Monday, April 25, 2011

CALIFORNIA IS A GIRL I SAW DANCING ON A BRIDGE







California Is A Girl I Saw Dancing On A Bridge, the latest show at Gloss Gallery (4954 Ne 14th and Alberta) is the combined effort of Peter Hurley, Calvin Trezise, and Morgan Manduley. The project stemmed from an essay by Elizabeth Grosz in which she commented that "Art [is] the excessive composition of material elements that are always more than material." Like the fetish item: any item instilled by its owner with a value incongruous with its function, the art object is the manifestation of a cognitive value uncorrelated to the materials and means of its creation. With this in mind the artists each attempted to convey the meaning of: "California Is A Girl I Saw Dancing On A Bridge." Peter Hurley's drawings are message pulled up from his subconscious, day-by-day, layer-by-layer. "They are love letters from the edges of consciousness, a distillation of unforgotten memories. " Calvin Treazise's collages distort and reorganize pornographic images in order to represent the plurality of meaning and emotion such images conjure. By making use of the actual magazines and other pornographic material he is able to ground his work directly in the market. Finally Morgan Manduley's paintings and collage represent elements of both the other artist styles. The semiotics of a cowboy hat or waterfall drags into each peace the specificity of its unique meaning, which, in contrast with the other elements of the work capture the terseness, and intensity of our imagistic society.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

true stories

Nate Wey of the Portland-based music projects Souvenir Driver and Happy Prescriptions, organized a bi-coastal screening of David Byrne's True Stories between Brooklyn and Portland.  Adding to the awesomeness of this film, Nate organized a live score to all of the Talking Heads songs played throughout to be broadcasted between Portland and Brooklyn.  Basically, bands from both cities alternated playing while a live video projection on the wall opposite to the film showed the bands from either city to each other.  After the film, the event turned into a dance party/dance-off between Brooklyn and Portland.  Fun times.
For those who have not seen this film, True Stories is a fictional documentary of the lives of Midwestern Americans residing in an industrial Texas town.  I call this film a fictional documentary because Byrne depicts the lives and events of seemingly typical Midwesterners in a seemingly Midwestern town, but this typicality serves as an obvious veil to the magic operating within everything and everyone.  True Stories is a commentary on the technological movement in the 1980s, and takes on a child-like curiosity towards its growing influence.  Overall, the mood is a commingling of nostalgia, absurdity, sadness, comedy, and hope.  Also, John Goodman in his younger years...
Now for some videos.  I went a little youtube crazy, but they're all so good! The first two are a sample from the event, and the rest are some of the musical scenes from the film.  Sorry for the potential spoiler.






This event was hosted by Dysjecta Interdisciplinary Art Center, a non-profit org focused on the contemporary arts.

The bands that played were:
Portland
Alan Singley (http://myspace.com/alansingley)
Soft Paws (http://myspace.com/softpawsband)
The Woolen Men (http://myspace.com/thewoolenmen)
Souvenir Driver (http://souvenirdriver.com/)
Highway (http://myspace.com/highwaybob)
Dj Ashley Gowith

Brooklyn
Serica Ux (http://sericaux.bandcamp.com/)
The White Kittens (http://myspace.com/thegoldenkittens)
David Aaron Hurwitz (http://davidaaronhurwitz.bandcamp.com/)
Minerva Lions (http://minervalions.bandcamp.com/)
DJ Ambassador Falafel
 
Contact info:
Nate Wey - http://natewey.com/
Disjecta - http://disjecta.org/main.php

Monday, April 4, 2011

Platinum Musing




You walk into a room peopled by figurants. You look at a statue and it looks back at you. This is Platinum Musing, a new project by local Portland artist Elizabeth Jaeger. Elizabeth's work is a merger of the conceptual and the physical, "the concept is the form;" the practice becoming the theory. Her sculptures, which seek to capture the elegance of a gestural drawing, are like sketches. However, their physicality pushes them into a realm of immediacy that is as un-ignorable and confrontational as their subject matter. The statues are a meditation on the dance of body language that we engage in and with unconsciously daily; on the way we look at ourselves when we look at each other. The statues have an emotional presence that is undeniable and more that a little unnerving. They engage with the viewer in an anti-voyeurism that is at once challenging, enthralling and emotive.You can find more of Elizabeth's work at: www.elizabethjaeger.com