The new year finds some galleries carrying shows from December, or vacationing. Others have adopted mid-month openings as a regular strategy. But there are some notable shows opening tonight.
Highlighter is a show of painting with artists Amy Bernstein, James Boulton, John Brodie, Timothy Scott Dalbow, Marie Koetje and K Scott Rawls. It will be bright and perky.
It also wins the copywriting award for the month: "[the curators] openly engage with the now in order to emphasize the heuristic energy guiding such innovation in the first place. Through a shared language of brilliant colors and jostling patterns, inspired in part by the excess of modern culture, the canvases of [the artists] function as a playground for symbolic and formal invention. However, despite such non-representational tendencies, the works ultimately renounce the highbrow tenets of traditional abstraction in favor of more relatable, personal experiences. Like an aesthetic transubstantiation, the act of painting converts momentarily from a studied medium to a mean for catharsis as the artists attempt to decipher society’s fraught existence through each arresting stroke. Whatever the end result, it is always this encounter that matters most for, as Mr. Dalbow avows, 'each painting is an excuse to ask the question again.'"
At Nationale thenewnationale.com 811 E Burnside Map Free
As population growth slows, people migrate away from small towns. Despite our web of electronic connections, we prefer to touch in person. So we have ghost towns in America. The same can be found worldwide. In the heady days of the Soviet Union, the tiny town of Tiski, Тикси, was settled by scientists and the military as a research outpost in the far North on the Arctic Sea. January high temperatures average -36F. Although the republic in which Tiksi lies is rich in natural resources, they are all mined far to the South in towns served by rail. In contrast, the only way to get to Tiksi, above the Arctic Circle, is by charter plane. Now it is becoming abandoned. Photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva was born in Tiksi, and lived there until 8. At 26, she returned to document the town disappearing through the lens of her memories. She focuses on the built environment, and experiences of the remaining residents, including children, who have the infinite landscape as playground. This is her first solo show in the United States, a great accomplishment for Newspace. At Newspace Photo www.newspacephoto.org 1632 SE 10th Map Free
Emily Bixler shows necklace-like sculptures or sculptural necklaces made of industrial materials. They work. Blair Saxon-Hill shows her halftone collages, work she pioneered at Fourteen30 gallery. Very high quality in both cases, and they fit well together, even if the large space gives both a chance to breathe. At Union/Pine www.unionpine.com 525 SE Pine 7Pm-late Free
Cheyenne Sawyer of Atlas Tattoo shows her illustrations. At Albina Press East 5012 SE Hawthorne 6PM-8 Free
