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Adam Sorensen, "Dragon's Mouth," 2010, oil on linen, 40 x 44", at PDX Contemporary Art.
Continuing through October 2, 2010
PDX Contemporary Art
Portland, Oregon

Adam Sorenson's "New Westerns" leads the viewer into exotic terrain that seems more the province of dreamscape than landscape. The dramatically composed mountains and hills evoke the fjords of Scandinavia and New Zealand, nowhere more potently than in "Flusskeller," a fantastical vista worthy of J.R.R. Tolkein. The piece, at 78"x67", is the largest in the show, and its scale heightens the otherworldliness of its imagery: waterfalls cascading down black and gray mountains, water atomizing into mist, brightly colored geodes and boulders dotting the valley below.

In "Dragon's Mouth," these boulders take on the appearance of oversized Easter eggs, while in other works, the artist renders strata of rock as stripes of subtly graded color, stacked one atop another, the creaminess of the paint mimicking the scenes' rugged topography. The wildly colored rocks and geodes seem to exist in a different space than the sylvan expanses behind and above them, as if inhabiting a more magical dimension seemingly exempt from the laws of perspective and physics. While the landscapes are unapologetically extravagant, their semi-abstracted forms and playful color palette keep the work on the ironic side of the romanticism/kitsch divide.

- Richard Speer

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
EXCESSIVE OBSESSION
Anchored by the promised gift of Jordan Schnitzer of Ellsworth Kelly’s [American (b. 1923)] monumental lithograph Purple/Red/Gray/Orange, ed. 16/18, 1988 the gallery presents art influenced by minimal expressions that came to the fore in the 1960s. These paintings, prints and objects are dominated by color, shape, repetition and industrial material embracing the minimalist aesthetic. The also installation includes artwork bySuzanne Caporael, Joe Fedderson, Bean Finneran, Linda Hutchins, Donald Judd, Shido Kuo, Sol LeWitt, Chris McCaw, Megan Murphy, Frank Okada, Gay Outlaw, Florence Pierce, Martin Puryear, Mark Rothko, LeRoy Setziol, and Joe Thurston

For TBA:10, Tharp will develop a body of work in residency over the summer. His art is representational — by both figurative and conceptual means — and expressed through a variety of media.

Tharp was raised in Ontario, Oregon, and presently resides in Portland. He received his BFA from Cornell University. His work was featured in the 2010 Whitney Biennial and has been acquired by The Whitney Museum of American Art, Albright Knox Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, Portland Art Museum, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Reed College. He is represented by PDX Contemporary Art (Portland), Nicole Klagsbrun (New York) and Galerie Bertrand & Gruner (Geneva).

THE WORKS at
Washington high school, Portland Oregon
opening reception
thu, Sept 9, 8–10:30pm
Gallery hours
Sept 10–19
every day, 12–6:30pm
Sept 23–oct 17
thu–Fri, 12–6:30pm
Sat–Sun, 12–4pm
Free CLICK ON IMAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION

August 24 - September 19, 2010
University Art Gallery at California State University, Chico
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION

PDX is pleased to announce the inclusion of Cynthia Lahti in the 2010 Bellevue Arts Museum Biennial: Clay Throwdown, the inaugural edition of BAM's new, juried exhibition competition. With over 30 participating artists, it provides a panoramic survey of ceramic art created in the Pacific Northwest and a glimpse into the many directions in which this dynamic medium is moving.

August 28, 2010 - January 16, 2011

August 24 - September 18, 2010, "Illiterature" University Art Gallery California Staet University, Chico, curated by Mark Carter.
Artists: Vuk Cosic, Linda Ekstrom,John Himmelfarb, Linda Hutchins, Yeal Kanarek, Stephanie Lempert, John Patrick McKenzie, Megan Murphy, Larissa Nowicki, Jill Sylvia Masako Takahashi, Cody Trepte. Curated by Mark Carter.

"Relative Picnic"
PDX Contemporary Art
A taxidermied jackrabbit sprouts golden horns, which morph into garish plastic machine guns—this is Peter Gronquist’s delightfully ridiculous wall sculpture, Nouveau Americana.

In the enigmatically titled “Hercules,” Portland-based artist and 2010 Whitney Biennial participant Storm Tharp presents his latest works on paper that run wild through the history of art, literature, and culture. The exhibition features large, deeply psychological portraits of notable and anonymous personages as well as pairs of ethereal, monochromatic washes that perfume the senses. Abstract Painter with Peony (all works 2010), for example, features the delicate hues of a flower’s unfurling petals (set before a stoic likeness of Ad Reinhardt), colors that reappear in the atmospheric monochromes of the two-panel piece Vreeland. In another portrait, Reinhardt is depicted behind a small pot, arms crossed. The pot’s overlapping shadows echo the bends and furrows of the figure’s visage. In other portraits, such as Realness, figures collapse into pools of color across the bright light of paper. The works feel romantically entangled in philosophical endeavor.

Tharp catalyzes mastery against accident in the seepage and layering of ink and gouache, which he’ll sometimes subdue amid scrims and expanses of marks, as in the portrait Groton House or Reinhardt’s suits in the works mentioned above. At the vibrating core of Tharp’s unparalleled vision flows water––messenger of an invisible humanity. Tharp’s subjects argue for a conceptual space beyond irony’s cutting edge, predicated on the very precariousness of representation. Shape-shifting before the viewer, the works cohere into a symbolic world, rich with metaphor and patterned on the idiosyncrasies of human nature as forms of aesthetic avowal.

— Stephanie Snyder

Arnold Kemps work is currently included in the Berkeley Art Museums exhibition curated by Larry Rinder. Show is called "Hauntology" and the features works that evoke uncertainty, mystery, inexpressible fears, and unsatisfied longing. Artists included in show: D.L. Alvarez, Diane Arbus, Lutz Bacher, Francis Bacon, Roger Ballen, Lewis Baltz,
Carina Baumann, Dirk Bell, Marie Krane Bergman, Debra Bloomfield, Fernando Botero, Todd Bura, Victor Cobo, Jess, Travis Collinson, Bruce Connor, Julia Couzens, Peter Doig, Vincent Fecteau, Linda Fleming, Goya, Robert Gutierrez, Hongren, Alfred Hrdlicka, Rudolphe Ingerle, Tadeusz Kantor, Arnold J. Kemp, Max Kurzweil, Aristide Maillol, Bernard Maybeck, Donal Mosher, Maruyama Okyo, Joachim Patinir, Mitzi Pederson, Laurie Reid, Ad Reinhardt, Patty Robeshow, William Rogan, Felicien Rops, Georges Roualt, Paul Schiek, Ivan Seal, Paul Sietsema, Takahashi Sakunosuke, Antonio da Trento, Luc Tuymans, Unknown Artist, Miller Updegraff, Carrie Mae Weems, and James McNeil Whistler. CLICK ON IMAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION

"Lightly"

Ellen George & Jerry Mayer

July 1 – August 31, 2010

Nine Gallery (inside Blue Sky Gallery)

12:00 - 5:00pm Tuesday - Sunday

122 NW 8th
Portland OR 97209
503-225-0210