ANIMAL LAUGHTER: WILLIAM MATHESON'S PAINTINGS & CAPSULE REVIEW

Installation view of Animal Laughter, paintings by William Matheson & sculptures by Nick Norman

Young Demon, 2017, oil on canvas, 26 x 44"

Tamer, 2017, oil on canvas, 46 x 48"

Toe, 2017, oil on panel, 10 x 8"

Secret Joke, 2016, oil on panel, 10 x 8"

Night Lemon, 2017, oil on panel, 10 x 8"

John, 2017, oil on panel, 24 x 12"

Golden Crab, 2017, oil on panel, 10 x 8"

After the Orgy, 2017, oil on canvas, 58 x 28"

What goes on after an orgy is not something many of us have, or will ever experience. This mysterious scenario is the setting for William Matheson’s painting, After the Orgy. The long, vertical painting focuses the action at the top third of the canvas with two figures crouch together, hands meeting, perhaps in an act of exchange. Lying nearby are two animals, only halfway visible, a coyote or dog, and a ram, only identifiable by one curved horn. A leg also juts out into the frame with a flaccid penis resting on its thigh. An object, a painting palette rendered in various grey hues hovers directly below this scene. The bottom two thirds of the painting is occupied by a field of yellow, like a bleak and hot desert landscape. Towards the bottom of the frame another leg, this time from the calf down emerges. Both legs serve to remind us that more people, although not completely visible, are involved in this story.

After the Orgy is a work interested in framing, in revealing just enough information for a narrative to begin to unfold without telling the full account. The grey painting palette is an outlier in this narrative. Without it the work tells the story of another place and time, perhaps an ancient one in which animals and humans co-exist in a special way. The fantasy of a post-bacchanalia scene is complicated by the palette, which refers back to the very act of painting and the painter himself.
                                                                                                                                                                                        –Gabi Lewton-Leopold

ANIMAL LAUGHTER: NICK NORMAN'S SCULPTURES & CAPSULE REVIEW

Face Vase (Fem.), 2017, glaze on clay, 18 x 19 x 9"

Face Vase (Masc.), 2017, glaze on clay, 14.5 x 10.5 x 8"

Intimacy Vase, 2017, glaze on clay, 11 x 3.5 x 3.5"

Penetration Vase (Mask), 2017, glaze on clay, 4.5 x 4.5 x 5"

Rock Head Vase, 2017, glaze on clay, 6.5 x 6 x 6"

Two Face Vase, 2017, glaze on clay, 7.5 x 6.5 x 5"

Humanoid Table, 2017, glaze on clay and acrylic on wood, 31.5 x 11.5 x 47"

From the gallery desk, Nick Norman’s carved wood sculpture Humanoid Table appears to be just a thin, bright pink neck and bulbous head floating in space. The sculpture’s face emerges from the nothingness—red snakelike tongue slithering out, green ceramic eyes, and ears like chunks of molded shiny pink bubble gum. Each month this seat forces a frame around the work on view, obscuring the majority and focusing on only a fragment. Humanoid Table, like many pieces that have occupied this view in the past, has become that prized visitor who keeps the gallery sitters company. It offers a place for our eyes to wander and find respite from the computer screen, but it also only lets us in on part of the story. 

The sculpture takes on new life and meaning when seen in its entirety. No longer just a detached neck and head, Humanoid Table, is exactly that, a table. In fact the only human quality to the piece is the head and neck—the legs have no feet, and the table top is a flat slab. These attributes also make it a very functional object; for this exhibition it’s used to display two small ceramic sculptures also by Norman. Although Humanoid Table is far from human, it does illicit issues surrounding labor and oppression. This is in contrast to Norman's other humanoid sculptures which function as vessels—vases don't imply the same exertion of energy in the way tables do. What would it mean to use this table in your life, to bring it home and eat off of it, or place heavy objects on its back while the eyes stare out blankly? The human quality of Humanoid Table is perhaps most present when we see it as a piece of furniture working hard for its human owners.
                                                                                                                                                                                        –Gabi Lewton-Leopold

Installation view of Humanoid Table in Animal Laughter. Paintings by William Matheson.

LAST DAY TO STAMP ART PASSPORTS!

well-loved passports ready to be submitted for a chance to win $1600 to spend on ART!

Today is the LAST DAY to get your Art Passport PDX stamped and turned in to one of the eight participating galleries for your chance to win $1600 to spend on art! We've had such a wonderful time being a part of this innovative program developed by the amazing Jennifer Rabin. Thank you to everyone who has come through our door and engaged in thoughtful and inspiring conversations about art! We look forward to congratulating the big winner! 

ANNIE McLAUGHLIN'S SOLO SHOW TOP PICK IN THE OREGONIAN

Excited to see Annie McLaughlin's current exhibition Brushing Out the Brood Mare's Tale listed as an Arts Best Bet in The Oregonian last week! Just a few days left to check out Annie's show—on view through May 19th.

EMILY COUNTS FEATURED IN SEATTLE GROUP SHOW

Emily Counts' Basic Diagram (2016) now on view in Migratory Paths at Tashiro Kaplan Lofts in Seattle

Seattle friends! Check out Migratory Paths, a group exhibition featuring work by gallery artist Emily Counts and curated by Julie Alexander at the Tashiro Kaplan Lofts. The show features four Seattle-based artists whose work is "tactile, object based and engages the viewer’s body."  Exhibiting artists include:  Emily Counts, Marisa Manso, Tuan Nguyen, Dori Scherer. Gallery hours and more info can be found HERE.  

Upcoming hours are:
Open hours: Friday 1/27 and Saturday 1/28 from 12-4pm
Open for the First Thursday Art Walk 2/2, from 6-8pm
Closing reception: Saturday Feb 4th from 12-3pm

Tashiro Kaplan Lofts
300 South Washington

FRANCESCA CAPONE FEATURED ON THE CREATORS PROJECT

Francesca Capone's weavings on display in Writing in Threads

Thrilled to see artist & writer, Francesca Capone featured on The Creators Project. So looking forward to her upcoming February solo show at Nationale, Text means Tissue! 

JAIK FAULK OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY

Jaik with Wolf Mask (2016)

We are thrilled to welcome Jaik Faulk back to Nationale for, "I feel alright with azaleas around," his fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. Jaik left Louisiana last Monday to drive his new paintings to Portland. Somewhere around Texas and New Mexico, he somehow took a wrong turn, which led him through the darkest stretch he'd ever driven. For three hours he saw no lights, no towns, no sign of life. It was at that exact time on the radio that the media called the election for Donald J. Trump. With this in mind, I'd like to thank Jaik not only for making the 2500-mile trek but for these haunting and beautiful new southern paintings.
Please join us tomorrow Thursday, November 17 for the reception (6—8 p.m.)

PATRICK COLLIER REVIEWS WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN II FOR OREGON ARTSWATCH

Patrick Collier's review of Elizabeth Malaska's current exhibition is not to be missed. Enjoy the journey HERE. 

ELIZABETH MALASKA OPENING RECEPTION THIS SUNDAY!

Elizabeth Malaska, We Shall Speak and It Shall Be So and What We Say Will be All You Know, 2016, oil, Flashe, spray paint, and pencil on canvas, 22 x 18"

Two years in the making, artist Elizabeth Malaksa's powerful new body of work proves that painting can be a catalyst for action in the struggle against our global culture of patriarchal aggression. As Sarah Sentilles writes in her essay for the exhibition catalog:

Malaska has taken on the fraught feminist challenge of painting women without objectifying women. It is as if Picasso's models have come to life (perhaps they are Malaska's awakened dead?), marching out of his canvases in protest and into hers.

Please join us this Sunday, September 4 (3–6PM) for the opening reception of When We Dead Awaken II. 

CLOSING RECEPTION W/ AMANDA & ANASTASIA // POP UP W/ LASSO

Amanda Leigh Evans + Anastasia Greer 

Please join us this Sunday, August 28 (3–5PM) for Amanda Leigh Evans & Anastasia Greer's closing reception, as well as a special pop up with LASSO (NYC). It's your last chance to see this lovely show, and meet Myranda Gillies of LASSO who will be sharing her new collection of bronze & silver rings and chignon pins. 

New bronze chignon pins from LASSO! 

A RARE GLIMPSE INTO ONE MAN'S PASSION FOR CERAMICS

Cermaics galore in Steven Korff’s Brooklyn home. Credit: Dave Sanders for The New York Times

It's not so often that we get to peek into private art collections, and it's a rare treat when we get access even to photographs. We currently are fascinated by THIS NYT article about Steven Korff's obsession with collecting ceramics! 

VISIT OUR CURRENT EXHIBITION ONLINE

Sculptures by Amanda Leigh Evans & paintings by Anastasia Greer, on view through August 28, 2016

We hope you will have a chance to stop by our current exhibition and view these pieces in person. If you are not in Portland, images are now online. This week, the exhibition received a Highly Recommended Pick by Jennifer Rabin in the Willamette Week.

SAVE THE DATE: POP-UP EXHIBITION & PERFORMANCE WITH RIKKI ROTHENBERG

New work from Rikki Rothenberg

We are excited to announce a special pop-up exhibition with Rikki Rothenberg from August 29-30, 2016. Please save the date for the reception & performance on August 29 (6-8pm). More info below! 

RIKKI ROTHENBERG
Special pop-up exhibition August 29 & 30, 2016
Reception & performance Monday, August 29 (6-8 p.m.)

Nationale proudly presents a pop-up exhibition of new works by Rikki Rothenberg, an artist and therapist currently living in Los Angeles, CA. Between 2009 and 2012, Rothenberg had three solo exhibitions at Nationale and performed here numerous times, either solo or with her aesthetically-inclined, trans-pop-culture, dance-therapy performance group, Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. We are thrilled to welcome back this old friend of the gallery!

The first I noticed it was four years ago while driving through Big Sur. From the coastal highway cliffs these majestic dusty blues and sage greens, vibrant colors set against chalky burnt sienna – were both death and aliveness. I could sit here and stare at these colors, I thought to myself. I could paint this for years. Although I have not focused on landscape or representational work, I felt as though I understood what it meant to be called to the landscape of a place.

Two years later while out walking near my home, I spotted the corpse of a seagull on the inside of the chain linked reservoir wall. I passed that corpse for months. The coyotes seemed to not have wanted this one. It decayed over time, drying out, losing its fur and turning to bone. I would walk by searching for something in this form and wondering.

That awareness of death amidst life, it was profound and humbling. My work as a therapist and artist ultimately intertwine: holding awareness for pain and potential, loss and inspiration. Noticing a breeze by the movement of the leaves, the branches, the flowers. How they dance for our attention. Aiming to replicate the experience—giving space to your lungs, back, neck, jaw, shoulder, legs, and feet. I feel it in my body, that strength and resilience, imperfectly beautiful, organized, repetitive, diverse, and specific.

Rikki Rothenberg is a visual and performance artist. She offers psychotherapy in private practice in Pasadena, CA. Rothenberg earned a BFA in Sculpture from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and a MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She most recently presented a series of new artwork and a performance in a show entitled Divinjnowshoe supported by a residency at PAM. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.

AMANDA LEIGH EVANS & ANASTASIA GREER

Left: Amanda Leigh Evans, Bridle, 2016, terra cotta and underglaze, 5 x 3 x 7”
Right: Anastasia Greer, Yelly Delly (detail), 2016, acrylic paint on dyed raw silk, 10 x 8”

We are pleased to announce our August 2016 two person exhibition with recent MFA grads Amanda Leigh Evans (PSU/Art and Social Practice) & Anastasia Greer (PNCA/Visual Studies). Looking forward to sharing their beautiful work with you all. Special thanks to Blair Saxon-Hill & Curtis Knapp. Please join us on Thursday, July 28 (6—8PM) for the opening reception.

More info HERE

LUSI REVIEWS READ IT AND WEEP

We were all having such a hard time saying goodbye to Christian Rogers' Read It and Weep, that Lusi, our intern from Lewis & Clark, wrote a short review of it. Thank you, Lusi!

"Shock factor can be presented in a multitude of ways, in terms of color, form, style, and text, and in his most recent work Read It and Weep, Christian Rogers uses those qualities to fully encapsulate that feeling. It is easy to find oneself treading the fine line between identity and visibility, both within the self and the other, particularly as an artist. That notion comes to the foreground when a work becomes inherently grounded with a personal mark, a gesture, or your identity as an individual and an artist. Rogers harnesses this in-between ground to create jarring and evocative pieces that challenge not only his own convictions, but those of his audience as well.

Considering the current societal and artistic state of hyper mediation and disinterest with personalization, Rogers’ choice to paint his works on ephemera, the fleeting, rosy pages of The Financial Times is astute. The choice of medium grounds the work with a specificity of time and place, making it easily accessible, much like the accessibility and abundance of newspapers everywhere. With his shift from a more formalist and abstract style, to this current figurative and narrative style, Rogers also creates deeply meaningful and intimate works.

Tabletop Offering, 2016, monotype, silkscreen, and acrylic on newsprint, 26 x 22.5”

The perspective in these pieces is rich, both in a literal sense—such as in Avocado Offering where the foreground is drastically shifted in relation to the background—but also in a more symbolic manner. It is the responsibility of the artist to create the art, and the responsibility of the audience to take it in, and it all boils down to a matter of how a piece is approached. It is interesting to relate something so metaphorical as perspective (think: your lens as an audience/artist/human being) to something so visceral as sight. Yet, it would be difficult to function without either, and Rogers, aware of this dichotomy, creates images that pack a punch: attractive, memorable, and connected with universal sentiments.  

His work is more personal than universal in this particular series, yet it is still capable to subtly address little tid-bits of pop culture and current news, particularly considering the queer medium (read: the unconventional material and the non-heteronormative subject matter.) Even his smaller black and white collages offer a tasteful yet scandalous romp through the inner workings of Rogers’ creative process. And despite their absence of color and more apparent use of a mixed media technique, the pieces are equally bold.

Untitled II, 2016, Xerox and ink on paper, 9 x 12”

Much like the offerings of fruit and other objects in some of Rogers’ pieces, this series is an eager offering to his audience—Read It and Weep is sexy, it’s unconventional, and it’s a hit."
—Lusi Lukova

Kyle, 2016, monotype, silkscreen, and acrylic on newsprint, 26 x 22.5”

AMANDA LEIGH EVANS AT PROJECT 387

Photograph courtesy of Project 387

Amanda Leigh Evans, who will be showing at Nationale at the end of this month with Anastasia Greer, is headed to Project 387, an art and community-focused residency program in beautiful Mendocino County, California. Take a look at this interview with Amanda on Project 387's blog to learn about what's on her mind as she begins her residency (she also gives some great book recommendations!). 

CHRISTIAN ROGERS' "READ IT AND WEEP" OPENS TOMORROW (3-5PM)

Join us tomorrow, Sunday, June 26 (3–5PM), for a small reception...

Layered atop the ubiquitous pink pages of the Financial Times, the intimate scenes on view within Christian Rogers’ solo exhibition at Nationale, Read It and Weep, foreground the body as a marker of time and place. Nude men lie languid, caught in private reverie, or pose coyly behind colorful offerings of fruit and flowers. Meanwhile, glowing eyes and comical faces float above the pressing horizon line, overseeing such proceedings with detached judgment. Time stands still—a fraught memory preserved, a quiet daydream infinitely suspended.

Rogers’ romantic scenes are in this manner at once both personal and common. His figures reveal the mark of his hand while also embodying a broader history through the inky names and dates of the still visible newsprint. These afforded glimpses of text also encourage a playful sort of analysis within his collaged landscapes. This urge for interpretation is only heightened by the indexical nature of the initial monotype process, wherein the ink outlines are visibly smudged during the transfer to paper.

While Rogers’ work remains rooted in the abstract tradition, it also, in this figurative and autobiographical impulse, parallels a movement towards what critic Jerry Saltz recently posited as “the art of the first person.” The human body becomes an active site of critical discussion, better able to communicate thoughts and issues than through the passive canvases of abstraction. As with Read It and Weep, while we may not grasp every layer, we are still able to identify and connect with Rogers’ universal sentiments. 

BIO
Christian Rogers received his BFA from Western Oregon University. He currently lives and works out of New York, NY, where he is also pursuing his MFA at Hunter College. Rogers has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at Stumptown Coffee Roasters (Portland, OR), and has also shown at Galerie Protégé, New York, NY; Canon Gallery of Art, Monmouth, OR; the University of North Dakota; Mary Lou Zeek Gallery, Salem, OR; and the Portland Art Museum’s Miller Gallery. Rogers’ work can be found within the permanent collections of the Western Oregon University Student Union and the Denver Art Museum. He is a 2016 Kossak Travel Grant recipient at Hunter College.

CONGRATULATIONS TO WILLIAM MATHESON !

Sending our congratulations to William Matheson, who just completed his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University! We are excited to share a few new paintings from William, and looking forward to seeing what the future holds.

William Matheson, Remus and Romulus, 2016, oil on canvas, 32 x 46"

William Matheson, Back and Weathered Glove with Pearl, 2016, oil on panel,10 x 8" each

STUPID MAN IN THE WILLAMETTE WEEK

We enjoyed Jennifer Rabin's thoughtful take on Ty Ennis's current exhibition, Stupid Man, this week in the Willamette Week.

TY ENNIS // STUPID MAN

Stupid Man by Ty Ennis, on view through June 20, 2016 (images Mario Gallucci Studio)

Clocked In (Sam Sheepdog), 2016, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 11”

El de la rollona (Mama’s Boy // After Goya), 2016, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 11”

Iggy Papa, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8"

On view May 13–June 20, 2016
Opening reception Sunday, May 15 (3–6PM)
Closing reception & catalog release party Saturday, June 18 (5:30–7PM)

For his second solo exhibition at Nationale, Ty Ennis presents Stupid Man, a series of small black & white paintings that explore his present day-to-day life as an artist and young father with a full-time day job. Like most of his past work, they tell individual stories that are all part of a larger narrative. This new body of work, in its loose composition and black and white presentation, adds a more raw and stripped down layer to the ongoing monologue which has been the crux of Ennis’s work for the past twelve years. Although deeply personal and intimate, Stupid Man ultimately explores themes that inspire and challenge us all. 

Ty Ennis (born 1981, Spokane, WA) lives and works in Portland, OR, where he graduated from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2003 with a BFA in Printmaking. His work was previously included in the 2006 Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. He has exhibited across Portland at Nationale, Open Gallery, New American Art Union, Pulliam Deffenbaugh, and the Art Gym at Marylhurst University; in Seattle, WA, at Prole Drift; and in Los Angeles, CA, at William H Bothy. Ennis is the recent recipient of a Project Grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and a Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission. He joined Nationale as a represented artist in the spring of 2013.

This project was funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council.