Saturday, January 02, 2010

January 7 Westside Art Openings

The Everett Lofts and associated spaces are recommended, as always, for your viewing pleasure. See them in the block bounded by NW Everett, Broadway, Flanders and 6th.



PDX has three exhibitions this month. Megan Murphy shows quiet abstract landscapes combining photography and painting. Murphy is also founder of Artocracy, a website making artists prints available directly to collectors. Next door, John Mann shows mixed media sculptures made with maps and photos of map-based sculptures. The world of maps is in flux. Mann's maps are of the paper type, crafted by cartographers with the luxury of detailed print resolution and color. The resolution enables great information density, requiring the cartographer to artfully place each legend and symbol to fit unambiguously. The world of digital maps does this without art, by machine; the problem of detail and limited resolution solved by zoom and layers. It changes our relationship with maps. In the window, Shawn Records shows a sequence of travel photos titled Stupid People Love High Places: Recent Photographs of the World. At PDX Contemporary Gallery www.pdxcontemporaryart.com 925 NW Flanders



Christopher Rauschenberg has been making street photographs in Paris for many years, including a project rephotographing Atget. For many years too, his subject has been the flea markets of Paris where the material culture of the French empire accumulates, like charmed dustbunnies. This is the work he shows this month. The markets have more the feel of antique shops with a bewildering array of glass bell jars, Belle Époque objects and design artifacts of the 1960's and '70's, near antique. Longtime Portland sculptor and PNCA professor Lee Kelly known for large scale works, shows small sculptures, paintings and prints. We discussed last evening if we near the extinction of large metal sculpture. It reached its zenith with Chicago's Picasso and the minimal monuments of Serra. Today it's in the sights of a fractious culture war and target of criminal scrappers. At Elizabeth Leach www.elizabethleach.com 417 NW 9th



Transference, the installation by Andy Paiko and Ethan Rose closes Saturday. It's a collaboration with Paiko contributing blown glass objects Rose has made into ambient instruments. Tonight Joe Cunningham and Reed Wallsmith accompany the sculpture on live instruments. Performance 6:30PM-7. At the Museum of Contemporary Craft 724 NW Davis



Rom'n Times is a show of work by Portland artists who visited Italy in the past summer on an art retreat. See the response of the participating artists Horia Bobia, Vanessa Calvert, Cassandra Dorsey, Lori Gilbert, Bethany Hays, William LePore, Stuart Mayer, Bridget Murphy, Cassie Neth, Jennifer Norton, Ralph Pugay, Rebecca Shelly, Miles Sprietsma and Cody Thomas. It is in the Autzen Gallery, Neuberger Hall (2nd Floor) PSU 725 SW Harrison. Opening 4PM-6



Chambers continues to leverage its video show space with Scott Wolniak's Patterning. The show includes sculpture, drawings and video. At Chambers Gallery www.chambersgallery.com 916 NW Flanders



Froelick has a group show themed Interiors in its broad definition. The show includes Vito Acconci, Marco Buti, Isabelle Scurry Chapman, Joe Deal, Matthew Dennison, Raymond Depardon, Walker Evans, Benny Fountain, Jeremiah Goodman, Shelly Jordan, Kevin Kadar, Andre Kertesz, Ralph Meatyard, Susan Seubert, Jeff Stuhr and Lili Wilburn. At Froelick Gallery www.froelickgallery.com 714 NW Davis



From the Northern worlds of threatened ice and snow world come two shows at Blue Sky. Céline Clanet has made portraits of the indigenous Máze people of Lappland, North of the Arctic Circle. Meanwhile Olaf Otto Becker has made large format landscape photos in Greenland. Clanet speaks st the gallery Saturday at 3PM. At Blue Sky Gallery www.blueskygallery.org 122 NW 8th



I usually don't make it over to the coop Gallery 114, but this month they have a group show by writers at the art blog PORT. It is a large show with Megan Driscoll showing Mysterpants, Nicky Kriara, Alex Rausch showing An Implied "Untitled" with Rhetoric, Arcy Douglass, Jeff Jahn's Asymmetrical and Minty, Gary Wiseman's Fear of getting Caught (Actaeon and Artemis), Sarah Henderson's Still Standing, Ryan Pierce, Jenene Nagy's Level, Amy Bernstein's I love You II and Jascha Owens' Strange Attractor and Mother Unit_03. All the work is recent. At Gallery 114 www.gallery114.org 1100 NW Glisan



Compound Gallery has After Hours, evening hour themed photographs from Arian Stevens, Kimi Kolba, Brian Reynolds, Thuy Duong Le, Sam Brosnan, Mike Crocker and Dominik Kruger At Compound Gallery www.compoundgallery.com 107 NW 5th