Bruce Conkle at Rocksbox

Visual Arts Bruce Conkle has been in all kinds of group shows around town, and solo shows as far away as New York City and Iceland, but this is his first local solo show since 2004. As Portland’s preeminent ...   More

 

Wednesday, October 1, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

Volume at Worksound

Portland artists explore space in curator-about-town Jeff Jahn’s latest show.

Visual Arts Volume feels different—more cavernous and self-directed, less tour-guidey—than most Jeff Jahn-curated shows. Perhaps that’s because the show’s theme is space and the way Portla ...   More

 

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

Ed Ruscha at the Portland Art Museum

An edgy elegy to youth from a pop art original.

Visual Arts At 70, Ed Ruscha is a California classic still going strong, as his exhibition at the Portland Art Museum proves. In a small gallery on the fourth floor of the Mark Building, the exhibition addresses ...   More

 

Wednesday, September 3, 2008 Richard Speerv

History Versus Nostalgia

Two shows offer differing takes on the swingin’ ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.

Something To Believe In

With Immaterialized, Disjecta scores a direct hit.

Visual Arts At the end of the Revolutionary War, when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown, it’s said that the Redcoats pulled out their fifes and cornets and played a song called &l ...   More

 

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

From Seattle, with Gusto

Kinga Czerska and John Dempcy show Portlanders how it’s done.

Visual Arts Kinga Czerska’s acrylic paintings look flat in reproduction. But in person they’re surprisingly present, owing to the knifepoint precision of their contours. The pieces, shown this month a ...   More

 

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

A Summer Serenade

At New American Art Union, Jacqueline Ehlis shines in one of the year’s best shows.

Visual Arts It takes a certain worldliness to be droll and dead serious at the same time. Jacqueline Ehlis’ Serenade at New American Art Union excels at such cosmopolitan paradoxes, mixing minimalist and po ...   More

 

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

Heart Of Glass

Henry Hillman Jr. explores Relationships—in art and life.

Visual Arts Henry Hillman Jr.’s show, Relationships, at Elizabeth Leach is aptly titled, because so many of the artist’s glass sculptures are made up of two or more components, placed in precise relat ...   More

 

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

Lowbrow Writ Large

The Contemporary Northwest Art Awards capture the zeitgeist—too well.

Visual Arts The highbrow Portland Art Museum has gone lowbrow in its Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, which replaced the museum’s Oregon Biennial this year. For what it is and how it does it, CNAA is a su ...   More

 

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

Divine Phantasmagoria

Tilt’s group show is simply...Divine.

Visual Arts A wild collision between minimalism and maximalism, Tilt’s third annual juried exhibition, Divine, is one of the strongest group shows so far this year. In the past, guest curators such as artis ...   More

 

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 RICHARD SPEER