November 2 First Thursday - Westside Galleries
MK Guth's show continues with a large hair braid-like installation, videos and lenticular prints which change as you walk by them. Jesse Durost has an installation which incorporates a large American flag-like drape. It is only up until Saturday, when he gives a talk at the gallery. http://www.elizabethleach.com/ 417 N.W. 9th Avenue until 9
Scott Wayne Indiana has an installation in the Portland Window Project at PDX Contemporary Art, Proposal for a Forest or a Desert. Indiana is one of the few Portland artists seriously (also sometimes playfully as with his toy horse project) exploring art in the natural landscape. http://pdxgallery.com/ 925 NW Flanders St. Window viewable anytime.
Radek Skrivanek shows photographs of environmental disasters in the former Soviet Union. His choice of black and white highlights the viewers response to the tragedy. Some photos depict the Aral Sea, which dried up along with its fish population to irrigate crops in Uzbeckastan, home to US military bases for the Afghan and Iraq war and in Kazakhstan the subject of a geopolitical charm offensive by both China and the US over it's oil and gas. This has nothing to do with Klamath Lake. In another meditation on water, Kate Mellor documents old hot spring spas in Europe, accompanying the photos with faux journals of a fictional landscape painter visiting the sites. http://www.blueskygallery.org/ 1231 NW Hoyt until 9, maybe a bit later
Marcus Brown performs music driven by galvanic skin response on instruments of his own construction. Galvanic skin responses are subtle changes in the electrical conductivity of skin caused by changes in blood flow and sweat. It is used in lie detectors and by Scientologists, so it's nice here to see it put to positive use. From the artist: "I use visual, audio and performance media in my work to create my own dishes which re-conceptualize and re-spiritualize American contemporary culture. Sonically, I transcribe the musical traditions of my African and Native heritages in both a spiritual and socio-economical context. With the use of my environment and the body, I aim to create spiritual tropes with my linguistic visual and phonic transmissions. Much like a voodoo craftsman, I view my role in society as a spiritual one, who uses many processes to connect society to the spirit world. My focus lies in revitalizing "spiritual making" in the midst of a capitalist-driven and spiritually diverse American society." http://www.pnca.edu/ Performance 7:30-8 in the Manuel Izquierdo Sculpture Gallery 825 NW 13th at PNCA across 13th from the main school, door on the loading dock
Also at PNCA Gilbert Neri creates a mythical archeology to "mimic a museum exhibit in an attempt to restore lost authenticity" - the perfect counterpoint to the Art Museum's show of Egyptian artifacts. http://www.pnca.edu/ until 9:30 in the Feldman Gallery NW 13th and Johnson. Neri also speaks free at the school at 12:30 Friday
Jen Corace shows meticulous drawings at Motel. "Overwhelmed" incorporates iconic threats to the mythological character, mirroring the dangers of navigating modern life. http://www.motelgallery.com/ NW Couch between 5th and 6th across from Ground Control until 9
Supernal is an angel-themed show. A good counterpoint to the preponderance of dark themed Portland halloween costumes this year. Curated by Monica HW Choy, artists include 2H, Liz Adams liz-adams.com, Andrew Hem andrewhem.com, Lori Field lorifieldfineart.com, Angry Woebots armyofsnipers.com, Lucy McLauchlan beat13.co.uk, Aric Miller, Luke Chueh lukechueh.com, Cho-Chan digmeout.net, Martin Ontiveros martinhead.com, Colin Johnson colinjohnsonillustration.com, Maya Hayuk mayahayuk.com, David D'Andrea dvdandrea.com, Meg Hunt meghunt.com, Edwin Ushiro mrushiro.com, P. Williams pwilliamsart.com, Erik Otto erikotto.com, Ren Sakurai, Hannah Stouffer grandarray.com, Ronald Kurniawan ronaldkurniawan.com, Jeremiah Ketner smallandround.com, Ryan Bubnis ryanbubnis.com, Jon Han jon-han.com, Madoka Kinoshita digmeout.net, Joshua Clay jclayart.com, Stella Im Hultberg stellaimhultberg.com, Kenichi Hoshine kenichihoshine.com, Thomas Han tomorama.com, Klutch klutch.org, Mr. Kin k3.dion.ne.jp/~lmtiny/, Leanne Biank eyesorestudios.com, and Hajime Yoshio digmeout.net. Also showing is Pet Show by artists Kelly Tunstall and Ferris Plock.
At Compound/Just Be Toys http://www.justbedesign.com/ 107 NW 5th until about 9:30
The girl half of APAK!, Ayumi Piland, shows Animal Friends!. The show includes paintings themed on animal friendship, an edition of 100 of the her "Animal ABC Book" and prints from the book. From their website www.apakstudio.com Ayumi and her husband Aaron met in a distant dimension and traveled to Earth together in a magic imagination machine. Using their art, they have learned to exchange energy with beings throughout the universe. From their secret cabin, they are sending out their signal hopes of contacting other creative life forms". At Reading Frenzy 921 SW Oak St until 9ish
Vino Paradiso has up a halloween-themed photography show. 417 NW 10th
At the Froelick Gallery, longtime artists Tom Prochaska and Laura Ross Paul show. Prochoska teaches printmaking at PNCA. In this show, his large scale paintings with a compelling colorful palate, seem to depict street scenes with barely discernible characters. His drawings are similarly impressionistic in a loose way that is actually coiled tight. Ross-Paul shows children and families seemingly in contemplation or at psychological play. Ross-Paul also is a master colorist, If you paint figures, take a look. http://www.froelickgallery.com 817 SW 2nd until 9
Caldera http://www.calderaarts.org is an arts camp and creative retreat in the mountains near Sisters, Oregon. What they do is very cool. Tonight they show some of the results, a show of photography and video, Seeing is Believing by young people in their program. In the W+K Lobby 224 NW 13th Ave until 9
The Portland Art Center shows an installation by PICA artist in residence Viktor Popovic http://www.viktorpopovic.com/ incorporating chairs and florescent tubes. Also IC2:Incidental Biographies by Elias Foley in the Light and Sound Gallery where live improvised music accompanies his video installation. http://www.portlandart.org/newsite/ExhibitionsNovember.html 32 NW 5th Avenue until 10
Valentines shows drawings "The Witchcraft Rebellion" by Arrington de Dionyso and Sophia Dixon. Their press release has a flair to it:
Two artists from opposite coasts conjure unseen worlds of alchemical oppositions: darkness and light, violence and love, populated by human-animal-vegetable hybrid forms with feathers, scales, hair, grass, water, clouds and blood. Pulsating with euphoria bordering on madness, these ink drawings of unbridled intuition expose us to an instinctual language of brush and quill. Sexy, edgy, fantastically risky, the viewer is invited to follow along with initiatory hallucinations, vine-ripened with suggested narratives and somnambular echoes. This is the stuff that dreams are made of, the dreams that draw themselves.
Both the opening and closing events will feature proto-musical sound performances by artist Arrington de Dionyso, drawing upon his synaesthetic readings of the artworks as scores for sound wave conduction.
SOPHIA DIXON-
I allow my own fantasies free rein in my work because I want to explore the nature and effect of representations of female desire within a culture whose collective imagination has been primarily formed by male fantasy. I am interested in the compact made between individual and cultural fantasies and the slippage between theatricality bordering on camp and almost embarrassing self-exposure. I indulge certain culturally inherited erotic aesthetics, and my drawings expose a fascination with young bodies and a desire to possess and ultimately form a collection of these bodies through portraiture. My interest in the intersection between personal desire and collective fantasy is connected to an interest in the ongoing cultural linkage of desire, especially non-normative desire, with illness and death, and the fantasy world of my drawings is populated by embattled or endangered sickly young bodies. In my red drawings, I am interested in both the teenage-melodramatic implications of the drawing being 'written in blood' and in the resultant relationship of paper to skin. I think about the viewer relating to the the paper both as a surface for the drawing and as a vulnerable, eroticized object, on which the drawing is a wound. I want her to feel implicated in the compromised eroticism of the drawing, and forced to participate in an eroticized representation of violence and self-violence.
ARRINGTON DE DIONYSO-
Founding member of the band Old Time Relijun, Arrington deals with many of the same themes in both music and art, using performance as a vehicle for driving through the nameless territories held between surrealist automatism, shamanic seance, and the folk imagery of rock and roll.
Lights on 6-9, music at 9 Valentines 232 SW Ankeny
