CHARLIE SALAS-HUMARA // Carts Behind the Jewel Osco

On view December 3, 2022–January 16, 2023
Opening reception Saturday, December 3 (2–4 p.m.)

Nationale is pleased to present Carts Behind the Jewel Osco, an exhibition of new paintings by Portland visual artist and musician Charlie Salas-Humara. In Salas-Humara’s work, letterforms, printed wallpaper, and simple line drawings emerge from thick layers of opaque white. Like hastily covered graffiti or a window sealed shut by a landlord’s careless paint job, there is evidence of a message or an opening, once accessible, now made obscure by the passage of time. The paintings’ chalky pastel colors and impastoed surfaces, paired with titles like Hidden Alleyway and In the Denny’s Parking Lot, evoke what the artist calls “in-between spaces” – seemingly insignificant places that function as washed-out backdrops or containers for distant memories.

The paintings in Carts Behind the Jewel Osco begin with what Salas-Humara describes as an attempt to recreate memories or feelings so faded that they have become almost illegible. “I don't try to unearth them, but witness them in their natural state,” he says, “like scraps of in-between spaces of no significant meaning.” The urge to paint, in some form, these hazy, liminal moments came in part from a sensory shift due to recurring bouts of hearing loss. “After losing my hearing these in-between space memories got really strong and weird, and for some reason I paint them, or paint the feeling of them.” The resulting works repurpose the debris of the everyday to build spaces for undefinable feelings and fragments of times gone by. 

Charlie Salas-Humara is a painter and musician living in Portland, OR. Self-taught, he began working with acrylic, oil, charcoal, and collage as a means of expressing his love of dance and music through art. Salas-Humara has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, Russia, and China (with The Planet The and under the moniker of Panther), and has shown his visual work in Portland, OR, Los Angeles, and New York. His solo exhibition at Ditch Project (Springfield, OR) is forthcoming (spring 2023).

PRESS & MORE
Charlie Salas-Humara Returns to Childhood, and an Almost-Blank Canvas, Matthew Trueherz, Portland Monthly, December 1, 2022
Recommended exhibition, EverOut / Portland, December 2022
Things to Do in Portland This Week, Matthew Trueherz & Conner Reed, Portland Monthly, December 29, 2022

IMAGES

All images © Mario Gallucci, courtesy of the Artist and Nationale.
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