 years of work in installation as well as wall-based work that Tivey has generated since the 60s and early 70s. Of the two dark rooms of Building/White Eclipse, the first was the most riveting, with a single giant spotlight shooting through the darkness overhead, through just-right-sized holes in black scrims and made visible with drifting smoke from machines that generated the only sound in the empty space.
We owe Leach a big thank you for bringing Tivey’s work to Portland, and especially for making Eclipse possible. You’d otherwise have to travel to the Museum of Modern Art, the Menil collection, the Guggenheim, or Bilbao. See the new show, Sands of the Ganges, at Elizabeth Leach through the month of January with a reception tomorrow night for First Thursday.
WHAT TO DO NOW?