VISUAL ARTS
MARCH 11–17
Cynthia Lahti: Battle
out in Kevin Kadar’s show, Portals
and Puzzles , is the acrylic paint-
ing Firewall . With its fl ame-licked,
scorched-earth landscape, it looks
like the unholy love child of James
Lavadour, Alex Lilly and Hieronymus
Bosch. In the back galleries hang
Takahiko Hayashi’s impossibly intricate
etchings and drawings on paper. The
astonishing series of 12 pen drawings,
collectively entitled In a Swirl of Many,
Many Small Circles , shows a geometric
cyclone of circles fl oating like snow-
fl akes or fairy-dust. Through March
14. Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis St.,
222-1142.
On the heels of winning the 24th
annual Bonnie Bronson Fellowship
Award, Cynthia Lahti exhibits a suite
of enigmatic and satisfying sculptural
and photographic objects at PDX. In
the past, Lahti’s idiosyncracies have
occasionally veered into preciousness,
but not in these works, which are at
once witty and accessible. The top
two-thirds of the digital print Bank ,
for example, shows a woman’s belly,
pantyhose-clad groin and legs; the
print’s bottom third shows a woman’s
lips, chin and hair, but not her
eyes. Like the eyeless female nudes
painted by the late Pop artist Tom
Wesselmann, Lahti’s image is denied
the advantage of a window into the
soul. Unlike Wesselmann’s objectifying
paintings, Lahti’s work is neither smug
nor salacious, but very, very smart.
Through March 28. PDX Contemporary
Art, 925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063.
Lyric Truth: Paintings, Drawings
and Embroideries by Rosemarie Beck
If you were an “important” New York
painter in the late 1940s and 1950s,
you dutifully pledged allegiance to
Abstract Expressionism and traf-
fi cked in dollops, drizzles, smears
and drips. Not so for Rosemarie Beck
(1923-2003), subject of a rigorous
exhibition at PSU organized by art
historian Sue Taylor. In her mature
work, Beck eschewed abstract state-
ments, preferring to portray fl esh-
and-blood human beings. Sometimes,
as in the oil painting Two with Horse ,
her depictions were frankly sensual
and erotic. She also drew inspiration
from the myths of Classical antiquity,
a predilection that was not exactly
considered forward-thinking by her
contemporaries. Still, she persevered
not only in the medium of painting
but also in drawing and embroidery.
More information at rosemariebeckex-
hibit2015.blogspot.com. Through May
3. Broadway Lobby Gallery at Portland
State, Lincoln Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave.
Dark Ecologies
The fi rst thing you see when you walk
into Bullseye’s three-artist show, Dark
Ecologies , is Carolyn Hopkins’ beauti-
ful and disturbing sculpture, Cascade .
It depicts a strung-up dog with styl-
ized entrails spilling out of its belly
and looping over a tree limb. Glass
beads link the dog to an eviscerated
bird underneath it, which appears
to leak blood into a red pool on the
fl oor. This violent, virtuosic piece is
left wide open to each viewer’s inter-
pretation. Emily Nachison’s Diver is
equally allusive, with its succession
of oysters opening up to reveal crys-
tals and geodes inside. Finally, Susan
Harlan’s kiln-formed glass panels are
diminutive masterpieces of exquisitely
nuanced textures and wave forms
in blue, beige, black and orange.
Through March 28. Bullseye Projects,
300 NW 13th Ave., 227-0222.
Nicholas Nixon: Hospice Patients
Hedonic Reversal
By now, the fetishization of urban
decay (so-called “ruin porn”) has
reached the point of ubiquity, if not
outright obnoxiousness. In an intrigu-
ing twist, artist Rodrigo Valenzuela
has kicked the genre up into a “meta-”
plane. In his suite of photographs enti-
tled Hedonic Reversal , he’s created
fake ruins in his studio, then taken
pictures of them. So he’s not fetishiz-
ing authentically derelict buildings;
he’s critiquing the fetishization of der-
elict buildings, and he’s doing so as
an artist buttressed by the platform
and aesthetic credibility aff orded by
a gallery show. It’s a brain twister that
Valenzuela leaves it to us as viewers
to parse. Through April 4. Upfor
Gallery, 929 NW Flanders St., 227-5111.
Kevin Kadar and
Takahiko Hayashi
Froelick off ers a strong pairing
of shows for February. A stand-
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RESTAURANT
Nicholas Nixon is best known for his
series The Brown Sisters , for which
he’s photographed his wife and her
three sisters every year since 1975.
He’s showing a diff erent body of work
at Blue Sky this month, but one that
also deals with the passage of time. In
Hospice Patients , he trains his lens on
people who are dying and their care-
givers, friends and family. The patients
are gaunt and careworn, but it’s their
loved ones who seem to be having the
roughest time. In the tender Maryann,
Marianne, Madelon, and Elen Brinker,
Wellesley, Massachusetts , an elderly
woman lies in her bed at home, eyes
closed, surrounded by onlookers.
There is tacky wallpaper and kitschy
furniture all around. There is a poin-
settia. Three black dogs lie at the
foot of the bed. It’s a scene of such
comfortably mundane Americana, it
seems almost incidental that a human
being is living out her fi nal moments.
It’s to Nixon’s credit that he brings us
such intimate moments with such a
deeply humane sense of restraint and
respect. Through March 29. Blue Sky
Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210 .
OF THE
BEER
GUIDE
REVIEW
MARIO GALLUCCI
Rebecca Johnson: Barns
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
By RICHARD SPEER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit show informa-
tion—including opening and closing dates, gallery address and phone number—at
least two weeks in advance to: Visual Arts, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland,
OR 97210. Email: rspeer@wweek.com.
Rebecca Johnson’s acrylic paint-
ings of barns exude a quiet ele-
gance. In the pieces Spring Ranch,
Gable Roof Barn and Barn on a Hill
Clarke Road , she renders the struc-
tures with a cipher-like lack of aff ect.
The barns look forlorn, sandwiched
between fl at, green grass and an
even fl atter blue sky. They don’t look
so much like actual barns as they
do Platonic ideals, fi ltered through
some eerie Andrew Wyeth time warp.
Heightening this ethereality is the fact
that Johnson braces her paintings
with wood salvaged from barns and
other structures. These aren’t panels
you pick up from Blick Art Materials;
they’re relics with unique histories,
which seem to bubble up into the
paint above them. Through March
28. PDX Window Project, 925 NW
Flanders St., 222-0063.
To Feel What I Am
Have social media aff ected our body
language? That’s a big question, and
in the exhibition To Feel What I Am ,
curators Eileen Isagon Skyers and Iris
Williamson answer it obliquely and
incompletely. Mostly that’s because
Hap is a small space, and there are a
whopping eight artists in the show. As
a consequence, it feels too crowded
with objects and ideas. The most suc-
cessful piece visually is a short fi lm
called Aquarium by Chicago-based
artist Tobias Zehntner. It was shot
underwater in a swimming pool, with
the camera upside-down. The bathers,
therefore, appear to be swimming
upside-down, with their legs where
we expect their heads to be. This
is an extremely odd eff ect that you
have to see to really appreciate. Does
it have anything to do with social
media? Damned if I know, but it’s cer-
tainly cool to look at. Through March
28. Hap Gallery, 916 NW Flanders St.,
444-7101.
Words, Words, Words: An
Exhibition of Text-based Artwork
The relationships between text and
image have given artists fodder for
exploration for a long, long time.
That’s what hieroglyphics were
about, as well as illuminated manu-
scripts, petroglyphs and the tradi-
tions of Chinese, Japanese and Islamic
calligraphy. It’s also what inspires
the artists displaying their work in
February and March at Elizabeth
Leach Gallery. Jenny Holzer’s scroll-
ing electronic messages have made
her an international art star. Ditto for
Ed Ruscha’s enigmatic words painted
in typeset fonts across mountain
and desert vistas. And then there are
the text-and-map sculptures of U.K.-
born, Ashland-based artist Matthew
Picton. Picton, who used to show at
Mark Woolley Gallery and Pulliam
Deff enbaugh, joins Elizabeth Leach’s
roster with this exhibition. Through
March 28. Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417
NW 9th Ave., 224-0521.
For more Visual Arts listings,
visit
PNCA’S NEW DIGS
Look closely for the
schooner…
First Thursday’s must-see destination for
March was the brand-flippin’-new campus
of Pacific Northwest College of Art, which
crowns the North Park Blocks at 511 NW Broadway. Although the building’s
name is an unwieldy 15 syllables—the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center
for Art and Design—the structure itself is anything but.
Portland architecture star Brad Cloepfi l of Allied Works has invigo-
rated a century-old building with an ingenious redesign. Originally a
post offi ce, then a federal building, the structure had been tackily ret-
rofi tted over passing decades with cumbersome low ceilings and fl oor
coverings, a labyrinthine layout and the kind of fluorescent-bulbed,
government-meets-corporate aesthetic that calcifi es souls. Renovated
and revivified by Allied Works, the building centers on a 2.5-story
atrium ringed by thick metal cables, which drape diagonally like ropes
tying a tall ship’s sails. In fact, the space as a whole feels like a cross
between a schooner and a circus tent. Fitting given that anything as
impractical as a fi ne-arts education may as well be a fl oating theater of
the absurd sailing toward Atlantis.
Beneath the atrium and surrounding the expansive commons,
artworks stand, hang and hold forth, including a handsome debut
exhibition, Gathering Autonomy: Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, in
the newly inaugurated 511 Gallery. On opening night, visitors’ chatter
echoed into the skylights, mingling with ambient soundscapes from
video installations. Those skylights are one of Cloepfi l’s most bracing
touches; by day they fl ood the newly unearthed hardwoods and marble
tiles in a luminous honey bath. The overall gestalt is quite grand, if a
touch drab, with a color palette tending toward Calvin Klein ecru and
eggshell. Chromatically, the space would benefit from, say, a juicy
stripe painting by Tim Bavington or a sculpture of Jeff Koons shiny-
metal variety, although such acquisitions would have shot the project’s
already-spendy $34 million budget through those fortunate skylights.
Lastly, let’s face it, PNCA’s new home needs a catchy nickname for
its cumbersome formal moniker, something more imaginative than its
address. Some are calling it the “511 Building.” Hmm…nautical meets
circus. How about the Commodore Ringling? RICHARD SPEER.
GO: The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design is at
511 NW Broadway, pnca.edu.
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BAR GUIDE
willamette week’s
april 9, 2014
Willamette Week MARCH 11, 2015 wweek.com
willamette week
1
BAR
GUIDE
So many bars, so little time. Our
annual Bar Guide gives readers
the lowdown on where to load
up. We do the dirty work of ex-
ploring the city’s bars, taverns,
lounges, and pubs to produce a
curated list of the best and most
interesting places to imbibe,
including our Bar of The Year.
Publishes: 4/15/15
Deadline: 4/2/15
Call: 503.243.2122
Email: advertising@wweek.com