2006 oregon
biennial
Jennifer Gately, curator for Northwest
art at Portland Art Museum, took on a tall order when she
assumed her position earlier this year. In less than six
months, she had to scour the state for talented artists, sift
through some 700-plus portfolios, visit as many studios as
possible, then curate the area’s most important visual arts
exhibition, the Oregon Biennial. That Gately accomplished this
feat not only ably, but with finesse, bodes well for the
museum’s present and future.
This Biennial feels
expansive overall, despite its tight hang. Bill Will’s
21-foot-long sculpture, “Reconstitution,” takes partial credit
for this, greeting the viewer upon entry to the main gallery
with a languid horizontal line of scrap lumber fashioned into
a shape reminiscent of the space shuttle. Near Will’s piece is
an installation by the single-monikered up-and-comer known
as Houston: an office filing cabinet tilted to one side as
if wounded, its metal skin pierced by seven arrows, a net
of dream catchers up above, as if Native American warriors had
regrouped and attacked white-dominated corporate
America.
New media are well represented, including Jo
Jackson’s bubblegum-hued video piece, “History: The Complete
Drawings,” and a digital film collaboration between Andrew
Ellmaker and Mark Brandau called Pedestal, which recalls the
meta-aesthetic dialogues of Richard Strauss’ opera
“Capriccio.” Other highlights include Emily Ginsburg’s
intricate prints, Federico Nessi’s photographic transmutations
of mundanity into heroism, and Matthew Picton’s intricately
traced roadway drawings, which float in front of the wall
supported by tiny pins, casting shadows this way and that way.
The show’s most dramatic piece is Chandra Bocci’s “Gummi Bear
Big Bang II,” in which the rubbery candies, strung up on
wires, seem to hurtle outward towards the viewer. It would be
hard to imagine a more dynamic meeting of consumer culture and
cosmologic speculation.
There are a few misses among
the hits. Brad Adkins’ “Keys to my Parents’ House” seems
unaware that Marcel Duchamp covered this ground 89 years ago;
Lucinda Parker’s paintings are much Sturm und Drang with
little payoff; and Jesse Hayward’s chaotic “Large Pod Project”
aims for deconstruction but achieves only demolition. These
are exceptions, however, in a Biennial that largely succeeds
as a savvy survey of an increasingly vibrant
art scene.
Oct 2006 by richard
speer
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