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Johannes Girardoni: reviewed by Art Ltd.
Johannes Girardoni: “Light Matters” at PDX Contemporary Art
It’s perhaps best to start in the back corner of the second gallery devoted to Johannes Girardoni’s “Light Matters” at PDX Contemporary Art. It is there that Dripbox - Yellow White is installed in a small white alcove. It is there that the reflection of light bouncing off the butter yellow wax thickly coating the rectangular volume on a rough, grey wood box subtly colors the white of the walls and ceiling as if Girardoni had captured the scope of the program of a Carlos Cruz-Diaz or James Turrell and embodied it in a sculptural object. Dripbox - Yellow White demonstrates the power of light interacting with pigment: an effect highlighted in the series of works—made of thick, monochromatic beeswax poured over weathered wood forms including curved trough, block and gate—shown in the first gallery under more conventional circumstances, as object rather than installation. The rough nature of the wood and the sloppy drips of the wax smartly play against the smooth wax surfaces’ visual legacy of finish fetish-ism. With absolutely nothing in common with precious encaustic painting but the delicious smell of the beeswax, Girardoni seems to ask, what if we took most of the painting out of painting and most of the sculpture out of sculpture? What would remain? As an endpoint, or perhaps naked counterpoint to the wax-drenched forms, Girardoni leans a wood frame against one wall, letting the gallery lighting complete the shadowed geometry of the piece to serve as a stark reminder of the apparatus of visual perception and the role light plays in it all.
A second series, Exposed Icon, consists of large-scale photos of the flipside of advertising billboards in desert and city, as if to point out their ubiquity while refusing to consume their visual pitches. The images are layered with digitally created double exposures; the ghosted second images offset enough to make one feel as though one’s eyes are crossing. These images are overlayed with screened-back blocks of color and painted forms that echo those of the billboard’s outlines, transforming oddball roadside photos into architectural studies in form.
—LISA RADON
Read moreEllen George at the Nine Gallery
Ellen George and Jerry Mayer collaborate in "Splace," an artwork composed of a full wall-sized sheet of light gray paper pinned to the wall by thousands of black and variously shaped pins. The artwork is a product of the artists' collaborative and creative process that focuses on the interplay of intention, spontaneous decision-making and chance. Splace was prepared for in the artists' studio, then created on site at Nine Gallery over a period of several days. JULY 7 - JULY 31, 2011 AT THE NINE GALLERY (INSIDE BLUE SKY GALLERY) 122 NW 8th AVE.
Read moreTerry Toedtemeier and Nick Blosser included in Art in Embassies exhibition
Works by Terry Toedtemeier and Nick Blosser have been selected for an exhibition in the Art in Embassies exhibition in Libreville, Gabon. Their work will reside in the residence of the Ambassador for the duration of his tenure.
The U.S. Department of State's Office of Art in Embassies (AIE) is a public/private partnership which plays a vital role in our nation’s public diplomacy through an expansive mission of temporary exhibitions and permanent collections, cultural exchange, and publications.
http://art.state.gov/ExhibitionDetail.aspx?id=105504®ion=AF&pid=113&t...
Read moreNancy Lorenz in "A Desert in the Ocean: The View from Cill Rialaig" at Lesley Heller Workspace
"A Desert in the Ocean: The View from Cill Rialaig"
Lesley Heller Workspace
54 Orchard Street
New York, NYJune 30th - August 19th, 2011
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Opening reception: June 30th, 6 to 8 pm
http://lesleyheller.com/artists/desert_in_the_ocean/index.htmlStorm Tharp: The Cleveland Museum of Art
Storm Tharp's painting installed at The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Read moreMegan Murphy in the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards
Megan Murphy is one of the seven artists included in the Portland Art Museum's 2011 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards. The exhibition will run from June 11, 2011 through September 11, 2011. Click on image for more information.
JUN 11, 2011 – SEP 11, 2011
The second Contemporary Northwest Art Awards exhibition showcases seven exceptional Northwest artists. The exhibition explores the work of Chris Antemann, John Buck, John Grade, Jerry Iverson, Susie Lee, Megan Murphy, and Michelle Ross, and is accompanied by a catalogue and exhibition-related programs. The artists’ work ranges from delicate, figurative porcelain vignettes to heroic-scale sculpture, and from film and video installations to glass and mixed-media painting. At the exhibition’s opening celebration, one artist will be awarded the $10,000 Arlene Schnitzer Prize. The prize winner will be selected by the Museum’s curators and Director Brian Ferriso.
Inaugurated in 2008 to recognize outstanding contemporary art and artists from Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming, this ambitious program was developed to highlight both emerging and established artists. The exhibition builds on the Museum’s commitment to the Northwest’s visual arts community. A wide range of regional arts professionals nominated artists on the basis of quality, innovation, relevance to community or global issues, continuity of vision, and dedication to studio practice.
The Contemporary Northwest Art Awards are organized by the Portland Art Museum and curated by Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art.
Read moreJames Lavadour in The Seattle Times
James Lavadour's latest exhibition in Seattle, is reviewed in The Seattle Times.
Read moreStorm Tharp in Willamette Week
"Storm Tharp's prints highlight sexy group show at PDX Contemporary." By Richard Speer.
There has always been an air of the arch epicene in Storm Tharp’s work: the perspective of a refined but warped dandy looking out at a beautiful world through dark-tinted spectacles, whose lenses are not ground from optical glass, but from two-way funhouse mirrors, such that even the most rarefied visage becomes a grotesquerie. Looking back over the artist’s exhibitions at PDX Contemporary, we see this brand of uppity perversity in the dewy androgyne of Jodie Jill (2009), the pig-nosed mall rat in Jerimiah Puckett (2006), and the spinster channeling Norman Bates’ mother in The Decorator (2010). Then there are the S/M-flavored sculptures: the fearsome horns of Maybeline (2004); the aberrant clown of Bather I (2005); and the wicked, spiked pumps of Snakes (2008), now displayed in the Nines Hotel. Even in his abstractions, Tharp filters the purity of minimalism through a pastel sieve until it emerges, needling and cloying, in Easter eggs such as Enterlaughing (2009) and Vreeland (2010). If you were to toss the Marquis de Sade, Francis Bacon, Noël Coward, George Sanders and Ted Bundy in a blender and hit “purée,” the smoothie that would emerge would be Storm Tharp.
Another, more déclassé, predilection emerges, however, in the group show Oompf: enthusiasm, vigor, or energy.
sex appeal, of which Tharp’s works are the indisputable highlight. Descending from the aesthete’s dandified remove, he wades into sweaty, bathhouse grime in his most explicitly homoerotic work to date. Among the eight striking prints in his Health series are the bearish, bearded men of Nos. 2, 3, and 6; the hirsute figure of No. 1; the rear-view cock-and-balls-at-the-ready of No. 5; and the extraordinary phantasmagoria of No. 4. In this last, Tharp has created a feverish, fractured tableau celebrating the joys of sodomy: multiple figures—out of scale to one another—mounting ass cracks, shoving fingers into rectums, hiking up legs, hugging thrusting buttocks deeper, hairy thighs and Goliath-sized feet akimbo. Imagine Tom of Finland butt-fucking Salvador Dalí, and you begin to get the fetid, hothouse desperation of this wild paean to hyperkinetic humping, which ought to be used as a recruitment poster to get straight men to try gay sex, just once, if they dare. What does this series bode for Tharp’s ever-evolving oeuvre? Has he permanently deserted his erstwhile Olympian perch to slum, cruise and troll with the horny hoi polloi? Stay tuned.
Read moreAnna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen: Interview in Shift online magazine
Click on image to read interview.
Read moreJohannes Girardoni at the Venice Biennale
Johannes Girardoni will present an interactive light and sound installation at the 54th Venice Biennale, as a part of the exhibition PERSONAL STRUCTURES. As part of the 54th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia, PERSONAL STRUCTURES presents 28 artists from 5 continents, representing 12 countries. The exhibition brings together an extraordinary combination of established artists next to artists whose oeuvre is less known. What they have in common is a dedication to the concepts Time - Space and Existence. The exhibition is curated by the Dutch curators Karlyn De Jongh and Sarah Gold. Other artists included in the exhibition are Marina Abromovice, Carl Andre, Roman Opalka, Peter Halley, among others. http://www.venice-exhibitions.org/index.php?page=24&lang=en
Read moreJohannes Girardoni 'Light Matters' Reviewed on Oregonlive
John Motley reviews Johannes Girardoni's 'Light Matters' for Oregonlive.com.
'Girardoni's tension between the concave and the convex is a basic conceit, but his formal rigor and restraint, especially with the sculptures, convey his idea eloquently.'
-John Motley
Read moreAdam Sorensen: Recent Acquisition by the Boise Art Museum
Adam Sorensen's "Flusskeller" on display at the Boise Art Museum, now a part of its permanent collection.
Read moreTONIGHT: Portland premiere of Vanessa Renwick's new video "Mighty Tacoma" at the Hollywood Theatre
Thursday May 12th, 7pm, Hollywood Theatre: Premiere of Vanessa Renwick's new film "Mighty Tacoma" as a part of Sound & Vision festival.
Award winning filmmaker, Matt McCormick (“Some Days are Better than Others”, “The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal”) will curate the evening. Matt is also known in music circles for his work directing videos for The Shins, Sleater- Kinney, and YACHT . Matt will provide visuals for a live performance by Eluvium, and screen short films by Vanessa Renwick, Karl Lind, Melody Owen, and Kurtis Hough. Good Night Billygoat will close.
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TIX AVAILABLE NOW: http://tinyurl.com/3quog43
Read moreMarie Watt: Featured Artist of PCC's Art Beat Festival
Marie Watt is this year's featured artist at Portland Community College's Art Beat Festival. She will present on her featured work and her style as an artist on Monday, May 9th from 1 to 2 pm (at Little Theatre, PCC Sylvania Campus) and on Tuesday, May 10th from 9 to 10 am (at Room 217, Moriarty Arts and Humanities Building, PCC Cascade Campus).
Click on link for more information: http://www.pcc.edu/about/events/artbeat/2011/
Read moreNancy Lorenz in "The Beauty Process": 2-person exhibition with Jeffry Mitchell at Winkleman Gallery, NYC
"The Beauty Process", featuring work by Nancy Lorenz and Jeffry Mitchell
May 6 - June 11, 2011
Curatorial Research Lab @ Winkleman Gallery
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621 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001Johannes Girardoni: Review by Eva Lake in Visual Art Source
A reductive enquiry into the merger of architecture and light via painting, photography and sculpture are the hallmarks of Johannes Girardoni’s work. Titled “Light Matters,” the exhibition occupies two separate rooms in what could be two separate shows. But the longer we look, the more the lines of distinction between the various approaches are blurred and therefore united. The main gallery houses sculptures which contrast found wood with a tactile paint composed of beeswax and pigments. Some are spilt in diptych fashion; the raw states of wood are paired with thick, cakelike painted sections. The result is a satisfying hyper-state of nature, as geometrical shapes rise from the patina with a dripping, oozing effect. Many of the pieces are voids and enclosures - empty and fully present, sexy and spare, hollow yet full. While monochrome surfaces and content are implied, even when processed as such, the experience of any one color is multidimensional. Light intervenes. His odd mustard in “Diptych – Yellow Green” reminds us how curious and transient color from the natural world is, inviting but also strangely plastic and saturated. The rough found wood is celebrated as such, looking like it just left the farm. The placement of the pieces utilizes just about every surface in the space – on the walls, lying flat on the floor and somewhere in between. They are individuals in conversation with each other, and remind us that the artist is known internationally for his installations. Indeed, the artists will present an interactive light and sound installation at the 54th Venice Biennale later this year. Digital photographs of billboards in both urban and rural settings are the springboard for Girardoni’s “Exposed Icons” series, housed in the second gallery. These pieces are montaged and layered, filtered with digital color and then painted with house paint. Creating a complicated maze and history of experience, Girardoni explores with ease the seams between digital and analogue realms. These icons are a compressed sculpture, once again presenting and repeating the light and the void. Every applied digital or painted color field takes its cues from the natural colors already captured in “reality,” engineering shifts in our perception of space. The layers can be subtle with hidden histories of process, but in pieces like “Exposed Icon 5’” the paint is more the point. It is far from solid, leaving marks and traces of the artist’s activity, aiding the consolidation of many mediums into one. Perhaps the most convincing exploration of a readymade void is “Exposed Icon 21,” in which the billboard is a perfect white. It is then reflected back onto the Mojave Desert in the same blue as the sky above, thus producing a delicious double-monochrome.
Read moreLucie looking at Amjad Faur's photograph
Lucie has been visiting PDX since she was a tiny baby. Her mother sent this photo of her viewing Amjad Faur's show. Deborah Dombroski's snap shot is beautiful.
Read moreVanessa Renwick: Two-night NYC Retrospective (April 10 - 11)
Program 1: "The Oregon Department of Kickass" at UnionDocs
Sunday, April 10 at 7:30pm $9 suggested donation.
http://www.uniondocs.org/vanessa-renwick-the-oregon-department-of-kick-ass/Program 2: "Mix Me A Walk" at Anthology Film Archives (a Flaherty NYC event)
Monday April 11th at 7:30 PM Tickets $9 / $6 for Anthology members.
http://www.flahertyseminar.org/?sb=3&mb=1CLICK ON IMAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION
Read moreArtist Talk with James Lavadour: "The Properties of Paint" at the Smithsonian's NMAI
When: SATURDAY, APRIL 9 AT 1 PM. Where: Room 4018-19, Fourth Level, National Museum of the American Indian, 4th St. & Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC. Click on image for more information.
Read morePDX is pleased to be a participant in Photolucida
Portland, Ore.—Running April 13 – 17, Photolucida will hold its eighth Photography Festival, a five-day celebration of photography bringing together an international set of photographers and reviewers for portfolio reviews, lectures, and a portfolio walk for the public. Photolucida is collaborating with the Portland Art Dealer’s Association (http://padaoregon.org/events) in presenting month-long exhibits of photography in Portland’s major galleries.
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