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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Visual Art The Betty Bowen Finalist List Is Out

Posted by Jen Graves on Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 4:56 PM

Chris Engman

Eli Hansen (with Oscar Tuazon)

And it's weird. The artists competing to win Seattle Art Museum's big annual award of $15,000 and a show at SAM are Chris Engman, Eli Hansen, and Emily Gherard of Seattle; Bellingham's Barbara Sternberger; and Ellen Lesperance of Portland.

Sternberger (represented by Elizabeth Leach in Portland) and Gherard (represented by Francine Seders) are abstract painters—Sternberger layers, Gherard subtracts.

Lesperance's work sounds like it could be more interesting, in the tradition of past winner Josh Faught, who fearlessly brought together politics and textiles: current project is "drawings in which sweaters worn by female activists during direct action campaigns are re-patterned in gouache on paper."

Engman shows his photographs at Greg Kucera Gallery. While his individual images can be smart and compelling, I'm still unsure of his overall project as an artist. I'm not sure that if I came upon one of his photographs without his name attached, I'd know it was his. I'm still looking, but...now?

Hansen, represented by Lawrimore Project, is an art-world darling, and by an insane margin the edgiest artist on the list. People who hate insiders will hate him, and the Bowen committee in the past has gone out of its way to choose unusually, sometimes resulting in mere irrelevance. I hope that doesn't happen here.

Hmm.

The winner will be announced October 21.

Comments (2) RSS

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sternberger's paintings make my heart flutter a little bit and remind me of cy twombly, so i am crossing my fingers for her. on the other hand, in light of the recent shooting of john t. williams and the promise of a demonstration in protest of his unnecessary death, i find lesperance to be the more relevant and inspiring candidate. a juxtaposition of both would be downright beautiful. may the best woman/man win.

Posted by vincaminor on September 3, 2010 at 8:49 AM

The last nomination has ripped a chunk out of my faith in art as anything but a nepotistic popularity game and has rendered this esteemed award meaningless . Perhaps I am the only one who still fails to understand why this work is lauded as genius or even considered anything other than an example of what happens when you watch back to back episodes of "Breaking Bad." Maybe his brother wrote his proposal? He certainly made the work in the photo you provided.

Posted by Henry W. on September 15, 2010 at 6:32 PM