Portland State Art | Past Exhibitions

February 2009

Autzen Gallery

Mike Bray

Exhibition Dates: February 2 - February 26, 2009

Opening Reception: Monday February 7 | 6-8 pm

MK Gallery

Julie Perini

Exhibition Dates: February 2 - February 27, 2009

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 7, 2009 | 6-8 pm

January

Autzen Gallery

A Humble Unfettering | Micah Malone

Exhibition Dates: January 5, 2009 January 30, 2009

Opening reception for the artists: Saturday, January 10, 2009 | 6-8 p.m.

Micah Malone's exhibition "The Humble Unfettering" appears to be of a worker and shopkeeper posing as an artist. Malone presents several bodies of work, consistently evoking the ever-problematic question of how artists are supposed to make a living. The artist and writer

Andrea Fraser once wrote, Artistic practice, one may say, is entirely surplus labor; there is no necessity about it. And it is precisely for this excess, which wage-earning members of society expend without compensation, that artists are paid. To this end, Malone's work disrupts the popular notion that artistic integrity is inextricably linked to an avoidance of economic gain. It is the limitation of this antinomy that Malone seeks to be unfettered from.

MK Gallery

Firewood : New Paintings by Jason Traeger
Exhibition Dates: January 5, 2009, January 30, 2009
Opening reception for the artists: Saturday, January 10, 2009 | 6-8 p.m.

Statement by Jason Traeger
The point of this is to do something meaningful. The dead can't die and the living live forever by using language to suspend death in the sky of the future. What it all means, nobody knows. We talk about parts and the way the parts relate to the whole. If you pay attention-to-attention you'll have an even harder time deciding, how it is and just what it is this group of paintings might mean.

December 2008

Autzen Gallery

MIXED MAGIC Humor in Contemporary Art

Curated by: Matthew Green

Artists: Chase Allgood, Aaron Buechel, Derek Franklin, Tesar Freeman, Eric Gibbons, Jason Powell, Michael Reinsch, Sara Roach, Jesse Spears.

Exhibition Dates: December 5 - December 22.

Opening Reception: Friday, December 19, 2008 | 6-8 p.m.

The artists included in mixed magic all have humor in common. Its form and usage are mixed but the intent is very clear. This group of artists uses the angle of comedy and humor to approach more complex subject matter. After the initial laugh, this work forces the viewer to look into areas and issues they might not regularly consider. The gestures range from small and nuanced to brash and unapologetic. With the current climate of America and the globe, it is important to consider humor as a means of understanding and dealing with our surroundings.

MK Gallery

Mmm… Video…
A Contemporary Video Sampler

Exhibition Dates : December 1- December 22, 2008

The artists included in the exhibition use video as a contemporary tool to document performative sculptural actions within the landscape of the personal and the everyday.

November 2008

Autzen Gallery

Heidi Schwegler - Antistatic

Exhibition Dates: November 7 - November 27

Opening Reception: Saturday November 8, 6 - 8pm

Antistatic, Schwegler's first solo exhibition, presents an ensemble of sculptures in metal, plaster, resin, found objects, and digital media that ironically and eloquently documents her continuing engagement with personal catastrophe. Taken together, the associative context of this exhibtion is an imaginary fatal car crash en route from a child's birthday party. But the objects in the exhibition also reveals Schwegler's formal interest in depositing emotional cntent in mnimal forms.

Image: Choking Hazard, 27 cast plaster balloons, dimensions variable.

MK Gallery

BUNDT - San Francisco Art Institute current

graduate students: Tom Borden, Dave Bryant, Eric Gibbons, Sonja Meller, Kusum Nairi, Elizabeth Pedinotti.

Exhibition Dates: November 7 - November 29

Opening Reception: Saturday November 8, 6 - 8 pm