Thank you, Silvia Wolf, for finding these and showing us their importance. Thank you for hiding the small exhibition in the peace of the Mezzanine amidst the clutter of the Whitney's 2008 Biennial dregs.
I had forgotten how much this man's images mean to me. I believe this to be another good exhibition. It's currently on view.
Despite the debate raging presently over whether or not Portland's art scene is a site of hope or despair, twee crafts or conceptualism, disappointing in broad strokes or streaked with moments of impressive, even visceral, pleasure, the heavy parade of shows tromps on, some good, some bad, most unseen by even the most discerning townies, and here we are, right in the beginning-middle of a grift about Keith Boadwee's show, This Is A Low, at Rocks Box.
DISCLAIMER: this is maybe one of four art shows I've been to in Portland in the last few years.
SPOILER ALERT: Boadwee dies. Just kidding, but I did really like the show.
The San Francisco-based Boadwee is most famous for giving himself paint enemas and shitting on canvas, which is something that is perhaps not as shocking now as it was in the identity-politics-1990s. Still This Is A Low is super gay. Is that why I like it? It's hard to say. Boadwee's work is both funny and dick-based, without ever really crossing the line into "crass."
Example: California Souvenir (above) is a sex-toy memento of our nation's finest state. Abstract from purpose (sans butt), something vulgar can be a chotcke, or, if you read it politically, a celebration of California's relatively lax gay marriage laws.
Untitled (Piss In Mouth) is best. It's so well-executed that it's not even shocking, just beautiful. In many ways like that Serrano piece, Piss Christ, only this has the added benefit of being the most simple closed-circuit human system I've ever seen. Nothing wasted, right? Plus I love to imagine that fucked-up scenes like these are happening in sunny backyards all over California.
For years: I've had a very hard time getting excited about grifting work in Portland, OR.
It's not hard to explain.
However, Melissa Dyne's recent exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Craft [MCC] is good. It presents a problem, but also extends a hilarious answer to Portland's lack of interfacing with good, conceptual work.
Sure, a generalization: it's hard not to notice that there is something craft about much of the work created/exhibited in the NorthWest. This is the work that is on pose. This is even the work that comes to fruition in an attempt at social practice or whatever. It's all kind of boring and executed skillfully ineffective and desperate (in a bad way). When it comes to constructing a forum for exhibition of said work, what we get is often lazy (not krunk) and ill-informed or ill-lit.
It's only when something as stupid as showing slightly more conceptual work in a museum of craft that things start to get better. It's as if someone finally started asking questions about greater contexts or venues.
The dumb magnet was just turned off momentarily.
Dyne's work is a piece of glass sitting atop a pedestal. Straight up. Beautiful. Rhetorically, she frames it in lieu of a masculine gesture or test of strength of said glass. She's interested in its form's perceived change over the course of the exhibition. She interested in materials. The glass is of particular manufacture. It seems important to her. There is no danger in the glass harming an onlooker in any way. There's not much of a risk in general inherent in the work.
Yet, the real risk seems to be in relation to the extent to which MCC is able and willing to extend its interest to a piece of ephemeral nature. For an institution whose boutique competes with the size of the exhibition space, they surprisingly respect Dyne's piece, a lot. The best part of this exhibition is watching how MCC spent its energy making it all happen. The exhibition, although great, is totally small (one piece, some photographs, a web cam). For a show of this stature, MCC invested a noticeable amount of spunk: there's the opening and also a panel discussion, a noontime chat, lecture, artist talk, discussion group and (get this) exhibition tour. Also: a webcam.
It's incredible. I love it.
I hope that it is not the same ten people at every event. I hope that through the language of craft is Portland art able to find its audience.
After reading over one of the multiple well-printed texts on the exhibition, I found myself asking if MCC has a inferiority complex about the relationship between conceptualism and craft or if they (MCC) are just being crafty and skillfully promoting an exhibition, no matter what the scale or form.
Craft has a hard time understanding a gesture. This is why a craft museum exhibiting a calculated gesture is completely poignant. Maybe I'm being too generous to think that the artist's piece was meant to question the relationship between craft and conceptualism or--for that matter--between Portland's art and, like, Chihuly lovers. Maybe the fact that the piece is on display at MCC is a fluke and could have been exhibited at any number of mediocre institutions in this very small city.
I hope not. I think that Dyne is smart. I like this about the work. I like this about her past work and her lexicon for explaining it. I think that she is one of the few there in Oregon who is capable of turning the dumb magnet off.
Let's hope that there are more. Moreover, let's hope that other galleries and institutions there can respect the work like MCC does Dyne's.
