First Thursday Openings
Latin Studies
Al Taylor
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th
Opening reception 6-9 PM
“Don’t call them sculptures,” the late Al Taylor said of his wall constructions of found materials. His drawings and constructions were of a piece, one leading to the other and back again. Taylor, a New York artist whose work is here via David Zwirner, made work with materials at hand and considered shadow as a medium, according to the artist’s widow, Debbie Taylor. As these represent his first forays into three dimensions, this is a rare opportunity to see works from a pivotal point in Taylor’s career without getting on a plane.
In Touch
Judy Cooke
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th
Opening reception 6-9 PM
Portland-based artist Judy Cooke negotiates a space between painting and sculpture with her almost architectural paintings on panel.
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th
Opening reception 6-9 PM
Targets
Eva Lake
Augen Gallery
716 NW Davis
Opening reception 5-8:30 PM
Portland knows Eva Lake as an abstract painter, host of Art Focus on KBOO, arts writer, and former gallery owner. But Targets may take some people by surprise (although they are more Eva than perhaps anything else she’s done in her long arts career). Unified as a series by paper targets (which Lake originally swiped as a teenager from a police shooting range), these photomontages embody Lake’s unique and powerful feminism as an artist. They capture her nostalgic appreciation for pop feminine icons as well as her sense of art’s historical treatment of women as object (even women artists as objects). All the while Lake demonstrates, as to be expected, her deft way with color.
Recent Paintings
Terry Waldron
Augen Gallery
716 NW Davis
Opening reception 5-8:30 PM
A show of Waldron’s paintings which incorporate figure and scrawled word in compositions that suggest precarious and even tragic narrative.
Hercules
Storm Tharp
PDX Contemporary Art
925 NW Flanders
“In some regard, the drawings from Hercules reflect a desire to observe philosophy and to encounter perfection – to be enlightened. The maximal and decorated inclinations are in question. The labor and the effort are being weighed. Representation is scrutinized and the desire to explore the formlessness of abstraction is pursued. I do not intend to discount the work as intermediary, although it is fair and exciting to suggest that the work represents both a closing and an opening. The nods to Minimalism throughout are both revering as much as they suggest an end game and, ultimately, a question.”
An opening and a closing. What an interesting time, then to be seeing this show of Tharp’s uncanny portraits and minimalist abstractions. Particularly on the heels of his inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, that we are seeing him at a pivotal moment is exciting. He namechecks the Pillars of Hercules on which the hero supposedly had inscribed, “Non plus ultra,” (or “Nec plus ultra”) “there is nothing beyond.” But it seems, from what he says above, that he’s about to disregard that warning and sail through the Straits out onto the open ocean.
Romance
Brad Adkins
Across the Hall, PDX Contemporary Art
925 NW Flanders
Meanwhile, Across the Hall, Adkins Romance is a show of large scale sculpture and text-based work with a dim (if witty) view of the show’s title.
Pop Coochie
IGLOO
625 NW Everett #102
Opening reception 6-10 PM
Maybe I’m just saying we’re all corrupted in a way; life itself is corrupted, and that’s the way we like it.
- Maurizio Cattelan
With work by Sean Joseph Patrick Carney, Jason Traeger and Liam Drain, Alicia McDaid, Matthew Green, Ralph Pugay, Patrick Rock.