News

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

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

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

Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen, whose show "The Classroom" is on display at PDX in July, are exhibiting this month both here in Portland as well as in Miami, FL. The Portland show is a group exhibit as a culmination to the PSU Masters of Fine Art program. In Miami, "How to Read a Book" explores classic literature and fiction and the relation to contemporary art.

D.E. May in "Northwest Artists Draw"
May 7–July 3, 2010

Together with work by artists Michael Brophy, Cat Clifford, Eben Goff and Helen Loggie, D.E. May presents works that focus on drawing and the creation of handmade objects.

MONTHLY ARTIST TALKS SERIES CONTINUES AT PORTLAND ART MUSEUM

JUNE 10th - STORM THARP

The second Thursday of each month offers the unique opportunity to casually explore pieces in Portland Art Museum’s permanent collection through the inspired lens of a local artist. All talks depart at 6 p.m. from the Hoffman Lobby and are followed by a lively happy hour with the artist until 8 p.m. that includes complimentary food, beer, and wine. Free for members or with Museum admission, but tickets are required. Space is limited to the first 45 ticket holders. Advance tickets are available at the box office.

On June 10th, Storm Tharp will lead a discussion about the biographical, philosophical, and aesthetic building blocks shared by Agnes Martin’s painting, Untitled #15, and Shirakura’s four-paneled literati painting, Visiting A Mountain Recluse. He is drawn to how Martin essentially abandoned her life in New York in order to pursue a humble and rigorous practice, living alone in New Mexico. Regarding his selection, Tharp expounds, "It may not be accurate to say that Agnes Martin was a recluse, as she maintained friendships and business relations with a select few. But it is fair to suggest that she turned her back on the voices and the influence of her day in order to locate the purest form of unadulterated inspiration within herself that she translated into painting." Considered a Minimalist in the canon of art history—suggesting a contemporary intention of formal reduction and essentialism—Tharp rather romanticizes her practice to be "reminiscent of a master Chinese calligrapher from the 12th century."

Storm Tharp was raised in Ontario, Oregon. He attended Cornell University and received a BFA from the College of Architecture, Art, and Urban Planning in 1992. Upon graduation, Tharp moved to Portland, Oregon where he presently resides. His work is representational—by both figurative and conceptual means—and expressed through a variety of media. Tharp was one of fifty-five artists selected to exhibit in the prestigious 2010: Whitney Biennial for which he created a series of new portrait works. He is represented by Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York City, Galerie Bertrand & Gruner in Geneva, Switzerland, and PDX Contemporary Art, where his solo exhibition Hercules will be on view June 1-26, 2010.

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