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!
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!
Excited to see Jessi Klein's You'll Grow Out of It reviewed by one of our customers in The Rumpus. Stop by the shop to get your copy. Perfect, funny summer reading.
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.
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.
Gallery artist Delaney Allen's photography was casually referenced in Elle Malaysia recently. Nice!
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
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”
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!).
We had a chance to catch up with Christian Rogers about his new work now on view in Read It and Weep. Thanks to Christian for his honesty and humor!
Christian Rogers // Read It and Weep on view at Nationale through July 25, 2016
Gabi Lewton-Leopold: Can you talk about your move from abstract collage to this current, figurative series?
Christian Rogers: My shift from abstract to figurative was a result of about a year of reflecting on what I was "really trying to express" versus something much less obscured or hidden by abstract gestures. I've always made work about men and my interactions with them but they were heavily distorted and deconstructed to the point they were no longer recognizable. I've realized that I was more concerned with formalist ideas at the time and I needed to find ways of making the content more visible. So naturally, bringing the subjects to the foreground solved some of my issues. I'm still trying to find that in-between ground.
GLL: Do you feel like the "abstracted gestures" of past work served as a protection of sorts? And with these more narrative pieces, they are freer but at the same time more vulnerable?
CR: Oh totally! When looking back I realize I was using abstracted forms in an attempt to avoid talking about what I really wanted to make work about. At the time I thought I was using them as a way of luring people into the painting before telling them what it was about. Since then, I feel much more open about who I am and am more connected to my subjects. I'm still trying to work through a lot of these topics. Like, how personal do I make it? How literal do I make it? Is a title enough?
To Know Him Is to Love Him, 2016, monotype and acrylic on newsprint, 22.5 x 26"
GLL: You mentioned before that you took a break from painting to focus on drawing before making this series. What brought that on and how did it influence this new work?
CR: I took a break from painting because I found myself putting the cart before the horse, which often resulted in a lot of stress and anxiety about painting. So, for a semester I chose to only draw and limit my materials. Not having to worry about materials or cost or "what if I fuck this giant painting up" was a relief. I could make lots of mistakes and not worry. Drawing also allowed me to be fast and free. The small drawings in the show are the most playful and least fussy. Some of them are my favorite. I also incorporated some collage elements into them. They serve like writing prompts for starting a drawing. I've most recently started taking the drawings and silkscreening parts of them to start a painting, like in Kyle for instance. I'm playing more with building the casual drawings into the paintings. We will see where it goes.
Untitled VI, xerox and ink on paper, 12 x 9"
Kyle, 2016, monotype, silkscreen, and acrylic on newsprint, 26 x 22.5"
GLL: Can you speak about your first experience working with the Financial Times as your medium? What intrigues you about that specific publication and how it responds to your work both in subject matter and formally?
CR: I first used the Financial Times a few years back. I found a couple of issues in Portland. They no longer distribute to Portland for some reason. I was using it as a surface to make abstract drawings using oil stick. Besides the pale pink color, I liked how as a material it inherently had tangible information that could ground whatever I created in a specific place and time. Since I was making abstract work at the time, I liked how it anchored my marks in specific time. When looking at a drawing, you were also looking at the events of a specific day. I could know when something was made within a week of its creation. Now when I use it, I still like thinking about how there are countless, sometimes world altering, events happening parallel to me making my work. It's a humbling thought. There is also a serendipitous quality to working on the Financial Times. In Slip It to Me you can see the title of the piece appears as part of an ad. It's a little sexy and a little vulgar. I like it.
Slip It to Me, 2016, monotype and acrylic on newsprint, 26 x 22.5"
GLL: Yes, I love that "slip it to me" moment! Because of how you incorporate the newspaper, you are able to appropriate the language and visuals of pop culture and current issues in a way that feels, as you put it, "serendipitous" and not forced. It's also humorous at times. Can you talk about Donald Trump and this series? I see him in Slip It to Me as he appears in the paper, arm lifted in a “Heil Hilter” stance.
CR: Ya, the newspaper is a great way to add pop culture/current events into the mix. It's whimsical and a little scary at times. And Trump, he's everywhere! He's popped up many times in the paintings—often getting painted out because he drives me crazy. In Slip It to Me he lays on the table like an object, maybe like a little statue. He's like some of the objects in the paintings with table "offerings" that I don't like, like the avocado in Pink Man with Avocado Offering. The objects were kinda metaphors of things someone could offer you physically and spiritually, some of them desirable and some not so desirable.
GLL: Yes, about the “offerings,” I'm really interested in how you use objects—flowers, fruit, vessels—as symbols. Do they all hold specific meaning? If so, do you borrow their significance from art history?
CR: The objects and flowers can be read as part of a long history of this sort of imagery in painting. Specifically, I think of Dutch still life painting. In those paintings—I'm specifically thinking of Wybrand Hendriks's Flower Still Life in the Portland Art Museum's collection—every flower has a meaning, every fabric, all the way down to the one dirty fly perched on one of the flowers. It's so voluptuous and sensual, but then there's a dirty fly there to fuck up your hot moment with this painting. And perhaps the realist part of the painting is the nasty fly just hanging out. I love it! So gross! In my work, I'm not THAT invested in a universal meaning, but rather a mix of gestural meaning and symbolism. The meaning is more personal than universal. Like how a cup of water means life, flowers mean sex or body is more universal, whereas the avocado is more personal. I hate avocados.
Wybrand Hendriks, Flower Still Life, 1810/1830, oil on panel, Portland Art Museum Collection
GLL: How about your figures? They appear like symbols in how they are almost "unspecific" or anonymous. Do you feel that way about them, or are they more individual than that for you?
CR: Most of the time the figures are someone specific, but as they get worked over, printed painted and drawn, they become more like a composite of men. You can see that many of the marks from the painting of "Kyle" are borrowed from the earlier drawing. The initial small drawing/collage was based off of a photo someone sent me. I then merged part of the drawing with the painting using a silkscreen method because I thought the long torso was similar to Kyle's body type. But like in Avocado Offering, the figure is obscured to the point that he reads more like a universal man. And like in life, some guys are more memorable than others, or the idea of them is better than the details.
GLL: Can you talk about how you think about and approach perspective? I'm specifically thinking of the wonderfully skewed perspective in Avocado Offering.
Untitled (Pink Man with Avocado Offering), 2016, monotype and acrylic on newsprint, 22.5 x 26"
CR: Perspective is something I've been thinking about a lot. Your questions about the table is a consequence of how I build images. I still utilize collage. Sometimes in paper form as well as digital. The collages sometimes create funky perspectives and sometimes when I work digitally the bodies become more elongated and awkward. In both situations, I think it's more about depicting the psychology of space or someone. It's meant to come across as awkward or "not right." Both the forms and color are meant to have more visceral effects than contain literal information.
When people ask me about "perspective," they are often concerned with how I position myself to my subjects. I often make work in 2nd or 3rd person. It's often the perspective of an artist looking at their subjects or the perspective of a camera man. IDK how I would ever paint myself in 1st person. That might be getting too personal. Lol.
GLL: Haha, maybe it’s something to experiment with! My last question is about NYC. I also left Portland to study in New York, and found that the city had a profound impact on how I view and think about art. How has the city shaped and influenced your work and painting practice? What are your favorite and least favorite things about NY?
CR: Moving to NY was a VERY humbling experience. Obviously Portland and NY are VERY different. In some ways better and some ways worse. But as far as my work goes, moving to NYC and doing grad school at Hunter was a great way to shake up what I was making in Portland. I feel like after a few semesters, I've learned to become more critical of my own work and I started to question my own motives and process. Before NY, I think my work was very linear and there was a clear start with a clear finish when making it. Now, I find myself reworking ideas over and over until I get sick of them.
This might sound strange, but I feel like I'm living more. It's nuts here. I am always on the go, seeing things, meeting people, working. This pressure-cooker type environment has done a lot for me in terms of production and energy. It has also caused me to go prematurely grey! But all of it is worth it. The opportunities are endless and so are the boys ;-)
And as far as school goes, I've been very blessed to work with artists like Carrie Moyer, Drew Beattie and AK Burns. They have done a lot in terms of shaping how I look and approach making work. I think the grad school setting has made me a lot more skeptical of art. I tend to not only question what it is I do and why, but also every other artist making work. As art becomes more commodified, I feel it's necessary to question all and everything being made and consumed, especially in NYC.
My least favorite things about NY are: rats, weekend train rides to Brooklyn and litter! Yuck! That's one thing Portland does not put up with! But my favorite things about NYC...
1) The food here is amazing.
2) The history that is all around you when you live in a city that is a couple hundred years old. Time is a very humbling thing to think about.
3) The amount of amazing museums and quality shows that are open to the public. I see amazing art every week and it's great what that energy does for your mental health. And lastly,
4) The access to artists. You can reach out to almost anyone here and they'll respond, big or small. For a city that can feel so lonely at times, there is also a great sense of community if you know what you're looking for.
Untitled III, 2016, xerox and ink on paper, 9 x 12"
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.
Portland, do you see that single place in town where you can come and get a copy of Cakeboy? The magazine was recently featured on It's Nice That for their June "Things".
Issue #03 features FAKA, Colby Keller, Kalup Linzy, Rhys Ernst, Shivum Sharma and more.
A piece from Delaney Allen's 2012 series, Painting a Portrait now on view at 516 ARTS in New Mexico.
Delaney Allen's photographs are currently on view in Albuquerque, NM, in Future Tense at 516 ARTS. This is part of the PhotoSummer 2016 exhibition programming in partnership with the University of New Mexico Art Museum. Take a look at this great interview co-curator of the exhibition, Stefan Jennings Batista, recently did with Delaney about his work and participation in the show.
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
DELANEY ALLEN, 2.1 (Documentation of Landscape), 2016, archival pigment print, 30 x 20"
This is one of my favorite pieces of Delaney's because it is simultaneously so simple and so complex; I love the bright light in the foreground contrasted with the deep blues and shadows of the back. It is calm while maintaing the eerie and fantastical nature of Delaney's work.
Tote bag by MODERNWOMEN LA, modeled by Emma
My go-to carry all tote that packs a punch. A perfect statement piece with some pretty empowering text on the front. We are nothing without feminist art!
Maggie Nelson, Bluets, Wave Books, 2009
"I have enjoyed telling people that I am writing a book about blue without actually doing it."
I'm on a roll here with blues and gender and Maggie Nelson's Bluets combines the best of both worlds. For me, this is one of those books that I picked up once and will carry with me for the rest of my life and am so happy we carry it in our shop. A must read.
Gallery artist Ty Ennis discusses his current series Stupid Man with Assistant Director, Gabi Lewton-Leopold. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Ty!
Installation view of Stupid Man, on view through June 20, 2016
Gabi Lewton-Leopold: In this new series, there’s a move away from your colorful works on paper that are often very detailed, to more abstract, mainly black and white acrylic paintings on canvas. What advantages did the latter medium give you? Why the shift in style and medium?
October 7th // Man Crushing the Dead, 2014, acrylic on paper, 15 x 11"
Ty Ennis: The advantage of the black and white acrylic was that I was able to work more loosely and I didn’t have to make color choices. With a small child and next to no studio time, I couldn’t rationalize spending hours simply deciding what colors I might use for a composition. I had also decided I was going to get back to basics with this work. I mean, High School basics, when painting was simple and free and fun and all the supplies were supplied by the school. I took it back even further and limited myself to just black and white. It was liberating. I was finding myself at work looking at the clock just dying for it to be time to clock out so I could get home and paint. I don’t remember that ever being the case with my studio practice. Art has always been a difficult endeavor for me. A real struggle. The style and medium choices allowed me to get more work out quicker, and I had agreed with myself to not be fussy but to just be myself, and if the piece I made on any given studio day was a keeper, but had some faults, we’d look at it later on and see if it was still needing adjustments. Almost every piece was set aside and in the end, I had grown to love each and everyone of them just as they were. This was a truly magical studio experience for me. Like I said, liberating.
GLL: What was the first painting you made for this series?
TE: The first painting I produced for this show was a portrait of Ken Griffey Jr. It did not make the show, but served as my studio mascot.
The Kid, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8"
GLL: I find something deceptively effortless (and I mean this in a positive way) about the work, a looseness, a sense of freedom. But when you really examine closely, you can feel how thoughtful and well-crafted they are. For example, the heron in The Clairvoyant. It’s composed of loose brush strokes but it’s so well-rendered and captures the serene and quiet beauty of the bird. Or, the cleverly obscured rabbit holding a tray in Zip's Drive In. What's your process like? Do you make sketches, and plans for each painting or is it more spontaneous?
The Clairvoyant (Blue Heron), 2016 , acrylic on canvas, 16 x 12”
TE: I never do sketches and I don’t say that in a “I don’t need to” sort of way. I often find that if I sketch something out, I have difficulty in reproducing it and get all caught up in loving the sketch more than the piece itself. So, I avoid it completely. The heron came easy, the rabbit was the result of absolute frustration. So, I guess I approach each canvas with my fingers crossed.
Zip's Drive In, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8"
GLL: Does your printmaking background inform your painting practice? Do you think there’s a relationship between the two or do you see them as completely different methods? (also interesting that you painted a version of the Goya print)
Goya, Capricho No. 4: El de la rollona (Nanny's Boy), 1799, etching, aquatint, drypoint
TE: Printmaking absolutely informs my work and even though I haven't set foot in a print studio in more than a decade, most of what I know about art I learned from printmakers: Tom Prochaska, Yoshi Kitai, Jayson Wynkoop, and Emily Ginsberg.
I work in layers like a screen printer and from light to dark like an etcher. In the past when working on paper, it has been difficult, with ink, to go back in and rework things, pen or brush moves are much more deliberate. With acrylic on canvas, I feel I have unlimited moves. A painting is never ruined and prints so easily are. You go back into a drawing or print and paint something out and you just highlight your imperfections. Some of these paintings in this show are paintings on top of paintings. Hell, Iggy Papa is a painting on top of a painting on top of a painting on top of a painting. And yes, I love that Goya print so much! It’s an example of a perfect piece of art in my opinion. It resonates with me deeply and on many levels and since the first time I saw it back in a history of printmaking class I took with Morgan Walker at the Gilkey Center at PAM fifteen years ago, the image has just been clawing at me. I finally let him/her out. There are a few “covers” in this show. El de la rollona is one of them.
El de la rollona (Mama’s Boy // After Goya), 2016, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8"
GLL: Can you talk more about your process for deciding on specific imagery for this series? We’ve got the gingerbread man, Sam Sheepdog, Iggy Pop, and so forth. Do they represent important influences on your life? Do you see them as symbols or relics from your past?
TE: I said earlier that I don’t do sketches. Instead, I take a lot of notes, I write things down on post-its and type ideas into my phone. With that information, I start to see patterns and recognize reoccurrences. From there the information starts to grow and become more concrete in my mind and I start to visualize how things “might” look. It all starts to act as a daisy chain, where the images/ideas begin to play off of one another and start the process of becoming one unified composition/show. There is always a common thread. With that being said—and hopefully not further confusing the matter—the characters I chose to present are all characters I have a deep connection to. They could have all be titled as Self Portraits really. I did a series of gingerbread man drawings a few years back for a project with Matthew Kyba.
Untitled, 2014, graphite and ink on paper, 7 x 5"
They really did feel like self portraits at the time, so naive, dumb, waving, and vulnerable. I was feeling really bad about myself at that time and this little figurine May had bought me was really mirroring my emotions. Sam Sheepdog is an old Looney Tunes character that clocks-in each day to go head-to-head with Ralph Wolf, who is essentially Wile E. Coyote. They greet each other in the morning... ”Mornin’ Sam” “Mornin’ Ralph”... and then put on their daily performance, Sam continually catching and punishing Ralph, in his attempts to get the sheep Sam protects. At the end of the day, they clock out and a new dog and a new coyote relieve them. I was thinking a lot about work here and the way in which I show up every morning as my “work-self” and put on a performance of sorts. I play a dumbed-down version of myself day-in and day-out, so I can come home to my family and my studio where I can actually be my true self again.
Clocked In (Sam Sheepdog), 2016, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 11"
GLL: This new series also has many obscured faces (Iggy Papa, La Buffoon, Cowboy Shadows, El de la rollona, Clocked In (Sam Sheepdog), etc). Your subjects almost become more mysterious, and perhaps less specific because of this. Can you talk about your thinking behind the faces in the show?
TE: Once again I’ll refer to the Ken Griffey Jr. piece that is not in the show. In the very early stages of this body of work, I was working on drawing Ken Griffey Jr.’s Upper Deck rookie card from memory. An exercise to simply get me back into practice, I drew a handful of them in ink on paper and then decided that I liked the image so much I should paint a final version on canvas. I did this portrait in black and white and then hung it on the wall of my studio. I had put so much time and energy into this one piece that I kind of returned to point A and really had no idea what direction the work might go. Portraits of childhood heroes or portraits of present day heroes? I did a large colorful portrait of Charlie Parker on paper and another portrait of Griffey playing in the field and again, was right back to point A. I was listening to Lou Reed’s The Bells a lot in the studio at this point and decided that I was going to do a portrait of Lou Reed from that record’s cover, straight up in black and white just like the Griffey one. I hung it on the wall next to the Griffey painting and I had my first two paintings. Only problem being, they had NO soul. I kept coming back, seeing these paintings and just kind of dying of boredom. I took the Lou Reed painting and masked his face behind fishnet. I kind of liked it. I kind of hated it. I got frustrated and just ruined it. I blacked it out. I thought back to my last show, JKJKJK, and remembered the crude figures from that show and some of the textures I was getting from working loosely, and a light bulb went off. I remembered how much I loved working on them as well and decided that was the direction I was going to take with this work.
Man with Monkey (L) & Spanker (R) from JKJKJK, 2012
I painted Lou Reed’s face in this fashion and he was no longer Lou Reed, he was a reflection of my own frustrated self and the painting now had enormous weight and things came very freely. The plan became to be myself. I’m not a portrait painter. I’m not an illustrator. I’m a painter. With this show especially, I wanted to be a painter. I took the Griffey piece down from the wall and extracted a whole tube of violet paint across his eyes, the eyes that I had just spent hours getting perfect. And somehow, it brought the dead painting to life. For me, at least.
La Buffoon, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8"
GLL: You often draw imagery from your childhood growing up in Spokane, WA. How has it influenced this series?
TE: Spokane is a merit badge I wear. The heron, the cowboy, the buck skinner, the fast food rabbit, they are all icons from my own personal experience. My own upbringing. In talking about Sam Sheepdog and my day job where I put on this act of portraying my work-self, what comes with that is also this realization while working with large groups of people that I don’t have many common interests with my co-workers, we don’t recall the same things from our youth from living on the same earth for roughly the same amount of years. I’ve seen so many instances where two, three, four, five people just mesh. You set them at a table and they have these long conversations where their recollections from childhood are almost synchronized. I’ve come to realize that with my co-workers I like some of the same music, but I can never remember the movies from the 80’s and 90’s that are quoted, I can’t join in on the Star Wars conversations that happen, far too often by the way, and I can’t relate with most people’s travel stories. My childhood was spent in Spokane and inside my own head, daydreaming, wandering. I had interests of course, I skateboarded and played baseball and ice hockey, I read, listened to music, I watched movies, but I didn’t retain much from any of these things. I could write a novel about listening to Pearl Jam Ten in sixth grade or Wu-Tang in the eighth and all of the places in which I listened to them, but I can’t recite more than three or four lines from either, and I listened to them a lot. A lot. And Wu-Tang I still do. Same goes for Elliott Smith and his albums later on into college. From all of these experiences, what I have retained are the experiences themselves. Little vignettes where the music served as a soundtrack. That doesn’t translate into a universal conversation that you can bring to a table, it’s way too personal. This has isolated me. It has made me unique, I suppose, but ultimately, lonely. Spokane was my WORLD. I can’t help but return to it when I sit down and try to process things or express myself. It’s the stage everything played out on for me. I know myself. I know Spokane. I don’t know much else. I think a person’s place of upbringing is monumentally important. I recently read that Ingmar Bergman once stated that regardless of where he was born and raised he would still be the Ingmar Bergman we know. That’s bullshit.
GLL: Much of this work and your past work, is deeply personal and seems to grapple with ideas and perhaps misconceptions on what it means to be a MAN. How does masculinity and the struggle for finding that identity play into this work?
TE: It’s a tough subject for me to talk about. That’s probably why it comes up in my work so often. My work is where my most intimate and personal conversations take place and they’re still encrypted. I’m 35 years old and I’m still learning how to speak. I read a lot, I surround myself with our language, I try to immerse myself in it so that I can express myself clearly and eloquently. I want to SPEAK. But, I just trip on my tongue. I think I grew up with a learning disability that I was completely unaware of. I don’t have a clear and tight grasp on things. So much of being a MAN is being able to communicate clearly, stand up for yourself, set good examples, and be strong in the process. To inspire. Then there’s this other aspect where you have to be physically strong and good with your hands and not make mistakes. You have to be witty and on point. A good MAN can’t ask questions. He has to know the answers. He’s gotta be in tune with nature and know how to tie all of the knots. Set up a camp. Dig himself out of snowdrift. Swim himself to safety. He has to be good with power tools and automotive shit. He has to protect himself and his family and not show sweat. He’s gotta be prepared for the big one. He has to fend off intruders. The list goes on and on and on. And each of these things has to be handled with the utmost confidence. My understanding, is that in our society, if you’re not into certain things and don’t know certain things, then you’re not a man, and I’m left feeling unmanly all of the time. My masculinity is challenged daily. I’m still getting bullied at 35 on a regular basis. My work is from the perspective of the flashlight holder.
GLL: I think that comes through because along with that idea of masculinity there is also a softness, a tenderness and even a sense of humor to this series that seems to counter that need to be a “tough guy.” It also feels personal and universal at the same time.
TE: We need to laugh more. We need to laugh at the “tough guy” more. Fuck the tough guys. It has gone too far, they’ve had their turn. My daughter lately has been telling me, “Be happy, Papa!” I have no idea where she got this, but seriously, happiness needs to be the universal theme. It’s got to be.
GLL: There are big vinyl letters on the wall that say your name and then “Stupid Man” below. Can you talk about the title Stupid Man? Is it meant to be self-deprecating?
TE: Yes and no. I have low self esteem, I’m insecure, I suffer from social anxiety, I grew up wetting my bed and sucking my thumb. I was called a pussy and a fag a lot as a child and even when I first moved here to Portland in ’99 I had people yell, “fags” at my roommate and I from their car window as we walked down the street. I’ve never felt masculine or manly in the slightest. I have always been afraid of men and feel that my work comes from my feminine side. I guess none of this has to do with being “stupid,” but it has to do with being misunderstood and judged. I mentioned earlier that I often trip over my tongue. I am not comfortable with the words that come out of my mouth a lot of times. I feel I poorly represent myself with my speech. I don’t have a large vocabulary and my dictionary app is my best friend. You would be surprised by some of the words I’ve looked up over the last six months. I know that I am not, but I often feel stupid. My geography, world history, and politics are bad, I am working on these things now at 35, because none of it stuck in my teens. I feel behind. In addition to all of this, my heroes are intellectual, activist types. The ones that stand up for themselves, liberate themselves. Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, who both appear in this show for example. They embrace their femininity and give the middle finger to the Man’s man. Last summer, when I had finally figured out where this show was going and what themes I was working with, when I was actually able to envision how this work might appear, May and I were at our friends’ house for dinner and The Bells came on. It begins with the track Stupid Man. A beautiful song about a deadbeat dad that only Lou Reed could write. I remember as it came on telling May that my show was going to be titled Stupid Man, and we just laughed.
GLL: You showed two studies or “failed” paintings during our group studies show in February. One was of a woman (though the canvas was sliced down the middle) in a long dress and heels. After thinking about that piece I realized that there are no images of women in the final show. Was that a conscious decision to remove the female subjects to focus on notions of masculinity?
Study for Woman with Black Gloves, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 11"
TE: You know, the figures in this show with their distorted faces and sexually cross-dressed attire are for the most part sexless. Only the buck skinner is a man, and that piece is from the perspective of the deer really, or the sickened child as the man’s spectator. In Cowboy Shadows, the real protagonist is the shadow. Those paintings are apologies of sorts to my father. And in other ways to my girlfriend and our daughter. I’m sorry I can’t be the Man that they might sometimes call upon. I’m sorry I was never able to impress my father or get his attention and that, as a result, that relationship fell flat. That my daughter has no grandfather as a consequence. It’s okay though, I’ve learned to live with it. Those conversations with her are going to be very difficult though. The figures in this show, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, they seem to have similar takes as mine on the subject of masculinity and I don’t think they would take any offense as being seen as women. There are no MEN in this show.
Mick Rock, Bowie, Iggy and Lou, Dorchester Hotel, 1972
If you haven't yet had a chance to catch Stupid Man, stop by this Saturday 5:30 - 7:00 for a mellow closing reception. We will also be releasing NATIONALE19, the exhibition catalog which includes an essay by Daniel Kine.
STUPID MAN by DANIEL KINE
Simplicity involves unburdening one’s life. Errors, oversights, the language of critics. In defining a painting, one takes shots at defining the human experience. Failure, imperfection, hindrance. An honest painting is a reproduction of life, not a reproduction of art. Memory, object association, stories overheard or remembered or interpreted—often void of color or ostensible detail.
The shift away from the perceptual, or the ability to interpret or become aware of something via the senses, is a modicum of insight into the 21st century experience. The twenty-four hour news cycle, the forty-hour work week, the filtered fifteen-second video. One is just as likely to witness footage from a plane crash on a pay-screen in the backseat of a taxi or on a muted television in a laundromat as they are to encounter an acquaintance in the street. And yet a distortion of reality does not take away from what is real. Perception is not malleable, even if reality is.
The following collection of paintings were produced loosely, in a rapid manner, with very few materials. They represent development via the act of unburdening; adaption via restraint. Not a return, but a progression. A demonstration not in simplicity, but restriction. Their lack of color and ostensible detail leave one with the impression of an almost Eastern discipline. Pieces like The Clairvoyant (Blue Heron) and Buck Skinner exhibit an interrelation of shade and shape that seem to speak more to cognizance and memory than to image. And yet nothing is lost here. Rather, something veritable is gained through the artist’s demonstrable control. Comedy (Grandma’s Laughing Eskimo) & Tragedy (Grandma’s Crying Eskimo), more like found objects or abrupt memories, serve as an almost Proustian aide to remembrance or loss. The dreamlike quality of interpretation. The intimacy of subjectivity.
As a whole, Stupid Man is a mingling of veiled emotions, representations and elusive, uneasy figures. Ennis’ subjects are an analysis of memory, experience. Representations not of subjects or forms or applied methods, but of sentiments. The impetuosity of youth. The obstruction of time. The burden of resolve.
DK
New York, May 2016
Daniel Kine is the author of the novels Between Nowhere and Happiness (2009, Smallhand Press) and Up Nights (2013, Ooligan Press). He was born in Toledo, OH, in 1984, and studied philosophy and literature in San Francisco, Mexico City, Guatemala, and Portland, OR. His writing has appeared in several publications, including Modern Review, Q Poetry, Pathways, and Indie Literature Now. Kine lives in Brooklyn, NY.
This essay was commissioned for the exhibition catalog accompanying Stupid Man and funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
Our current exhibition, by PNCA alumnus Ty Ennis, on the college's website.
Artist Elizabeth Malaska is featured on the Oregon Arts Commission's website following her 2016 Individual Artist Fellowship. Congrats, Elizabeth!
We enjoyed Jennifer Rabin's thoughtful take on Ty Ennis's current exhibition, Stupid Man, this week in the Willamette Week.
