POV Dance is going to dance the Ford Building (2505 SE 11th), its stairwells, walls, windows, and rails. What’s the Ford Building you say? You know it as home of Gallery HOMELAND.
Mandy Christiansen, Noel Plemmons have choreographed an evening-length work called “The Ford Building Project” in which their nine dancers will move from one end of the building’s ground floor to another, making a moving landscape of architecture, bodies, light and sound. $15 at brownpapertickets.com
Note: The performance runs approximately 65 minutes with no intermission. Seating is extremely limited and options include sitting or kneeling on the ground, with the option of standing. All performances are ADA compliant.
POSTED: March 10th, 2010 | AUTHOR: admin | FILED UNDER: dance | TAGS: ford building, gallery homeland, mandy christiansen, noel plemons, pov dance | No Comments »
Five minus one baby coffins smoking and a naked man with a saw. He used the ryōba (a Japanese double-sided saw) a screwdriver, and a hacksaw blade to take apart the sixth coffin. When I arrived, Lucas Murgida was bent over one of the coffin sides, arduously sawing off its molding. The parts of the disassembled coffin were neatly arrayed around him: a row of screws, the bottom, the top, neatly aligned.
In a four-hour performance yesterday at Autzen Gallery at PSU, Los Angeles artist Murgida disrobed, lit the sage smudges in the coffins with a blow torch, and began to disassemble one of the coffins. According to Gary Wiseman who was there longer than I was, Murgida kept relighting the smudges when the curls of smoke coming from the coffins died away.
The title of his exhibition will be perfectly creepy for those who see the coffins in the artist’s absence. But for those who saw the performance, GRIP, GRASP, GROPE, AND FONDLE, clearly refers to the artist working with the wood in the absence of a workbench and clamps, for example trying to brace the wood between his feet and calves while he bent over it with a saw, or jamming a screwdriver between two loosened pieces to pry them apart.
The installation was beautifully lit with the blond wood coffins against the concrete floor, Murgida’s skin, a tone not far from that of the wood. The curls of smoke (though nearly asphyxiating) were disturbing and poetic at the same time. And when Murgida took a break from sawing, one could hear the coffins emitting tiny clicking sounds.
Could unbuilding the coffin bring its tiny contents back to life? Is this a protest against the necessity to build such small coffins in the first place. Is the artist naked because never are we more metaphorically naked than when we deal head-on with death? Am I being to literal? What of the smoke? Ashes to ashes? One thinks of the comfort of work, especially physical labor, in the face of trauma. I know that Murgida makes art related to his employment, and I know that he’s done cabinetry, so it’s no surprise the coffins were cunningly crafted. The ideas embedded in the installation, while less linear, seem equally so.
GRIP, GRASP, GROPE, AND FONDLE
Lucas Murgida
Autzen Gallery
2nd Floor PSU Neuberger Hall, Room 205, 724 SW Harrison
POSTED: March 5th, 2010 | AUTHOR: admin | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: autzen gallery, lucas murgida | No Comments »
GRIP, GRASP, GROPE, AND FONDLE
Lucas Murgida
Autzen Gallery
2nd Floor PSU Neuberger Hall, Room 205, 724 SW Harrison
SF artist Murgida makes work through (and addressing) his work … conducting “research” while employed as cabinetmaking, restaurant work, locksmithing, and now yoga instruction. Artist talk/performance at opening.
Wrecking Crüe
IGLOO
625 NW Everett #102
Titled cute, this is a group show of work by Jordan Tull, Josh Smith, Salvatore Reda, Joshua Pavlacky, and Jeff Jahn (like the j-alliteration…should Salvatore change his first name?). Bullet points from the quite poetic statement:
- constructed space
- structural invention
- half-made/half-undone
- hypershapes
- blueprints and Outer Space
- rendering philosophical material from impulsive architecture
3X_PWN_TRANZ
Future Death Toll
Tractor
328 NW Broadway
sometimes when you pick up the pwn, you don’t know who is on the other line.
sometimes when you pick up the pwn, you do all the talking.
sometimes when you pick up the pwn, the pwn does all the talking for you.
I’m into the idea of “evidence of a past or future mission to transmit” as well as the machines of communication.
Grassland Alphabet
Seth Nehil
In House Gallery
625 NE Everett St. #106
“…calligraphic exercises – letter-forms constructed from waves and clusters of marks. I imagined a field of wheat attempting to form itself into words, a mute landscape swelling in the wind, blades of grass arranging and aligning themselves.”
Constrain to Vertical
Brenda Mallory
DOPPLER PDX
625 NW Everett Street #109
Fabric wall pieces inspired by stacks of UPS “end-of-day” barcodes + Agnes Martin.
Also
Clouds
Lucinda Parker
Laura Russo
805 NW 21st
O.G. Ab-Ex powerhouse and longtime arts educator Parker with a show of new paintings. Parker gives a talk Saturday, March 27, at 11 AM.
Letters from Switzerland
Melody Owen
Elizabeth Leach
417 NW 9th
“For Letters from Switzerland, using the tools and media of the Swiss-originated Dadaists, Owen created a precise and strange group of collages, examining feelings of dislocation and disconnection. Featuring bisected animals spilling flowers from their guts, and hotels sprouting roots that can’t find purchase, these works allude to the deracinated experience of the contemporary traveler.”
Marker
Marie Watt
PDX Contemporary Art
925 NW Flanders
Show of new work by Watt including “Trunk,” this incredible, sinuous cedar sculpture.
Laurie Danial
Froelick Gallery
714 NW Davis
Abstract paintings by Danial that feature tracings, structures, transparencies, the built and the organic.
POSTED: March 4th, 2010 | AUTHOR: admin | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: art, autzen, brenda mallory, doppler pdx, elizabeth leach gallery, first thursday, froelick gallery, future death toll, igloo, jeff jahn, jordan tull, josh pavlacky, josh smith, laurie danial, lucas murgida, lucinda parker, marie watt, melody owen, pdx contemporary art, portland, salvatore reda, seth nehil, tractor | 1 Comment »
Portland-based choreographer Linda Austin is the final artist to perform “The Metaphysics of Notation” today at noon at Portland Center Stage on the Mezzanine, Gerding Theater at the Armory.
Performance series “The Metaphysics of Notation” finds abstract notation interpreted through a kaleidoscope of methods: theater, movement, music, and sound poem. Third Angle and Portland Center Stage have invited a number of artists from different disciplines to interpret “The Metaphysics of Notation,” an epic, 72-foot graphic score by Mark Applebaum currently installed on the mezzanine at the Gerding Theater at the Armory.
The series is in anticipation of Third Angle’s concert “Chance/Perchance: A Musical Happening,” on Friday, March 5 — featuring work by David Schiff, Terry Riley and Mark Applebaum — at the Hollywood Theatre.
POSTED: February 26th, 2010 | AUTHOR: admin | FILED UNDER: dance | TAGS: dance, linda austin, metaphysics of notation | No Comments »
POSTED: January 30th, 2010 | AUTHOR: admin | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: in-between | No Comments »