Arts Get Your Portland On
What’s going on in Portland this season makes Seattle look drab. In the complicated (and yes, I suppose, always only half-baked) equation of comparison that factors in the sizes of the cities and balances the cool gallery activity in Seattle against what feels like a fallowness at higher levels in Seattle (SAM circling the runway, no art fair or biennial in the city proper), I think Portland is coming out ahead at the moment.
I’m going to the lecture tonight at the Henry Art Gallery at 7 pm with a bunch of Portland artists and Reed curator Stephanie Snyder to add to the computation of my ongoing equation, and you should, too.
Coming up in P-town:
1. Pierre Huyghe show at PAM, opening Sept. 23. Thanks to Jeff Jahn at PORT blog, I saw this doubting account of Huyghe’s Tate show in London. It made me reconsider Huyghe’s Whitney Biennial albino-penguin extravaganza, which struck me as likable for its blend of archness and sentimentality, but maybe it was a shade too adorable. (What comes to mind as a not-dissimilar work, but with a dash of bracing discomfort, is Douglas Gordon’s 30 Seconds Text, which I recently saw at MoMA: a sheet of white text on a black background in a dark room is lit by one hanging bulb that clicks off every 30 seconds and leaves you in a small crowd standing in the dark. The text is the account of a French doctor who elicited reactions from a human head for 30 seconds after it was guillotined.)
2. The art fair at Jupiter Hotel, Sept. 29-Oct. 1. This is the third year for the fair, and there are galleries from around the country, and, well, I’m just looking forward to seeing what a Northwest contemporary art fair can be, since there is no other, and since I haven’t been before.
3. PICA’s fourth annual Time-Based Art Festival Sept. 7-17. I still can’t decide whether to go to this. The bulk of the vis-art events seem like highly missable lectures. Anybody want to convince me otherwise?
4. Alice Wheeler showing The influence of flowers on a melancholy day, a series of new photographs, at Chambers Gallery Sept. 7-Oct. 14. Any woman who makes both of these photographs interests me:
(By the way, the second is Jefferson Street at Broadway.)
Seattle's downtown library makes it a world class city. Portland's library doesn't even come close. Once we remove the onerous hight restrictions and promote dense urban living, we'll have the great restaurants, the vibrant nightlife and the interesting art scene that comes with density.