Portland2010 is ON

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

You Too Can Have a Show at Disjecta

Disjecta is giving it away. When I first read this, I kind of couldn’t believe it.

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.

Review: Jenene Nagy’s Tidal

Liquid Mercury
We called it “mercury sea:” the Pacific on a windless evening in a thin fog just after sunset when the glassy surface of the Monterey Bay reflected the orange-tinged grey of the sky.

A Shattered Polyhedron, A Wave, A Horizon Line
As as if a giant pink polyhedron had been cast into the corner of Disjecta, Jenene Nagy’s “Tidal” is a massive installation of hot pink irregular polygons and jagged shards cast across the floor, splashed onto two walls, and shattering on the rafters and trusses of the soaring space.

Unlike earlier installations, including “s/plit” at the Portland Art Museum, where flat monochrome fields are both painted on the walls and extend out from them on panels, “Tidal” hugs but maintains a distance from floor and wall. It tangles but does not merge with the rafters above.

The installation is lit only by a horizontal strip of florescent tubes a few feet off the floor that run the perimeter of the l-shaped space. It was not until my second visit to “Tidal” that I perceived the magic that the horizon line of florescents worked, making mercury sea of the panels propped on the floor and brushing exquisite gradients on the vertical panels. If my first impression was that the panels pushing and pulling with the wooden rafters in the shadows were lost without further illumination, my second was that the lighting strategy both further complicated the relationship of installation to architecture overhead and toyed with my perceptions of a single hue.

Real, Hyperreal, Un-
But Nagy’s always thinking about how we perceive and/or remember color, hence her use of intense, hyperreal hues. She’s dealing with space—Nagy’s recent installations are both big enough to envelop the viewer and nimble enough to create a sense of movement with static parts. She is, in fact, creating stage sets—referencing natural world with forms that evoke wave here, or flock as in “s/plit” at PAM, or with titles like “Meadow”—built of drywall and exposed 2×4s.

As set, “Tidal” signals that we are to suspend disbelief, be willing to meet this fractured hot pink wave somewhere between reality and artifice. Unlike strictly representational art (say a pastoral scene painted in oils and surrounded by a massive gold frame) Nagy’s work is resolutely honest about its fakeness.

If Nagy’s work employs reductive methods borrowed from minimalism (while addressing space and perception as did light and space artists), the  blue-collar 2×4 supports of her installation point away from the thing itself to that for which it is a stand-in, reinvigorating the reductive with possibility…the possibility of viewer-supplied narrative or memory…not unlike that of a mercury sea.

Jenene Nagy Artist Talk + Happy Hour

Disjecta is doing a happy hour every Friday from 5-8 PM with artist Jenene Nagy whose epic installation, Tidal, is currently on view. Friday night, February 19 at 7 PM, “Nagy will present a talk on her work in the form of a Q+A led by fellow artist Avantika Bawa. The conversation will range from practice in general, site-specific and project-based works, Tidal in particular and how it came to be, and the influence of curatorial practice on artmaking.”

Rumpus Room’s RESA

Tonight is the premiere of the new dance work by Portland dance company, Rumpus Room at Disjecta (8371 N Interstate) at 7 and 9 PM. Rumpus Room directors Stephan Laks and Rachel Tess explore the theme of tension and transition in Portland’s evolving urban neighborhoods in RESA. If you haven’t seen this eminently watchable and inventive pair—here joined by four additional dancers—don’t miss this. The evening-length work, springing from a month-long residency at Disjecta, is a series of mise en scene through which the audience literally journeys. For all show dates and times and to reserve tickets, see the website. $16