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The show makes a strong argument for photojournalism’s interacting with art. In the context of Nina Berman’s photo series depicting a soldier disfigured by a suicide bomber in Iraq and Stephanie Sinclair’s gruesome shots of Afghan women who have self-immolated as a form of protest, the stained, splotchy faces in Storm Tharp’s washy gouache portraits begin to evoke abrasions or burns. The theme of bodily disfigurement is continued elsewhere in the juxtaposition of Thomas Houseago’s hulking, seemingly hacked-at sculpture of a crouching figure with David Adamo’s installation comprising an ax, its wooden handle cracked and eroded, stuck into the wall and surrounded by whittled-down canes. Adamo’s ax appears to have done a number on Houseago’s statue, while the canes evoke missing limbs.
Not that "2010" doesn’t make missteps. I wanted to like the Bruce High Quality Foundation’s installation: a hearse, headlights ablaze, playing on its windshield clips from various TV shows and movies to a soundtrack ranging from "A Whiter Shade of Pale" to the "Star-Spangled Banner" and including a voice-over recounting an aborted love affair with the U.S. ("We fucked America to make America disappear"). But the work comes off as juvenile, bathetic, too tongue-in-cheeky by half. One marvels that light fare can be so heavy-handed; Josephine Meckseper displays a far more nuanced take on capitalism’s ills in her brooding video meditation on Minnesota’s sprawling Mall of America. And although Lorraine O’Grady’s sepia-tinged photographs of Michael Jackson and Charles Baudelaire convey something ineffable about the romantic nature of celebrity and America’s worship of it, their pairing with the Bruces’ piece feels ponderous. Still, O’Grady’s photos beat out by miles Daniel McDonald’s kitschy sculpture in the museum’s lobby of Jackson with Uncle Sam being rowed across the river Styx by Charon, which has all the subtly of Beetlejuice-era Tim Burton.CLICK FOR FULL REVIEW

May 14 - July 9, 2010

In regard to her large-scale installation, Marie Watt, Seneca artist, states, "Forget-me-not is about memory, story, and devotion. In part, it stems from my disinclination toward the abstraction of war by the modern media." The Iroquois concept of “mother” is broad, extending from one’s mother through a long line of women. She views Forget-Me-Not as a continuing dialog. "I asked the men I know to suggest women who were significant to them to include in this work." Forget-Me-Not consists of weblike constructions of portraits of soldiering sons and their mothers. "Some of these women were mothers in the physical sense; others gave to our culture in other ways." Ms. Watt's work draws from indigenous design principles and oral tradition. She uses a vocabulary of natural materials (stone, wool, cedar, cornhusks,) and forms (blankets, pillows, bridges) that are universal to human experience. Her large-scale works bring about an intimate focus.

More information about the exhibit at http://www.tamastslikt.org/exhibits.cfm

SATURDAY MAY 15th:
In conjunction with our May exhibition, "Cut-ups" by Gus Van Sant, PDX will sponsor transportation to the opening of "ONE STEP BIG SHOT: Portraits by Andy Warhol and Gus Van Sant" at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene.

REGISTER TODAY FOR YOUR SPOT ON THE RESERVED COACH BUS: http://uoalumni.com/jsma-bus. The registration fee is $10 and covers your round trip from Portland to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.

view article at: http://www.artforum.com/words/#entry25387

The Academy Award winning director Gus Van Sant is well known for his unparalleled vision in cinema, as well as his original screenplays. An accomplished artist as well, he is debuting two bodies of photographic work in Oregon this month. “Cut-ups” opens at PDX Contemporary Art, Portland, on May 5, and “One Step Big Shot: Portraits by Andy Warhol and Gus Van Sant” will be on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, from May 16 to September 5.

A multidisciplinary panel of Portland artists whose work has had a strong relationship to Donald Judd's. This will be a be a thought provoking discussion about intersecting influence, precedent, examples and the inevitability of where these artists differ from Judd. Of particular interest is the inter-artist note-comparing portion of this gathering as they all produce such divergent work.

Where : Pacific Northwest College of Art.1241 NW Johnson, Portland OR

Hosted by the Painting Dept Room 201

When : Saturday April 17th. 3 PM

Moderator: Jeff Jahn

On April 8th, James Lavadour will lead a discussion about Max Beckmann's oil painting The Mill, 1947. Lavadour notes that he is drawn to talk about this work in particular because of the personal meaning it holds for him. A self-taught painter, he is known for his expressive abstract landscapes that are influenced by movement through the mountainous region of northeast Oregon. Lavadour is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation where he lives and works in his studio, and where he helped found Crow's Shadow Institute. - CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION

Eva Lake will interview James Lavadour on KBOO Art Focus. Airs at 11:30am Tuesday March 30th

Hear it at the following address. http://kboo.fm/node/20446

Adam Sorensen and Joe Macca are included in he latest edition of New American Paintings.

Storm and Jessica at photographed at the opening of the 2010 Whtiney Biennial

Inspired by Werner Herzog’s book “Of Walking In Ice,” Sixteen artists explore themes of ice
and travel – through film, sound, installation, painting, photography, sculpture and writing.
For more information about the exhibit and the White Box, visit http://bit.ly/d0mOLr.
ªAnna Gray + Ryan Paulsen
Color in "Of Walking in Ice", by Werner Herzog, 2009
archival inkjet)
CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION