CALENDAR » Visual Arts Listings

Visual Arts Listings

For the week of Wednesday May 14th thru Tuesday May 20th

BY RICHARD SPEER.

To be considered for listings, send information at least two weeks in advance to:

Jump to: NW GALLERIES, SW GALLERIES, NORTH PDX GALLERIES, NE GALLERIES, SE GALLERIES

NW GALLERIES

AUGEN (DESOTO BLDG)

Sharon Bronzan's works, works from the estate of Elly Guerin.
Sharon Bronzan paints faces and dresses in a mannered, neo-Mannerist style. Implacable and iconic, the faces stare out at the viewer, giving nothing up, letting no one in. In Canopy, the female subject sports an elaborate centerpiece in her hair: birds and flowers and leaves—a banana bunch short of Carmen Miranda—yet she refuses to smile, smirk or even raise an eyebrow. She is the Mona Lisa on Botox. Bronzan’s empty dresses float midair, some of them with hearts and branching veins beneath their bodices, perhaps as an over-obvious nod to Frida Kahlo. 716 NW Davis St., 224-8182. Closes May 27. Map

BEET GALLERY

Reed Clarke's works.
1720 NW Lovejoy St., #120., 224-5000. Closes June 3. Map

BLACKFISH GALLERY

Linda Ater's paintings, Palmarin Merges' prints, Priscilla Carrasco's photos.
420 NW 9th Ave., 234-2634. Closes May 31. Map

BULLSEYE GALLERY

Jane Bruce's formalist glass works.
New York artist Jane Bruce’s Contained Abstraction tackles ideas of art vs. nature with glass—using the vessel as her point of departure. Bruce is not interested in the vessel; she is interested in the idea of a vessel, and so in piece after piece, she starts with jaunty, graphic outlines of a vase, flask and bowl, then switches into meta mode, flattening the timeless forms into thin rhomboid planes that appear 2D from most angles. With their primary colors, the works exude a Platonic formalism tempered only by the skewed, cartoonish outlines of the über-vessels themselves. Side by side, one atop the other, or separated by handlelike dividers, these glass “houses” are anything but cozy. 300 NW 13th Ave., 227-0222., 227-0222. Closes May 17. Map

BUTTERS

Dorothy Goode's works, Ted Katz's works.
Ted Katz’s acrylic paintings walk the line between abstraction and representation. Summer Stirrings offers an astringent take on the time-worn landscape medium. Fly, Blue evokes a plume of sulphury smoke coming out of Yellowstone-like volcanic pools, with oblique reference to Adolph Gottlieb’s Burst series. Also at Butters, Dorothy Goode’s gestural abstractions delight in color and freedom, particularly in a lyrical, wall-spanning installation. 520 NW Davis St., 2nd floor., 248-9378. Closes May 31. Map

CAMERAWORK

Tess Durham's photos.
2255 NW Northrup St., Peterson Hall., 413-7212. Closes May 16. Map

CHARLES A. HARTMAN

Kazuumi Takahashi's photos.
Photographer Kazuumi Takahashi’s High Tide Wane Moon consists of elegant, evocative landscapes, seascapes and skyscapes. Works such as #09 encapsulate the series as a whole: moody, misty and haunting, a visual incantation of rocks and fog, cresting waves and retreating tides. For sheer atmospherics, these works are hard to top. 134 NW 8th Ave., 287-3886. Closes June 21. Map

COMPOUND GALLERY

Dennis Brown's pen and ink drawings.
Dennis Brown makes sexy pen-and-ink drawings of sexy alternative girls in sexy clothes and sexy poses, and he dispatches the works with a technique that is, well, sexy. Is the work original? Not particularly. Are the drawings as compelling as Arnold Pander’s updated geisha girls, shown recently at Mark Woolley? Nah. But they’re fun and frothy and well done—and, oh yeah, sexy. 107 NW 5th Ave., 796-2733. Closes May 31. Map

ELIZABETH LEACH GALLERY

Amanda Wojick's sculpture, Judy Cooke's mixed media.
The 2003 and 2006 Oregon Biennial darling Amanda Wojick diversifies her resources in this sprawling solo show. The most effective pieces are her constellations of yellow Band-Aids strewn across wide sheets of paper: invigorating, jaunty, counterintuitive. Another highlight: her sailboatlike grouping of long, multicolored strips, tied together with rubber bands. Less effective is her red-loop sculpture, Among, which feels derivative. While none of these pieces knocks you down and pulverizes your soul, the show as a whole shows promise and evidence that Wojick is more than just a one-trick pony. 417 NW 9th Ave., 224-0521. Closes May 31. Map

FROELICK

Laurie Danial's works, Isabelle Scurry Chapman's works.
If Michael T. Hensley, Michelle Ross, and James Boulton met in a bar, had four Long Islands apiece, then made a painting together, chances are it would look something like Laurie Danial’s work this month at Froelick. There is something self-consciously hybridized about Danial’s paintings, with their meandering lines, tentative drips, and uneasy pivoting between abstraction and figuration. Representational elements (bones, a tree trunk, architectural forms) assert themselves then recede into a jumble of squiggles and willfully noncommital shapes. It is a style that cannot, or does not care to, coalesce. 714 NW Davis St., 222-1142. Closes May 31. Map

IGLOO

Ryan Burghard's works.
325 NW 6th Ave., #102., 724-7300. Closes May 31. Map

LAURA RUSSO GALLERY

Margot Voorhies Thompson's paintings and works on paper, Cie Goulet's landscapes.
805 NW 21st Ave., 226-2754. Closes May 31. Map

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY CRAFT

Ken Shores' works.
Art or craft? Ceramics or high-art sculpture? Who knows and who cares when you’re veteran envelope-pusher Ken Shores. Generations: Ken Shores is a retrospective of the artist’s 50-year career. With his unique iconography, culled from studies undertaken and influences absorbed in Asia and South America, Shores’ life’s work is overdue for this in-depth treatment. 724 NW Davis St., 223-2654. Closes July 23. Map

OGLE GALLERY

Tsilli Pines' works on paper.
Natty and gaminelike, Tsilli Pines’ mixed-media works on rice paper are diminutive treasures. With their tiny dots, lines and shapes, they evoke flowers, snow flurries, root systems and sun rays. Pines deploys her graphic design background to brilliant effect, creating a series of inventive variations from a bare minimum of elements. The works are dainty without tiptoeing into preciousness and have a quiet feminism about them. An understated, immaculate show, not to be missed. 310 NW Broadway., 227-4333. Closes May 31. Map

OREGON JEWISH MUSEUM

Chaim Gross' drawings.
310 NW Davis St., 226-3600. Closes May 25. Map

PDX CONTEMPORARY ART

Nell Warren's paintings, Heather Watkins' window project.
925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063. Closes May 31. Map

PNCA

"The Searchers," a group show about eBay as a catalyst for interpersonal connection.
1241 NW Johnson St., 226-4391. Closes May 25. Map

PRINT ARTS NORTHWEST

Lynn Wiley's prints, Tara Murino-Brault's prints.
416 NW 12th Ave., 525-9259. Closes June 1. Map

PULLIAM DEFFENBAUGH GALLERY

Zeitgeist: Group show.
To try to encapsulate what’s going on in the bruised and splintered Portland art scene circa May 2008 is an unenviable task, but the artists in Zeitgeist: a changing landscape give us hope. Brian Borrello’s elegant mixed-media-on-linen works show the eerie silhouettes of trees against a pale yellow background. Anna Fidler’s intricately cut-out construction-paper fantasy worlds show her veering increasingly toward Brian Dettmer territory. Other highlights include Daniel Peterson’s photographs and G. Lewis Clevenger’s evergreen rectilinear abstraction. 929 NW Flanders St., 228-6665. Closes May 31. Map

QUALITY PICTURES

Roger Ballen's photographs.
The celebrated South Africa-based shooter presents a handful of new creepy-gorgeous black-and-whites centered on uncomfortable characters, forlorn animals and stark situations—all of which may exist only in his own mind. 916 NW Hoyt St., 227-5060. Closes June 28. Map

QUINTANA GALLERIES

120 NW 9th Ave., 223-1729. Closes May 31. Map

RAKE ART GALLERY

Dane B Wilson's paintings.
Dane B. Wilson’s solo show at Rake is called Flow, apropos to its aquatic subject matter. In his luxuriant oils on canvas, the artist riffs on the interplay of water and rocks in the High Sierra mountains. In his Still Life and On the Water series, he layers horizontal swaths of blue and white to suggest reflections and dappled light. Other paintings, such as Reflecting Pool, are flatter and less compelling. Wilson’s pièce de résistance is a 200-foot scroll of fancifully hued river rocks, displayed in a Plexiglas case. At $15,000, it’s the most expensive piece ever offered for sale at Rake. 325 NW 6th Ave., 914-6391. Closes May 31. Map

SPRINGBOX

Mitchell Freifeld's paintings.
2376 NW Thurman St., 228-1600. Closes May 31. Map

THE LIFE GALLERY

Joby Barron's works.
625 NW Everett St., #107., 971-544-1365. Closes May 30. Map

TILT

Rebecca Ripple's installation works.
Rebecca Ripple’s installation pieces are tours de force: a nipple-bedecked orb on a table amidst a sea of crochet; a sculpture that looks like a deconstructed patent-leather pump, emblazoned with the letters “G,” “O” and “D” (Try that one on for size, ladies); and the pièce de résistance, a sculpture with four bulky feet rising in airy metal filigree, evoking birds in flight or a Giacometti horse. This is trippy, eye-pleasing, head-scratching work. 625 NW Everett St., #106., 908-616-5477. Closes May 24. Map

URBAN GRIND

Stuart Allen Levy's photos of Portland.
911 NW 14th Ave., 546-5919. Closes May 31. Map

SW GALLERIES

ATTIC (SW)

Gretchen Grammel's paintings.
206 SW 1st Ave., 228-7830. Closes May 31. Map

AUGEN GALLERY

Cynthia Mosser's works.
A couple years ago, Cynthia Mosser grabbed hold of a retro-chic bandwagon sputtering through contemporary art and synthesized it with an unnatural predilection for succulent plants. It was an agreeably hideous, thoroughly successful combination, so successful that she has ridden the bandwagon into dangerous, precious territory. Her Swim Puff series abounds with squishy vegetative motifs cartoonishly rendered and garishly colored. I enjoyed Mosser’s previous outing at Augen, but the current show feels like taking a botany class from Fred Flintstone. Yabba-dabba don’t! 817 SW 2nd Ave., 224-8182. Closes May 27. Map

CHAMBERS FINE ART

Group show featuring contemporary artists appropriating antiquarian media.
207 SW Pine St., #102., 227-9398. Closes May 24. Map

GOTTLIEB GALLERY

Brian Brenno's works.
220 SW Yamhill St., 241-1070. Closes May 30. Map

MARK WOOLLEY GALLERY

William Park's paintings.
Painter William Park’s solo show is called Life is Good, but probably should have been titled For the Birds. The show is an ornithological overdose populated by canvas after canvas of geese and finches in retina-chafing variation. It leaves you praying some real-life birds would descend, Hitchcock-style, and peck your eyes out. Many of the works, such as Anxiously Awaiting the Arrival of the Pilgrims, leave you in “So what?” mode, but Park occasionally musters impressive compositional skill and painterly inspiration, as in Backyard Poetry, with its woozy reflections and drippy, semi-abstract luxuriance. 817 SW 2nd Ave., 224-5475. Closes May 31. Map

OREGON COLLEGE OF ART & CRAFT

Post-baccalaureate exhibition, undergraduate thesis exhibition.
Hoffman Gallery, 8245 SW Barnes Road., 297-5544. Closes May 27. Map

PORTLAND ART MUSEUM

Jenene Nagy's installation.
Nagy’s s/plit, at Portland Art Museum, is the latest in a series of similar installations themed around the interplay among landscape, the idea of landscape and the artistic representation of landscape. The genre-bending piece features tiny neon triangles grouped together to form directional signs, guiding the eye along the work as it begins as a painting on the wall, then juts into your personal space, becoming sculptural, then climbs the walls and wraps around you, becoming architecture or a stage set, turning you into an actor in Nagy’s stage play. The idea that barriers between artistic categories are fluid rather than fixed is not a new one, but Nagy restates it for the cyber age with winning pluck. 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-0973. Closes June 22. Map

PORTLAND ART MUSEUM

Every Picture Tells a Story.
Persian narrative paintings. 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-0973. Closes July 27. Map

PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

Group show featuring work by graduating seniors.
1825 SW Broadway., 725-3000. Littman and White Galleries, closes May 27. Map

RIVER ROOM, THIRST WINE BAR

Nikki Kress' paintings.
0315 SW Montgomery St., 295-2747. Closes May 19. Map

STUMPTOWN-DOWNTOWN

Tim Karpinski's works.
128 SW 3rd Ave., 295-6144. Closes May 28. Map

NORTH PDX GALLERIES

NE GALLERIES

23 SANDY GALLERY

Group show showcasing contemporary photographers who use antiquated processes.
623 NE 23rd Ave., 927-4409. Closes May 31. Map

CHAMBERS FINE ART

Group show featuring contemporary artists appropriating antiquarian media.
207 SW Pine St., #102., 227-9398. Closes May 24. Map

GUARDINO GALLERY

Julie Ann Smith's paintings, David Strough's works.
2939 NE Alberta St., 281-9048. Closes May 27. Map

HELLENIC-AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER & MUSEUM

Marguerite Sylvia's works.
3131 NE Glisan St., Closes May 31. Map

ONDA ARTE LATINA

Rita Urdaneta's paintings, Gordon Davis' sculptures.
2215 NE Alberta St., 493-1909. Closes May 27. Map

SE GALLERIES

BITE STUDIO

Mary Ann Puls' prints, Lisa Jones' prints.
2000 SE 7th Ave., 971-219-3802. Closes May 30. Map

ELEVEN O'49

Pat Barrett's works.
11049 SE 21st Ave., 786-5900. Closes May 25. Map

JANOVEC STUDIO & GALLERY

Tupper Malone's works.
4504 SE Milwaukie Ave., 231-8346. Closes May 31. Map

LAUNCH PAD

Brent Wear's paintings.
534 SE Oak St., 971-227-0072. Closes June 1. Map

NEW AMERICAN ART UNION

TJ Norris' installation.
In this new installation, multimedia artist TJ Norris has pulled off an elegant, thought-provoking show in his hallmark aesthetic of clinical yet invigorating minimalism. As you enter this “multimedia video lounge,” the first thing you see is a light box that cryptically declaims, in wedding-invite calligraphy: “Reserve the right to remain silent.” You recline on gurneys and watch two channels of video projected onto the ceiling: grainy images of old Lincolns and Subarus rushing in front of a chain-link fence; a disco ball rotating in a sleazy, wood-paneled room; a woozy shot of a run-down apartment hallway…. The images have a vintage urban feel, like derelict souvenirs of pre-Giuliani Manhattan, when gentrification had yet to impinge and it was still possible to get a decently priced blow job in Times Square. Norris compartmentalized and fetishized the habitat of his East Coast youth in ways that continue to inform his present. He has romanticized a gritty metropolitan past while also draining it of every last drop of romanticism it ever did or did not possess. He conjures the aftermath of experience—which is to say, memory—even as he embalms its corpse. 922 SE Ankeny St., Closes June 22. Map

NEWSPACE CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY

Inner Light Group, group show.
What would peripheral vision look like if you tried to photograph it? Members of the Inner Light Group, a local photographer’s collective, take up that question in a largely unsatisfying group show. Much of the material here is hackneyed—a moody photograph of a cat, a child’s hand in an adult’s hand (gag!)—and the lion’s share amounts to little more than travel photography. Two exceptions are Scott Weston’s luminous untitled silver gelatin print, which channels David Hamilton, and Jonathan Brand’s intriguing narrative vignettes. 1632 SE 10th Ave., 963-1935. Closes June 2. Map