november 21.2003 * J u f t M at; 4 5
ART
▼
Engaging impermanence
Enteractive Language Festival artists
make a lasting impression with temporal art
by
T imothy K rause
his back, to write responses (sometimes answers,
igitally manipulated art by Horatio Hung-
Yan Law is slick and sophisticated, ground­
often non sequiturs) in chalk on the floor.
“I love the fact that I’m seeding out this
ed in present politics. David Eckard’s work
weird
mythology. It’s exciting to know that I
engenders the mechanical and the primal,
seductively suggesting an imposing history.
can kind of create this rich moment for some-
Kxly,” he says. “I’m throwing out the first ques­
Yet both Portland queer artists share a budding
appreciation for interactive, ephemeral art that
tion in a dialogue, saying, ‘O h , what do you
leaves viewers with more questions than answers.
think you’re going to see today?’ ”
For the festival’s closing night event, Language
And Kith are presenting work at the Enteractive
Language Festival continuing through Nov. 29.
o f the Bawdy, Eckard faces his most daring and
personal performance yet when he dons a hand­
“1 started out doing this sort o f object work
crafted, fully endowed prosthetic centaur outfit
that always referenced some sort of use,” says
and leaves the gallery to cmise Stark Street.
Eckard, 39, who teaches at Pacific Northwest
College of Art. “Tilings lcxiked like tools, toys,
Why?
S& M devices, prosthetics— it ran this whole
“To see if I can get attention, to see if 1 can
find love, to find affection in this imperfect, hriv
gamut. You’d come into a gallery and you’d be
ken, mythic, sexy idea of half-horse, half-man
like, ‘O h, 1 know what that is.’ ”
that’s sort of cultured, sort of not,” explains
Though you wouldn’t, because the intriguing
Eckard. “And to take authorship over what that
industrial contraptions, like those in his
whole area is for me, which has been really gixxj
Tournament (lumens) exhibit at Marylhurst U ni­
and really bad sometimes— the sexual
versity last winter, are simply fictional apparatus­
compulsion, the drinking, all that
es from Eckard’s factual mind. “You don’t really
lovely Stark Street stuff.”
know what they are, but it’s hopefully convinc­
Far from bashing it, however,
ing that they have a function,” he says.
Eckard is fessing up to his own attraction/
Creating a coy historical patina, how­
repulsion with the Burnside Triangle by
ever, became more like crafting a faux
examining rules and expectations sur­
finish, leading Eckard to ask himself:
rounding identity, role-playing and
W hat happens when these fanta­
stx:ial games. In some ways, it’s just
sy implements are actually used?
another Saturday night, he implies.
“I’m really excited aKiut
“I’m just amping it up to the degree
implicating myself in the fictions
of this desperate centaur.”
with which I have teased other
people,” he remarks. “It almost strips
hat do Chinese factory work­
the theater away and makes them
ers think when making a
pragmatic, going from prop to tool.”
Mickey Mouse figurine for
More and more, Eckard has cre­
Americans? T h e nearest cultural point
ated a synergy between sculpture
of reference, Horatio Hung-Yan Liw
and performance. In Tournament, for
imagines, is the panda, and so he recasts
example, he crawled into the gallery
garage-sale Disney into native fauna.
and was hoisted onto a piece resem­
Though not performative, Liw ’s cross-
bling a gladiatorial parade float. In
cultural art is impermanent in its own
Scribe, he pulled a wheeled drawing
way due to the fragile and finite life of
device around town to etch ephemer­
the materials he selects, such as different
al circles in public spaces.
colored rice grains used to transform
And for Enteractive’s Nov. 7
one cultural icon into another.
Language o f the Body, he created a
“Rice is sustenance, what
delicate tissue-paper gramo­
I am made of, culturally,”
phone through which audi­
Law explains. “And
ence members whis­
there are different
pered into his ear,
kinds of rice. Some
prompting Eckard,
people
lixik at
on all fours with
It’s tough to miss artist David Eckard, who will don
candles burning on his most daring visage to date Nov. 2 9 on Stark Street Asians and say
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H oratio Hung-Yan Law ’s W ar Candies (h in t: the image becomes clearer the farther away you
get) will be projected during Language of Con$umeri$m
they all look the same. So I’m kxiking at the
rice and saying, well, rice are not the same.
T here’s white rice, brown rice, red r ic e ....”
Law, 48, also teaches at PNC 'A. He moved
to the United States from Hong Kong when he
was 16, receiving a degree in biology before
taking his first art course. “Being an immigrant
child, I was expected to be a professional. So
art never entered in my mind as an option,” he
says. “It was a revelation.”
Printmaking manifests his revelation in
K ith physical and metaphorical layers. Early
on, for example, he created a series of pho­
tographs based on classic nudes (himself the
model) sandwiched with Oregon landscapes as
transparencies he then printed onto handmade
paper with a color photocopier.
“As a young artist, and an artist of color, I
worried and wondered aKiut how I fit in," he
says of studying classical European work. “T he
idea o f posing myself in those nudes was a liter­
al way of inserting myself into those pictures—
as a male person in some places where they
were female nudes— touching on my gay iden­
tity but also as a person of color.”
Last summer, Law made War Candies, a
suite of digitally created inkjet prints that will
be projected at Enteractive’s Nov. 28 Language
o f Con$umen$m. “T h e images themselves were
appropriated from images aK>ut the war (on
Iraq], but then they are reconstituted with
images of life-size candy,” he comments.
Law adjusts the color, position and shadow of
each candy image so that when the whole piece
is viewed from a distance, the original image is
perceivable. But he u'ants viewers to ask them­
selves if they are really seeing things clearly.
Because closer isn’t always K ‘fter and sharper
isn’t necessarily clearer, how much information
is needed to discern the tnith? he asks.
“We are a culture that wants things, includ­
ing images,” he observes, “but that makes us
want more. Like an addiction. Like eating
candy. You can’t stop.”
Like Eckard, Law sees temporal art as an
inevitable next step. For example, he envisions
a flcxir installation with giant oriental rugs of
Jolly Ranchers.
“I have to shift my whole way o f thinking. I
can ’t help it. My mind is on this kind of mater­
ial, and I cannot make it go away,” he admits.
“I’m going to give into it and see what comes
out of it.” j n
The E n teractive L a n g u a g e F estival presents
Linguage of the Bawdy 7 :3 0 p m. N ot. 29 at
The Hall Gallery, 630 S.E. Third Aee. Tickets
are $7 from In Other Words, but you can see
David Eckard on Stark Street for free. Horatio
Llung'Yan Law's War Candies appears m
Linguage of Con$umeri$m 9 :3 0 p.m. N ot. 28
at luminal, 403 N.W. Fifth A te. Admission is
free. For a complete festival schedule, visit
uteu1. 2gyrlz. ( rrgjfestival.
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