Skip to main contentGavin Shettler, Bryan Suereth and Sam Gould work, play and get loaded together. They show up and throw up on each other's doorsteps at odd hours of the day and night to enthuse and rant--but most of all, to plot.
Ever conspiring to circumvent Portland's still-staid art establishment, this trio of young impresarios is on a three-pronged mission to promote independent artists. As I sit down with them for PBR and merlot in Shettler's namesake gallery, the guys have a bomb to drop.
"I'm closing the gallery early next year," says Shettler.
"I'll be phasing out Disjecta during the same time frame," adds Suereth, owner of gallery/music hall Disjecta.
"And I'm leaving town," says Red76 Arts Group founder Gould, completing the triple detonation.
Shettler and Suereth are merging their venues into a forthcoming nonprofit arts organization, while Gould is skipping town in a year to curate his free-form happenings throughout the U.S. While these new projects sound promising, the presumed exeunts of the Gavin Shettler Gallery, Disjecta and Red76's commandant will leave sad voids.
What these three have accomplished in the past two and a half years, individually and in tandem, shows an ambition that belies their generation's reputation for slack.
Shettler, whose mile-a-minute elocution and hip-to-be-square spectacles recall Quentin Tarantino, started his gallery with a fistful of plastic and, along with Matt Fleck, helped turn the Everett Station Lofts into one of First Thursday's most eclectic stops. Aiming to subvert from within, Shettler has infiltrated the Pearl with his indie agenda, showcasing promising but not terribly well-connected artists who might otherwise need kneepads to land a show.
Less politic than Shettler, Bryan Suereth has the expansive, Sundance Kid charisma of a guy who'd offer you a drink and kill you if you refused. His tastes lean toward a sometimes eccentric mix of painting, sculpture and conceptual art, which he personally installs in Disjecta's cavernous main hall. When I first met him, he was perched atop a 20-foot ladder, hanging mobiles from the hall's impossibly high ceilings. "I live here, too," he said languidly. "I came here from Eastern Oregon. I need my space."
Sam Gould is the loosest cannon of the trio. An artist-at-large beholden to no one, he rails against Portland's "so-called Art Museum that considers Damien Hirst--who's been on the scene for decades--an emerging artist" and asserts that "other than Tracy Savage, there's hardly a major gallery owner in town who knows what the fuck they're doing."
The three balance their distaste for Portland's "provincial" institutions, which engender "very little excitement or competition," with a strong sense of how to clear up the algae-covered pond. Shettler's strategy has been to focus on up-and-coming local abstractionists, setting a high bar for painters and multi-media types exploring digital processes like giclée prints. Suereth lures underground rock, jazz and film enthusiasts into Disjecta, then confronts them with art on all sides. "People come in for a show," he says, "and walk away with a painting." Gould, another cross-pollinator, mixes up his be-ins with music, dance, visual art, film, and that great Cage-ism, random events.
Making a splash has been fun, but not easy. Shettler has struggled to sell enough art to make the rent. Suereth calls Disjecta "a two-year-long headache," complete with landlord and liquor-license problems. And Gould grimly faces, as does every artist with a day job, the challenge of "how to make art the thing you do for a living."
These frustrations, in part, provided the impetus for the forthcoming nonprofit, tentatively called "The Portland Center for the Advancement of Culture"--but desperately seeking a catchier moniker. As Shettler and Suereth envision it, the Center will feature a gallery, a performance space, and the pro bono services of a lawyer to counsel artists on necessary evils like copyright law and taxes.
The Center will also serve to help young artists build portfolios, hook up with gallery owners and otherwise network. "Portland attracts radical individualists," Shettler observes, "which is good but doesn't foster any community. Half the abstract painters in town don't talk to the other half, because they don't know they exist." During the transition, Gould will host a series of monthly shows first at Disjecta and then at the Center, each with a different curator. And he'll begin "The Connection Project," which aims to unite arts groups around the world. The project, along with his personal life (he is newly married to a law student), will lead him away from Portland within a year, though he says he intends to keep Red76 active in town by returning periodically and "curating from afar."
Whatever comes of their best-laid plans, this troika can be counted on to keep advocating for independent artists--not by flapping their jaws, but by busting their asses as they have before. Says Suereth, "The artists I promote will be represented by major galleries someday. But right now, while they're still in flux, they're in the most exciting stage of their careers."
625 NW Everett St., #106, 224-0252, www.GavinShettlerGallery.com .
116 NE Russell St., 335-6979.
www.Red76.com .
WWeek 2015