disjecta

The Curators of This Year’s Portland Biennial Imagine the Future of Regional Art by Uncovering Oregon’s Past

If you walk into Disjecta during the next few months, you’ll find large black-and-white photos of demolition on your right and a massive Japanese diasporic shrine to your left.

The Strange, Singular Cinema of Joshua Churchill and John Davis Comes to Portland

Vibrant colors, eerie music and an exhilarating embrace of the unknown are among the many joys to be found in films by Joshua Churchill and John Davis. But there are two things you won’t find: story and character.

Art Gym’s New Director Wants to Create a Platform for Emerging Pacific Northwest Artists

In 2012, artist Manuel Arturo Abreu was evicted from Reed College housing after a campus drug raid. After struggling to find a new place to live, Abreu moved into the garage of a punk house in Southeast Portland. A few years later, Abreu wrote a blog for San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art about the experience. Titled Notes on the Garage Residency, the essay stuck with curator Ashley Stull Meyers ever since she read it. So when she decided to work with Abreu for Place Names, the first exhibit she curated as the director of Art Gym, she knew the garage had to be in the exhibit.

Art Exhibit “Cloud of Petals” Was Built With 10,000 Roses and Artificial Intelligence

The tedious process resulted in something that’s effortlessly sublime—VR programs that place you in a black void, surrounded by the digitally generated petals.

“A Situation of Meat” Embraces Everyday Grossness

In “And Don’t Call Me Shirley,” by Portland artist Maggie-Rose Condit, fake maraschino cherries are suspended over a king size bed that’s soaked in goopy, red-tinted corn syrup.

Blake Shell Has To Follow In The Footsteps of Disjecta Founder Bryan Suereth—After He Finally Leaves The Building

Just over two weeks before Blake Shell starts as Disjecta’s executive director, and Bryan Suereth, her predecessor, is still occupying a section of the gallery’s building.

Kenton

Kenton was built out of necessity as a company town. Set down on the Columbia at the junction of several rail lines, the city was designed to be Portland’s meat-packing and transportation hub, and serves as such to this day. Many port and rail workers call the neighborhood home, which is why a walk through … Continue reading Kenton

Beach House Is Playing Disjecta Somewhere Small the Night After Its Sold-Out Crystal Ballroom Show

Before heading out on the road in late February, the group added a series of installation performances “in galleries, art spaces, community centers, and various other alternative venues” interspersed among its formal tour dates, with the Portland edition taking place at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center on April 29.

Writer Jon Raymond's 20-Year Portrait of the Portland Art Scene

Jon Raymond is an art critic the same way a novelist is a critic of humans—a keen and often cold-eyed observer who manages to use his subjects for purposes other than their own. Raymond is probably best known to Portlanders for his fiction (The Half-Life, Livability) or the works he’s written for the screen (Todd … Continue reading Writer Jon Raymond’s 20-Year Portrait of the Portland Art Scene

The Book of Scores Reviewed

Disjecta curator Chiara Giovando’s opening salvo is a familiar approach to group exhibitions, but the result is something very unexpected.

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