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Cynthia Lahti in Bellevue Arts Museum Biennial 2010

27 August, 2010

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




Storm Tharp: Artforum

2 August, 2010

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 Kemp: Berkeley Art Museum

14 July, 2010

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



A Limited Anthology of Edits: Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen

23 June, 2010

Please join the artists Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen for a lecture about their work, and more specifically, the new book they just completed called A Limited Anthology of Edits. It will take place on Friday June 25th at noon in the New Video Gallery at Portland State University. The talk is a part of the completion of the artists' MFA degree and is happening in conjunction with their MFA thesis exhibition, which is currently on view. CLICK ON IMAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION


A series of lectures hosted by Anna Gray & Ryan Wilson Paulsen

22 June, 2010

Saturdays at 11am at PDX Contemporary Art:

Saturday, July 10th: Anne Marie Oliver
Saturday, July 17th: Sean Regan
Saturday, July 24th: Helen Reed
Saturday, July 31st: Barry Sanders
In conjunction with their exhibition "The Classroom" - a body of work which examines the politics and aesthetics of education - Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen and PDX Contemporary Art will host a series of short lectures on Saturday mornings during the month of July. Four local educators will use the objects of The Classroom to present on a variety of topics including fan-culture, pedagogy, language, philosophy and literacy.

Lecture Schedule (Saturdays at 11 am at PDX Contemporary Art, 925 NW Flanders Street): CLICK ON IMAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION