Avantika Bawa. yesterday, Yellow. installation view.

Funny how caution tape, and the smiley face share that same bright, sunny yellow. It’s a hot rod color, a daisy color, and the color of French’s mustard. And in yesterday. Yellow, Avantika Bawa’s installation at Milepost 5 where she is currently artist in residence, every element in the piece is awash in the hue. Bawa deftly uses yellow to displace the found objects she assembled for the piece from the NE 82nd neighborhood surrounding Milepost 5. These materials are those for building, carrying, or storing; not consumer goods but objects that are meant to be used to do something else. Here, most wait in a glorified state of the same purgatory from which Bawa plucked them: concrete blocks are lined up on the floor, low crates are stacked just a bit haphazardly, boards and wood scraps are piled on the floor, lean against the window, or trace a corner. The unity of their hue, the visual rhythm of their repetition and line (it’s interesting to consider their edges as a drawing in the space), their orderly disorder or slightly disordered order makes of the static objects a dynamic whole.

Avantika Bawa. yesterday, Yellow. installation view.

Minimalism’s tactics including Andre’s use of the floor, McCracken’s leaning planks, and the widespread use of seriality are reinvigorated in the project of casting a critical eye on the life (and death and rebirth) of the manufactured good and what it says about where we are and where we’re going…something that Bawa here casts in a hopeful light, a bright yellow one, not least because in the opposite corner of the space, tucked into the corner, it appears that building anew has begun.

Avantika Bawa. yesterday, Yellow. installation view.

This week, Fourteen30 Contemporary (1430 SE 3rd Avenue) opens Self Expression, a show of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Sayre Gomez.

There’s a reception, this Friday, March 19, 6–9 PM and the show’s open through May 1.

“Sayre Gomez creates installations, drawings, and collages that address the most basic formal instincts of art making, born from a practice in which process/form and content are equally important. Gomez had his most recent solo exhibition (2nd Cannons, Los Angeles) in 2009. And Self Expression will also act as the title of the artist’s forthcoming exhibition at Kavi Kupta Gallery in Berlin.”

Toshiko Okanoue, Noon Song, 1954. Photolithographic collage.

Photocollage rising…witness Jonah Freeman’s oversized, intricately cut wonders at Reed during Reed Arts Week, Josh Pavlacky’s contained, manipulated/layered landscapes at Igloo, and Eva Lake’s upcoming show at Augen. We haven’t seen this much photocollage since Reed College’s Cooley Gallery hosted a Jess retrospective in 2008. Opening today at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art (134 NW 8th Avenue) is Drop of Dreams, a show of original surrealist photolithographic collages from the early 1950s by the Japanese artist, Toshiko Okanoue.

From the gallery:

“Okanoue’s collages, created when she was in her mid-20s in post-war Japan, were constructed largely from American picture magazines such as Life and Vogue. Mining these rich visual sources of American popular culture, Okanoue’s beautiful surrealist imagery expresses the dreams of a young female artist in Japan standing at the crossroads of events and movements of enormous historic significance.

“Her work was widely shown and published at the time, and since being rediscovered in the late 1990s, Okanoue’s collages have been exhibited and collected widely by major museums in both Japan and the United States. There are very few examples left in private hands, this exhibition presents some excellent pieces that have until recently been retained by the artist.”

There will be an opening reception on First Thursday, April 1, 5:30—8:30 PM.

In November of 1974, in a space a couple floors above where Backspace is today in Old Town, a crew of volunteers built a plywood installation, a Donald Judd, from a drawing by the artist. Paul Sutinen, Co-Chair of the Art Department and Director of Arts Programs at Marylhurst University, vividly remembers crawling around in the u-shaped box that hugged three walls of what was then the Portland Center for the Visual Arts’ (PCVA) expansive space, screwing the sheets of plywood together from the inside.

It was just one of the important installations and exhibitions that PCVA staged in the 70s and 80s. Carl Andre, Sol Lewitt, Daniel Buren, Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Alice Aycock, Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman, James Turrell, Frank Stella, and Vito Acconci all came to town. Lucy Lippard curated a NW survey show. Allan Kaprow did “Routine” here. The audience for Chuck Close was SRO. And that’s not to mention dance by choreographers like Yvonne Rainer.

On Sunday, April 25, 2010, Portland’s arts community has another opportunity to consider the Donald Judd installation and the larger issues it raises about Judd’s work and its fabrication at Donald Judd: Delegated Fabrication, a one-day conference with Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art and longtime Judd fabricator Peter Ballantine at the University of Oregon in Portland, White Stag Block (70 NW Couch Street).

An exhibition of original documents—invoices, drawings, correspondence, all from Ballantine’s private collection—trace how Judd’s work went from sketch to fabrication. In a second black box, there will be films about Judd.

I talked to Conference Director and Portland-based artist/writer Arcy Douglass, who organized the conference with Peter Ballantine.

What was the initial impetus for the conference?

When writing about Judd’s installation at Portland Center for the Visual Arts for a piece called Looking at Donald Judd, I got to thinking about how no one had really talked about how Judd’s work got made. To me, as an ex-architect, it seems like a fundamental question: how does it go from Judd’s initial idea to finished piece? The Judd Foundation put me in touch with Peter Ballantine, Judd’s fabricator for over 25 years. I met with him in New York to interview him. After two days and eight hours of conversation, Ballantine said, “This is not an interview, it’s a conference.”

There are two fundamental issues. One, the piece in Portland was fantastic, an example of all PCVA was doing so well. And two, considering Judd is a very famous American artist, no one is talking about some of the core issues at center of his work.

I know there were other Judd plywood installations, Portland wasn’t the first was it? Was the first in Germany?

Germany was later. The first were in London at the Lisson Gallery, I believe in January 1974. PCVA was the third piece.

Peter feels like built-in plywood pieces are really some of Judd’s most radical work. He’ll talk about the family of plywood works, how it fits in with rest of Judd’s work.

What is Robert Storr going to be talking about?

Robert will talk about why this is all still important in a contemporary context. And Bruce Guenther [Chief Curator at the Portland Art Museum] will give an introduction to Judd’s work, to PCVA and the installation at PCVA.

[I tell him about talking to Sutinen.] I don’t remember Paul talking about Ballantine being here for the install. I know Judd wasn’t.

No, and Mary [Beebe, director of PCVA] had to scramble to get money to pay for it. She couldn’t raise money to pay for plywood. Finally, she negotiated with Stimson Lumber to borrow plywood. Afterward, they returned it and Stimson sold it as, “slightly used.”

Peter says whenever he talks about the conference he gets two questions.
1. why hasn’t this been done before? and
2. why isn’t this happening in New York?

***

Follow Arcy’s blog about the conference at juddconference.posterous.com. Already he has put together a Judd reading list. Registration is $65 for early registration by March 22, $85 after and $35 for students.

image via: juddfoundation.org

Justin Gorman interviews artist Patrick Kelly (above) about the large graphite drawings he calls “Carbon Traces” on PAPERMAKESTACK, Gorman’s recently overhauled (and beautiful) website, which also serves as Gorman’s portfolio site. Kelly’s work will be featured in “Drawing the Slight Uneasy,” the April group show at Worksound curated by MK Guth. Who else is in the show? According to Gorman: Bill Adams, Nicolaii Dornstauder, Patrick Kelly, Tania Cross, Michael Lee, Nicole Eriko Smith, Lynn Yarn, Frank Parrga.

The latest beautiful issue of Work for Free, edited by Aidan Koch and Paul Wagenblast is Issue Six: Sensation. Scriabin’s synesthesia as jumping off point for issue? Yes.

Tanner Dobson has started a blog. Tanner Dobson’s brain to mouth filters are set alarmingly low. Tanner Dobson is smart, funny, and obnoxious. Tanner Dobson, brought to you by artist Sean Joseph Patrick Carney (they look so much alike, it’s uncanny), reviews Radiohole’s “Whatever, Heaven Allows” at PS 122. He concludes, “Experimental theater is for stoners. On a scale of Gary, Indiana to Portland, Oregon, I’d give ‘Whatever, Heaven Allows’ a Boise, Idaho.”

A little interview with Audio Dregs’ E*Rock by Hiram Lucke on Circle Into Square.

Plus this piece from the NYTimes on the hot topic of performance art and the museum.

Here we go. Portland2010, a biennial exhibition of contemporary art curated by Cris Moss and organized by Disjecta kicks off this weekend with a double hit: new exhibitions with a powerhouse group of artists opening at Disjecta and Rocksbox Fine Art. Portland2010 is really a series of exhibitions in several Portland venues rather than a single venue/multiple artists. Eighteen artists were chosen from a field of 300 and shows will happen at venues ranging from established galleries like Elizabeth Leach to the Left Bank to the Templeton Building (hell, yes, bring back the Templeton Building!). All kicks off tonight, 6-10 PM at Disjecta and Rocksbox.

What I’m most interested in for this first round of openings is to see Are You Ready for the Country? by Springfield, OR’s Ditch Projects at Rocksbox Fine Art (6540 N Interstate). This artist collective runs a space in Springfield where they’ve been putting up what look like really strong shows for some time. And I’ve never been able to get down there. So I’m glad the mountain comes to Moses. I’ve seen great work by a number of Ditch members like Mike Bray (at Fourteen30) and Donald Morgan at the Hoffman Gallery at OCAC. The current members of Ditch Projects are: Julie Berkbuegler-Poremba, Mike Bray, Jared Davis-Haug, Damon Harris, Tim Meyer, Donald Morgan, Dave Siebert, Robert Smith, and Jesse Sugarman.

There exists a separation between the rural and the urban, a relationship of margin and center in which the urban assumes the position of primary focus. Are You Ready for the Country rejects this relationship, offering in its place an extraction of the phantom presence of the rural from within the facade of the urban. Finding inspiration in the apocalypse of vacancy that marks urban failure, Are You Ready for the Country identifies and celebrates the urban center’s sudden and full submission to the rural margin. Refusing the iconography of idealized naturalism, the members of Ditch Projects opt, instead, to frame rurality as the physical lack of constant urbanity. This expanded arcadia offers an alternate interpretation of provinciality, an opportunity for country objects and backwoods instances to be birthed from the crises of urban decay. Are You Ready for the Country displays the trappings of this neo-rurality, creating a buck hunter’s trophy wall of crude plaza monuments and high-tech folk art.

Bring it.

And at Disjecta (8371 N Interstate), Bruce Conkle & Marne Lucas further explore their trademarked(!) Eco-Baroque concept they’ve worked with before at The Art Gym and at PSU. The artists’ statement:

‘Eco-Baroque’ is a maximalist aesthetic approach and style based on natural forms in which magnificent opulence is created using ornate or decorative materials, and mixing in simple natural materials when possible or practical. Exploring this concept, the aim is to inform and amuse while questioning our consumption of energy, (tanning beds, grow lights, and by extension – nuclear fusion), resources, and humanity’s ever-changing relationship to the environment, drawing analogies between complex beauty as found in nature and the luxury goods with which mankind seeks in order to try and separate himself from the animals.

We draw inspiration from moss, lichen, crystals, minerals, honeycomb, coconuts, Native American culture, reflections, gold leaf, fountains, dioramas, chandeliers, most shiny things and psychedelic patterns found abundantly in nature. Our collaborative process is very spontaneous and allows us to push the boundaries of each of our individual oeuvres, often to absurd dimensions. We share a similar sense of humor, political, social and eco-based attitudes about the world and making art. Individually, we have produced work that explores Pacific Northwest regionalism with both humor and reverence for the place where we have been raised and live.

Also at Disjecta (8371 N Interstate), we’ll see work by David Corbett (who recently had work in The Quadratic Logogram of Almost Everything show at Half/Dozen, Sean Healy, who most recently did a project with Joe Thurston at Gallery HOMELAND’s EAST/WEST Berlin, Crystal Schenk & Shelby Davis who I think are reinstalling West Coast Turnaround, their installation from Milepost 5, and dancer and choreographer Tahni Holt whose “Culture Machine (In Progress)” performance will be developed and performed over the course of Portland2010 (more on that shortly).

Ongoing are two exhibitions of work by PORTLAND2010 artist Melody Owen, Letters from Switzerland through March 27 at Elizabeth Leach Gallery (417 NW 9th) and So Close to the Glass and Shivering through April 9 at The Art Gym at Marylhurst University (BP John Administration Building, 17600 Pacific Highway).

Still to come: work by
Holly Andres
Corey Arnold
Pat Boas
John Brodie
David Eckard
Damien Gilley
Oregon Painting Society
Melody Owen
Jenene Nagy
Heidi Schwegler
Stephen Slappe
Kartz Ucci

The next in the Alembic series at Performance Works NorthWest (4625 NE 67th), over_here: now, choreographed & directed by Richard Decker opens tonight with performances tonight and tomorrow night March 12 and 13 at 8 PM. Decker collaborated on this interactive performance with photographer Chelsea Petrakis and lighting designer Dora Nicole Gaskill. According to the release, Decker “sculpts a transformative, ritual space with latex tubing and intense physicality, blurring the lines between dance and installation art. With philosophical and spiritual questions in mind, over_here: now utilizes lighting, still image and video technology to explore the connection between performer and audience, humans and their environment.”

I’m looking foward to this. For her new installation, yesterday. Yellow, at Milepost 5 (900 NE 81st), current artist-in-residence Avantika Bawa uses “fragmented debris from foreclosed properties, abandoned spaces and close out sales” to “construct a landscape where the commonplace is glorified,” reinventing “the mundane, the forgotten, and the foreclosed.” The exhibition opens this evening, Friday, March 12 with a reception from 6-9 PM.

We’ve seen Bawa’s spare, architectural installations in Portland at Tilt Gallery and Project Space and recently as part of the Vantage show at Clark College, dealing with in part, as she puts it, “my relationship to the legacy of Minimalism and its emphasis on reductive form, modularity and literal scale.”

And artist and curator, Avantika Bawa is based in Atlanta, Georgia and New Delhi, India. She has an
MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1998) and a BFA in the same from the
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India (1995) and has shown internationally with solo shows at Saltworks gallery, the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi, India, and in Mumbai at Gallery Maskara this past November.

Solid gold, baby. Appendix Project Space celebrates one year of exhibitions in their alt space in a NE Alberta alley tomorrow night, Friday, March 12 from 7-12 PM. But Ben Young, Josh Pavlacky, Maggie Casey, and Zack Davis aren’t just looking backward, they’re looking forward with an eye to raising funds for upgrades to the space plus a new outdoor performance space. There will be a silent auction (7-8 PM) and raffle (9:15) of art donated by more than 25 artists (bring cash!) including:

Justin Bland, Julia Calabrese, Jill Campoli, Calvin Ross Carl, Maggie Casey, Zachary Davis, Future Death Toll, Michael DiMotta, Derek Franklin, Damien Gilley, Mariana Gordon, Josh Hulst, Jamen Lee, Chelsea Linehan, Jennifer Mercede, Nathaniel Thayer Moss, Dina No, Joshua Pavlacky, Ashley Sloan, Christine Taylor, Jill Torberson, Anni Tracy, Daniel Wallace, Gary Wiseman, Benjamin Young

Appendix is located down the South Alley between 26th and 27th off Alberta Street in NE Portland

This post has been updated.

The way I understand this, we’re going to vote on giving an artist or a curator a show at Disjecta at the next Art Spark which is going to be held at Disjecta (8371 N Interstate) on March 18 from 5-7 PM. Anyone can show up no later than 5 PM with a one page synopsis of a project + a page of images (two pages max). I’m fuzzy on the mechanics, but somehow, “The Art Spark audience will review proposals at the event and award one artist the opportunity to show at Disjecta. The three finalists will make a direct appeal to the audience.”

Sponsored by RACC, Art Spark is a monthly happy hour gathering of Portland’s arts community that each month features a presenter who does a quick little something at around 6. This is the most insane little something any presenter has done so far. Usually it’s a slide show or talk or something. Of course we’re also celebrating Portland2010, but the awesome of that is going to pale momentarily in comparison to this horse race. Or not. I guess it all depends on who shows up to the party, eh?

Oh, and I’m kind of dying to know who penned this final from the Art Spark website: “Don’t be shy; every time is a practice of rife greatness, come on give it a try, stop by!”

All artists must attend the Art Spark event and be ready to present their project to the audience if chosen. This one-time only event offers artists a direct route to obtaining an exhibition at Disjecta. Don’t miss it! Individual artists or curated group shows encouraged to apply. Work in all media accepted.