Appendix Project Space (in the south alley between 26th and 27th avenues off NE Alberta) welcomes it newest member, Travis Fitzgerald with an exhibition opening this Thursday, May 27 from -10 PM.

A painter, Fitzgerald has worked with “the collective identity of grouped characters and a trajectory of design through the 20th century,” and has recently turned to the third dimension.

At 8:30 PM Kristin Smallwood performs in the Hay Batch! peformance space just outside Appendix.

Meanwhile, across NE Alberta and a bit east, Little Field Gallery opens Zach Rose’s HOMETOUCH. “Through object, performance, and interaction design, Rose interrogates the myths of technological innovation and capitalist enterprise. Situated between cell phone huckster and tech startup, HOMETOUCH divorces product from service, form from function, and innovation from success.”

Joseph's Boyz: Boyz Night Out at Hay Batch! photo: Wayne Bund

everyone is an artist.
it is so simple!
we will show u the hidden texts
the new tattoo designs
teach u about uploaded barbecues, organic traffic jams, hummus delivery and mandatory parties.
extreme Gore-tex solutions , Blue Ray bandages, IPA splints
U are not invited, but encouraged to watch
A grand spiritual unraveling.

Is it fair to talk about a performance when you didn’t stay to the bitter (cold) end? Considering that the performers built a wall of hay bales between themselves and the audience, I’m going to say yes. Joseph’s Boyz: Boyz Night Out began when the Boyz (Matthew Clifford Green, Sean Joseph Patrick Carney, Michael Reinsch, Eric Gibbons) backed a Mini down the long Appendix Project Space alleyway into the new Hay Batch! performance space, an outdoor mulch-floored space surrounded on three sides by hay bales stacked shoulder high.

Joseph's Boyz: Boyz Night Out at Hay Batch! photo: Wayne Bund

When the Mini reached the back of the “stage,” the Boyz disembarked and began to move hay bales. They silently stacked the bales higher and higher until they completely walled themselves off from the audience which reminded me of Robert Rauschenberg’s contribution to a performance collaboration: building a masonry wall at the front of the stage so that as the performance went on, the audience saw less and less of it. The Boyz almost trapped a couple of audience members like the Mercury’s Matt Stangel who made it to the right side of the wall just in time.

Wall built, a trombone played a sloppy tune. A drum was played. The wall leaned. And various glow sticks and vegetables were lobbed from behind it. I retreated. The audience mostly returned the volley except for a group in front of me that seemed to be gleefully gathering ingredients for a vegetarian feast.

Joseph's Boyz: Boyz Night Out at Hay Batch! photo: Wayne Bund

Gibbons ascended the wall, held aloft a Canadian flag, and tried to set it on fire. The flag and wall added up to reference Joseph Beuys’ 1974 “I like America and America likes me” action in which he spent three days in a room with a coyote. Beuys was wrapped in felt and carried/transported from the airport to the René Block Gallery, his foot never touching American soil. Beuys explained, “I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote.” Beuys’ felt was the Boyz’ wall. But the Boyz’ wall was also a comment on the “y’all come” participatory nature of participatory art. U are not invited.

“These colors won’t burn,” Gibbons muttered, as the flame never flared but limped along. And so the provocative act—in 1974, the flag would have been Old Glory, the motivation, like that of Beuys the Vietnam War—instead took on a beautiful, lantern-like quality.

According to Appendix collective member Josh Pavlacky, I later missed, “semi-impromptu tarot.” And Stangel said something about leaving “after the wall-fall.”

Why Beuys? Why now? As artists prone to satire, I’m guessing the Boyz are addressing two current Portland art tendencies: ritual and social practice projects that both have antecedents in Beuys’ practice and teachings.

If you stayed longer than I did, what else happened? Was there a dead hare?

Kicking off the 2010 programming season, Appendix Project Space and Little Field Gallery are the best reason to head to NE Alberta’s Last Thursday, this Thursday April 29 from 6-10. This marks the “merging coordination and curation of the two spaces” plus the launch of their Hay Batch! performance space curated by Portland artist Matthew Green. Appendix is in the south alley off NE Alberta between 26th and 27th. I’m pasting in their descriptions of the shows below, but know that you’ll see an installation that looks like it’s shaping up in interesting ways plus a range of digital projects that get at a number of issues around these works from authorship to real-time collaboration with a dose of Future Death Toll retro-radness. At 8, Boyz Night Out will likely involve the assembled Joseph’s Boyz explaining pictures to a dead hare or otherwise kicking out the jams.

Nathan Dinihanian+Molly Cooney-Mesker
APPENDIX PROJECT SPACE

Nathan Dinihanian is a site-specific furniture designer and fabricator whose interests reside in the conjuntion where place and space meet. His past work includes “The Useful Parts of an Old Desk” and “Entertainment System.” Both are explorations of forced and focused utilitarianism. The recent recipient of the Individual Development Account from Mercy Corps, Nathan’s interest in site-specificity and in the physical object yields work that forces viewers to examine space, inherent tensions of function, context, use, and their own place.

Molly Cooney-Mesker’s work investigates the intersections of social and physical space and how pathways change or are determined by guidelines and social patterns.

In their installation at Appendix, Nathan Dinihanian and Molly Cooney- Mesker will be distilling the function and program of a space. They will attempt to delve into the way meaning is layered physically, socially, and materially in their surroundings.

FOR REAL!
LITTLE FIELD GALLERY

The collected computers represent work exploring viral replication, digital image curation, pixel work, and interactivity. Working with the knowledge of the internet audience’s primacy, these artists engage the viewer through networks, screens, and links. As such, their work exhibits tendencies towards rapid dissemination, recombination, the exploitation of zoom shifts, and the use of image sharing platforms. Positioning these unreal works in real positions within Little Field, For Real attempts to pull the question of the gallery’s relationship to digital work into conversation with the developing crowd of viral-curators, image dumpers, digital image makers and programmers.

New Digital Paintings
TABOR ROBAK
Tabor Robak is an Oregon native and a recent graduate of the Pacific Northwest College of Art. His digital paintings are equal parts abstract expressionism and JPEG compression. This largely formal work also explores the problematic idea of digital materialism and questions the relationship between nature and technology.

DUMP.FM
DUMP.FM is a new exciting tool for the internets; allowing pictures to be used for realtime communication and collaboration. Users can send image URLs (which display instantly in the chat), upload locally from their hard drive or post a pics right from their webcam. Every image gets stored in your DUMP.FM log, similarly, a log is kept of the entire collaboration.

THEJOGGING.TUMBLR.COM
Displayed without its maker’s permission, The Jogging is an original content blog of images and writings by artist Brad Troemel. Relishing the forfeiture of context demanded by the internet, The Jogging’s exploration of the immateriality, dispersion and presentation of digital images is part of a movement towards decentralization and ecoanarchic art production and presentation models. Here, the digital maker is less interested in the “miracle” of the making, as Troemel puts it, and more in the events, contexts, and interactions that unfold in perpetuity afterwards.

ZACHARY DAVIS
An abandoned platform plays host to aftermarket visual manipulations and 4D footprints, amid which programmed foragers attempt to play out the usual calculus of conflict.

PORTALHOLE.COM
JOSH PAVLACKY

whatsinthebearbox.com
FUTURE DEATH TOLL

HAY BATCH!

JOSEPH’S BOYZ: BOYZ NIGHT OUT
performance starts at 8
everyone is an artist.
it is so simple!
we will show u the hidden texts
the new tattoo designs
teach u about uploaded barbecues, organic traffic jams, hummus delivery and mandatory parties.
extreme Gore-tex solutions , Blue Ray bandages, IPA splints
U are not invited, but encouraged to watch
A grand spiritual unraveling.

Matthew Clifford Green / Sean Joseph Patrick Carney / Michael Reinsch / Eric Gibbons

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.

To celebrate its one-year anniversary, tonight, Thursday, July 30, Appendix Project Space (south alley between 26th and 27th on NE Alberta) presents a series of site-specific works at 6 locations between NE 18th and 27th. Maps and works can be found in the Project Space, and there will be a performance/action/?, a “a psychogeographic waggle-dance” at the space at 8 PM. I’m going to be especially on the lookout for work by Maggie Casey who has in past done elegant installations with fiber, Josh Pavlacky, whose “Ark” at Tractor (see photos at OPENWIDEpdx) was really intriguing, and Matt Green because I want to see where he takes his man-ly art next.