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Art aficionados hoping to lighten up this particularly unhinged spooky season, find reprieve at Well Well Projects, Oregon Contemporary’s members gallery, for its cute and mysterious group exhibition ₍^. .^₎⟆ & /|\ ^._.^ /|\ (pronounced Cats and Bats), on view through Oct. 26. Though the animals’ social symbolism will be on full display, plenty of the works are easily digestible works of art all about the animal kingdom’s mascots of Halloween.
₍^. .^₎⟆ & /|\ ^._.^ /|\ features new works by Anna Fidler, Michael E. Stephen and John Whitten that summon the humor, tenderness, and strangeness of closely related animals—felines and chiropteras, naturally—borrowing elements of esoterica, kitschy cottage, magick and pet worship. Shown as a trio, the artists capture the uncanny relationship of these animals to the collective subconscious through drawing, painting, installation and assemblage. Cats are depicted in this show as witchy collaborators, mischievous night prowlers, and spookily tender companions, while bats are reimaged as underworld messengers.
Highlights include ephemeral hidden cat whisker messages; a taxidermy tribute to the late Ozzy Osborne’s neck-snapping legacy by multimedia artist Stephen; sharp, graphic gouache effigies to Le Chat Noir via mystical symmetry by Fidler; and lush, heartwarming color pencil portraits that connect soft psychedelia to cat parenthood by Whitten.
Corvallis-based Fidler draws inspiration from “historical photographs, spirits and everyday life,” according to an exhibition statement. She uses mediums such as cut paper and gouache on linen to impart the innate energy of her recent subjects. Her work is held in the collections of The Portland Art Museum, The Boise Art Museum and The Hallie Ford Museum of Art among others.
Stephen is a conceptual artist based in Los Angeles. He composes arrangements, from all manner of materials (for instance, taxidermy, beanie babies, keychains, and incinerated VHS tapes all make appearances in this exhibit). Stephen’s work examines the dynamism of objects as they age, and their idiosyncratic relationship with nostalgia.
Whitten, who lives in Portland, often begins their work “with fragments of the everyday: a grain of salt collected from a desert, the surface of a healing scar, or the shifting texture of a single element isolated from a landscape,” according to a show statement. The colored pencil works Whitten displays here serve as “portals into questions of presence, care, and observation.”
₍^. .^₎⟆ & /|\ ^._.^ /|\ celebrates stigmatized animals in a similar spirit as Kenton gallery Carnation Contemporary’s recent summer show Hearts and Minds, Blood and Nerves by Maria Lux did for snakes. Maybe spiders will have their turn next?
SEE IT: ₍^. .^₎⟆ & /|\ ^._.^ /|\ by Anna Fidler, Michael E. Stephen, and John Whitten at Well Well Projects, 8371 N Interstate Ave., #1, wellwellprojects.com . Noon–5 pm Saturday and Sunday. On view through Oct. 26.
