Vanessa Renwick: APEX, Portland Art Museum

MAR 26 – JUL 17, 2016
Vanessa Renwick, Next Level Fucked Up
A multi-channel video and sound installation displaying the artist’s view of the crumbling world we live in is the central sculptural element of Vanessa Renwick’s piece Next Level Fucked Up. This primarily cacophonous, alternately soothing work combines images of global catastrophes with biting, guided-tour commentaries on Portlanders’ disgusted responses to recent regional development. Video bursts of typhoons, fires, melting glaciers, and images taken from metropolitan Portland are flanked by projections of Oregon’s Painted Hills. The artist embraces technology to make a statement focused upon the inevitability of cyclical environmental change through eons and eons of time. Renwick reminds us that oceans rise and fall, ice melts, palms replace firs—and that whatever the cause, change happens. From local to global and immediate to timeless, displaying both fear and hope, Renwick’s aptly titled installation blatantly addresses the artist’s reaction to our current state of affairs.

APEX is an ongoing series of exhibitions of Northwest-based artists, curated by Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art. The APEX series is supported in part by The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Endowments for Northwest Art, The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, and the Exhibition Series Sponsors.