Cynthia Lahti: Willamette Week

Cynthia Lahti: Battle
Visual Arts
RICHARD SPEER

Wednesday March 11
PDX Contemporary Art
925 NW Flanders St.

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.

Where: PDX Contemporary Art
Phone: 222-0063
Address: 925 NW Flanders St.

http://www.wweek.com/portland/event-210257-cynthia_lahti_battle.html