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  For Heaven's Sake Arnold

  Posted: 31-May-2012, 9:08pm EDT by Jeff Jahn

  ...and the likely winner of this year's Joseph Kosuth award for minimalist PR is:
  
  Arnold J. Kemp | FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE
  MEΣ(s) A Project Space
  923 SE 13th Ave. Apt.#4, Portland, OR 97214
  RECEPTION: THURSDAY, May 31 | 6 - 9PM
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  Feral Children turned loose on Last Thursday

  Posted: 31-May-2012, 9:43am EDT by Jeff Jahn

  
  Video still from Children's Games by Seth Nehil (2011)
  
  Well it is a video of feral children (and would a real pack of feral children really be that surprising on Last Thursday?)... So here is the PR for Gavin Shettler's inaugural video window featuring Seth Nehil's Children's Games. Here is the PR:
  
  "Seth Nehil's Children's Games looks at Brueghel's 1560 oil painting of the same name to imagine a world without adults. These short video pieces imagine a self-created society of runaway teens, hidden deep in the woods. Isolated from society, they lose their use of language, play timeless games and invent ritual interactions. Children's Games continues Seth Nehil's interest in performance systems and sonic environments."
  
  
  Reception: Seth Nehil's Children's Games | 6-9 PM Thursday, May 31st
  Last Thursday at Living Room Realtors | NE Alberta Office
  1422 NE Alberta St, Portland OR
  
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  Olaf Breuning Lecture

  Posted: 29-May-2012, 11:02pm EDT by Tori Abernathy

  
  
  Still from Home 3 footage, Olaf Breuning, 2012
  
  
  
  Olaf Breuning's talk tomorrow will prove invaluable for all of those attracted to sardonic undertones embedded in video and performance work. Home 3 continues to unravel the result of homelessness, fetishization, tourism, and "cultural" conditioning on the Global citizen.
  
  
  
  "Swiss-born artist Olaf Breuning makes art that combines a large dose of dark humor with a critical eye for present-day faux-pas and missteps. In Home 2, a hapless protagonist caricatures the Western obsession with the authentically "exotic" through a series of awkward travelogues. Home 3, Breuning's most recent film, continues his series, focusing on the relationship between modern man and his technological environment."
  
  
  
  
  Home 3 | West Coast Premier & Artist Talk
  
  Co-presented with PSU MFA Studio Lecture Series
  
  May 30th | 7pm | Free
  
  5th Avenue Cinema | 510 SW Hall

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  Tuesday Links

  Posted: 29-May-2012, 8:24pm EDT by Jeff Jahn

  I hope everyone had a great weekend and if you were in Portland did not miss the Rothko show. Here are some links.
  
  Roberta Smith goes on about fun house art. As I wrote last year, I agree that some artists like Carsten Holler and Olafur Elliason do make fun house work that doesn't demand much of the viewer. Then there are artists like Alfredo Jaar, Robert Irwin, Richard Serra who push institutions and viewers to their limits. That isn't a fun house it is to rigorous and demanding for that and the distinction needs to be made. BTW the fun house stuff likely started with Salvatore Dali's World's Fair pavillion. It's all a question of how much pandering the work does towards the viewer's expectations.
  
  Here's an article on the "Try-Again-Ennials" from Modern Painters.
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  Final Thoughts on Rothko

  Posted: 28-May-2012, 10:47pm EDT by Jeff Jahn

  
  Mark Rothko retrospective at the Portland Art Museum (all photos Jeff Jahn)
  
  It is the last day for the Rothko Retrospective at the Portland Art Museum and though I've written on the Rothko retrospective frequently, and discussed on OPB's Think Out Loud radio program, even taught a seminar on the subject... it never becomes exhausted.
  
  Though it is a very main line even predictable retrospective....read that as a Christopher Rothko style focus on the singular stylistic development achievements rather than a more complicated look at how artists and other thinkers like Miro, Matisse, Milton Avery, Adolpg Gottlieb and Clyfford Still all played a part in his still singular breakthrough, it is arguably the most important show the Portland Art Museum has put on since Rothko's first solo show in 1933 at that same institution. You should see it right now if you haven't already.
  
  It is important because it is above all else, excellent. I cannot tell you how many artists and Portland art scenesters saw it as a moment of pride for their city. PAM has pulled off an unquestionably good show, something which many openly doubted was even possible. Thus, the show is a benchmark as a definite point of greatness. It will be the show by which everything else will be judged.
  
  
  Mark Rothko, Sketch for Seagrams building (1959) on loan from the National Gallery of Art
  
  So what is my favorite work? It is easily the darker of the two sketches for the Seagrams Building project on view. I prefer its size and the close monochromatic tonal range. The Seagrams murals as they are called were an odd project where Rothko's ideals and the world's expectations collided head on. Notice how they are never called The Four Seasons Restaurant Murals? You see Rothko (ever the populist) thought he was doing a lobby for the Seams Building only to find he was doing decor for the upscale Four Seasons Restaurant. This gave him occasion to confront his own success, reputation and benefactors in a direct way.
  
  
  Mark Rothko, detail of Sketch for Seagrams building (1959) on loan from the National Gallery of Art
  
  This early sketch is much more muted and subtle than the the final versions and frankly I prefer it's depthless mysteries to the starker color contrasts of any of the finished panels. Even the peachy-orange under painting of the work only reveals itself at the edges of the canvas in the most muted understated way. As Rothko worked on the commission he rightly realized this setting was not the best for taking in subtleties and acted accordingly.
  
  Eventually, he quit the commission as the project produced works simply too good for such a setting... and Rothko, ever the staunch social advocate just did not want to be the pet of the rich providing a backdrop as they sipped their soup.
  
  It set the tone for the later Rothko chapel project but I prefer these earlier sketches for the Seagrams murals as his finest series of works? Why... because this is the point where Rothko is at the height of his powers, is just starting to see financial success but isn't in full revolt against it. Instead he has moved into a new phase in his life and just allowed to "be", and these paintings have a gusto and self assuredness that is tough to beat. To this day this particular work feels singular, with no phantom limb of a larger commission around it. For me it is complete and fulfilled... no wonder Rothko had to do other version... why paint a suite of paintings when one says it all?
  
  It reminds me how great artists place greater demands on the world, patrons and institutions... asking them to raise their expectations and allow something to exist outside of prescribed roles (something artists like Olafur Eliasson and Cartsen Holler with their funhouse amusements do not). To this day Mark Rothko asks that we expect more, linger longer and embrace something unexpected... it is a message Portland needed to feel at this time. So fitting that its most famous son could deliver the message.
  
  You have a few hours, go see this show... the city of Portland will be talking about it for decades to come. Perhaps PAM can work out an arrangement with the national gallery to have a few Major Rothko's on loan at all times in his boyhood home city as Tyler Green once suggested to me? Perhaps the next time PAM expands (by 2017?) a gallery designed specifically for presenting Rothko's paintings could be accomplished? That would be incredible... and fitting for the city where he came of age, learned to draw and had so many formative experiences.
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  Friday News

  Posted: 25-May-2012, 10:45pm EDT by Jeff Jahn

  Kanye West has a pyramid designed by OMA dedicated to him for Cannes Film Fest. Sure he believes his pyramid is the greatest of all time but it is in fact a tent... an awesome big-assed tent but a tent none the less. Interesting viewing environment though.
  
  In the least shocking news of the week, longtime Museum of Contemporary Craft curator Namita Wiggers was named director. I've always described Wiggers as MoCC's #1 asset, even above its building and collection so this makes sense and I suppose it took this long to happen because she is such a force as a curator and thinker. She succeeds my friend Jeffrey Thomas, whom was interim director for a year and stepped down a few months ago. My read on this is that his tenure was a way to allow Namita to transition and to get the museum on firmer ground with old Portland and national level funding sources... while she got the programming back on solid ground. Normally, I'd be concerned about the quality of programming with such a shift but shows curated by others like the recent Northwest Modern show were excellent historical efforts. Namita's current Betty Feves retrospective wont be her last effort either. Frankly, she's one my favorite art people in Portland and this is good news.
  
  It is the last weekend for the Mark Rothko retrospective at PAM (and it's free tonight from 5-8PM) so catch it. Yes it has been extended through Monday the 28th. I'll have more on this later weekend.
  
  And last but not least think about attending this event documenting the history of experimental film making in Portland on Sunday for EFF. Jim Blashfield, Matt McCormick etc...
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  Last Weekend of May 2012

  Posted: 26-May-2012, 3:19am EDT by Tori Abernathy

  
  Christian Oldham at Appendix
  
  The notifications sent out attracting people to Christian "Megazord" Oldham's Chat with Flowers at Appendix typically give little away. It might be frustrating to stab in the dark, but I implore you to make the jaunt up North to investigate the work of my favorite of the ultra-trendy-90s-core-net-based-dudes whose work is maturing faster than Erin Jobs. Although the boys have little to say about the show at the moment, we were left with this lovely little link.
  
  Chat with Flowers
  May 29 - 30th and June 1st - 3rd | 7-10 P.M.
  Appendix | south alley between 26th & 27th, off NE Alberta
  
  
  
  Warm for Your Form, Bobbi Woods, 2011, Enamel on Poster
  
  You won't have to sift through as many layers of shadowy "conceptualism" (or at least yard debris) to get to Bobbi Woods' opening at Fourteen30 tonight, but you will be confronted with some form of obfuscation. Here, the view of 1970s-era posters is almost totally covered by blankets of enamel. Fourteen30 writes, "Through an environment of repetition, in which the viewer is able to move easily between correlative works, Woods creates an experience predicated upon visual pleasure, desire, and obfuscation."
  
  Warm For Your Form
  Opening Reception | Friday, May 25th, 6-8pm
  May 26 - July 15th, 2012
  Fourteen30 | 1501 SW Market St.
  
  
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  Rumblings for EFF at Gallery Homeland

  Posted: 24-May-2012, 10:53pm EDT by Jeff Jahn

  I've always liked the video installation art shows that the Portland Experimental Film Festival has done each year because there is nothing like a big dark crowded room full of video screens and projections. This year is no exception and though nothing strikes me a particularly outstanding this effort put on by Gallery Homeland and Grand Detour is very solid affair.
  
  
  Wierd Fiction performing at Rumblings
  
  What's more it has all the frenetic yet soldid energy everyone seemed to want from the 2011 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards and the Portland2012... but did not get. What's more with a bag of Bollywood (chutney flavored) popcorn this show delivered the kind of festival atmosphere/art that larger scale art scene's like Portland require (17,000+ artists last I heard) of its institutions. It is a kind of social "get out of the studio" mixer that such rambling group shows become venues for.
  
  Here are some thoughts:
  
  
  Gorgeous Media by Christina Santa Cruz at EFF
  
  Christina Santa Cruz's Gorgeous Media would have been just another merchant of nostalgic 50's kitsch with it's retro booth of classic furniture and television if I didn't like the stop motion animated video of a flood sweeping through a typical American town so much. Obviously the flood waters were a metaphor for the invisible waves that surround, delight and drown us in information every day. In the days of television before the internet this was a homogenizing force, now it is much less so. Here the overall effect was similar to Michael McMillan's installations one of which Reed showed many years ago, very nostalgic, somewhat cozy and more innocent than things have become where extremely customized content panders to the viewer's every whim and taste.
  
  
  Julie Perini at Rumblings for EFF
  
  My favorite piece was Julie Perini's Video Projection with Movement. The simple visual motif of dried leaves, a few wind making fans and a piece of paper flapping in the breeze acts as a kinesthetic feast in this somewhat difficult space. The piece of paper, perhaps the ultimate blank slate... calls to mind the viewers own constant state of agitation being pushed and pulled every which way in this video festival environment. The leaves themselves present an off season sense of Fall calm.
  
  
  Fairbanks at Rumblings for EFF
  
  Nearby Catherine Fairbanks' Transference is a Tough Row to Hoe, dealt in images of mated pairs. In this case two actors in bird suits doing whatever a couple might do in a lake. It was well presented though the sound at the opening was difficult to hear. The production and busy melancholy of companionship were well executed.
  
  
  Rauer at Rumblings for EFF
  
  Similarly I liked Kelly Rauer's P.O.V. (reflexive) reminded me of works by Jenine Antoni and early Pipilotti Rist for it's stark and multifaceted view of the body in motion. It was very kinesthetic and the non-flat screen TV's gave the whole thing a slightly nostalgic feel. It looks a bit dated in a knowing way though.
  
  
  Future Death Toll
  
  Performances by Wierd Fiction and Future Death toll made use of repeating barrages of images. Wierd fiction dresses up in somewhat Wes Anderson-esque costumage and then inserts the proceedings into their projections with green screen glitchery while echo-y surf-ish music drones on. I didn't catch FDT's actual performance but by using matching orange overalls as a costume it turns their every action into a performance. Every city simply must have a performance group that runs around in Devo-esque coveralls?
  
  I wasn't terribly fond of Lydia Greer's A Self Made House which seemed like an excuse to use one of those excellent golden glitter curtains and Ajna Lichau's On Demand was yet another exploration of the media's demands upon women's bodies with the text projected onto her naked body. It's a move I've seen hundreds if not thousands of times and requires a bit more to stop being an anonymous sociopolitical move. Also, Neil Ira Needelman's Loud Loop was yet another exercise in pulsing op art forms... meh but not the worst thing in the show which I wont even point out.
  
  Overall though it is a solid show so don't let that lone total stinker deter you. Go see Rumblings at Gallery Homeland through June 13th.
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  From Portland to Houston, Madrid, Berlin and Back

  Posted: 23-May-2012, 10:48pm EDT by Jeff Jahn

  
  
  Though Portland's media reportage for culture can be insulated and frequently decades out of touch, the Portland art scene itself gets around quite nicely as ever more important art hubs always tend to behave.
  
  Perhaps, let's discuss the way we frame the discussion... instead of wondering "whether"... simply pay attention to what is already going on. Here's a prime example... Paul Middendorf's Gallery Homeland has already done projects in Istanbul, Berlin and Houston. Yet a lack of support (& credit, aka attaboys) perhaps drove him to move to Houston where he's working on another branch of the organization while keeping the Portland office open too.
  
  Now Paul is back for the week and leading a discussion at Froelick Gallery tonight called From Portland to Houston, Madrid, Berlin and Back. Here's the PR:
  
  "Please join us for an impromptu discussion about the current FROELICK exhibitions and comparisons of contemporary art scenes in Portland, Texas & Europe.
  
  Take part in an ongoing dialogue between artists Terrell James, Laura Ross-Paul & Victor Maldonado with Paul Middendorf, co director of Gallery Homeland & curator of Southern Pacific. Please RSVP by email to rebecca@froelickgallery.com"
  
  To foreground a difference I find very important, Houston has a very coherent plan which sets the expectation that every project, especially one which receives significant public and private dollars promotes Houston as an "Arts Hub." In Portland the expectations are lower, especially from public money, which generally doesn't make a point of using simple but loaded words like "Excellence." Instead, the word "Community" is used as a catch all... we should be asking for more details like, "what kind of community?" Is it one that supports excellence or the internationally newsworthy edgyness of Portland's Alternative Spaces? It's a question of Portland understanding its own relevance on the international stage not just its local fetish for process process process. I contend we need to look at the outcomes as well as the process.
  
  I'll have detailed thoughts and options in my followup to my Op Ed earlier this year in the Tribune sometime in the near future. Till then let's just say Portland's public policy has been one of benign neglect and it will be a key point of contention for Mayoral candidates Jefferson Smith and Charlie Hales as well as the City Commissioner race between Amanda Fritz and Mary Nolan.
  
  Here are some key questions to table. Are private funders insisting on excellence in Portland and how do they learn what is excellent? Are there mechanisms like major awards and media coverage that highlight and reward those who are doing internationally worthy work as artists and curators? Overall the quality of work and thinking is here in Portland but it isn't always heralded, yet it gets outside validation from frankly sharper and more discerning eyes and minds elsewhere beacuse they understand the value of what is happening in Portland better than many of our institutions/gatekeepers do.
  
  Yes, Portland does many things very well but the city is on the cusp of a new phase. It could mean greater prosperity or continued somewhat chaotic neglect that gains success by being validated elsewhere, though it is created/developed here. Come ready to discuss.
  
  
  Froelick Gallery | 714 NW Davis Street
  Discussion: Wednesday, May 23rd | 5:30 - 7:30pm
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  Rumblings of the Eff-ing volcano at Gallery Homeland

  Posted: 22-May-2012, 8:06pm EDT by Jeff Jahn

  
  
  Tonight is the night for Rumblings and I highly recommend it! In the past Gallery Homeland has hosted major portions of Portland's Experimental Film Festival and it has always been an exciting/well attended event. So it is time to "Rumble" tonight and the lineup is heavy on programming that could be considered either video art and video installation art as a form as experimental film. Frankly making the distinctions between those three terms is exasperating but I can say that video installation is a major strength of the Portland art scene that gets international attention. Here is the lineup:
  
  Cathy Fairbanks: Transference is a Tough Row to Hoe
  Lydia Greer: A Self-Made House
  Jason Gutz: Sequence
  Shawn Patrick Higgins: Fortune
  Ajna Lichau: ON DEMAND
  Neil Ira Needleman: Loud Loop
  Julie Perini: Video Projection with Movement
  Kelly Rauer: POV (reflexive)
  Christina Santa Cruz: Gorgeous Media
  
  Performances by Weird Fiction and Future Death Toll and this exhibition is sponsored in part by The Historic Ford Building, Ninkasi Brewing Company, Ford Food and Drink, and RACC's Project Grant
  
  
  RUMBLINGS @ galleryHOMELAND
  Opening: May 22 6 - 9PM
  2505 SE 11th Ave.