We’re inching closer to 2022—let’s prepare for a new year by digging into some freshly-founded art spaces! SATOR projects, a migrating exhibition series, highlights the work of Yemeni American artist Mohammed Murshed this month. At SE Cooper Contemporary, located on a family property in the Lents neighborhood of Portland, Fawn Krieger’s Rebus Principle investigates the role of written language in culture. Southeast Portland’s MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture, an artist-run space and think tank, shares their third exhibition this month, a group show focused on the resonances of the year 1989. Meanwhile, reliable favorites like HOLDING Contemporary, lumber room, and Fuller Rosen Gallery also push boundaries this month, experimenting with Twitch streams, voyeuristic viewing experiences, and massive multimedia sculptures.

Michelle Segre: Transmitters & Receivers
October 16, 2021 – January 16, 2022
lumber room
419 NW 9th Ave (Fri 11 AM – 6 PM and by appointment)

Michelle Segre, a Tel Aviv-born artist now living and working in New York, historically has drawn on mycology, physics, and the science of fermentation to influence her works. With a career spanning five decades, she’s created drawings, woven fibers, sculptures, and papier-mache in a continuously-evolving practice, now highlighted in her latest exhibition, Transmitters & Receivers. To different viewers, Segre’s works might seem magical, psychedelic, or scientific, and none of these assessments would miss the mark. In conjunction with the Segre’s exhibition, lumber room will screen Kelly Reichardt’s short film Bronx, New York, November 2019, which features Segre methodically working in her studio.

Patterns do Furnish a Life, solo exhibition by Mohammed Murshed
October 23 – November 21, 2021
SATOR Projects
1607 SE 3rd Ave (Fri-Sun 12 PM – 5 PM or by appointment)

Mohammed Murshed’s Patterns do Furnish a Life, inspired by the artist’s experience reading Books Do Furnish a Life by Richard Dawkins, questions patriarchy’s role in faith systems. Murshed, a Yemeni American artist, shares textiles and video for this exhibit. The works blend contemporary designs with traditional Yemeni patterns and symbols, referencing garments worn by women in Yemeni culture. Murshed reimagines conventional Yemeni ornamentation in order to challenge opression and highlight the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. The artist’s work also addresses the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder they inherited due to the ongoing war.

Emmanuela Soria Ruiz: The Longest Leg
November 11, 2021 – January 9, 2022
Fuller Rosen Gallery
1928 NW Lovejoy (Thurs-Sun 12 PM – 5 PM or by appointment)

In The Longest Leg, organized by independent curator Laurel V. McLaughlin in collaboration with Fuller Rosen Gallery, artist Emmanuela Soria Ruiz explores the nature of trauma through videos, sculptures, installations, and drawings. Ruiz plays with subversion and viewer-object power dynamics by inviting exhibition visitors to lift a skirt to watch a video, stoop to see subtitles, and more. The works encourage viewers to examine their own muddled relationships with patriarchal culture. The Longest Leg is accompanied by a series of free public programs, including a talk with poet/theorist Rachel Zolf, a movement workshop with Allie Hankins, performances at Oregon Contemporary, and a screening on the queer modernist legacy of Eileen Gray. Details are available here through Fuller Rosen Gallery.

Anya Roberts-Toney: If She Floats
October 14 – November 28, 2021
Nationale
15 SE 22nd Ave (Mon and Thurs-Sat 11 AM – 6 PM, Sun 12 PM – 5 PM)

Women bathe in mystical landscapes in Anya Roberts-Toney’s newest paintings on view in her latest solo exhibition at Nationale, If She Floats. Roberts-Toney’s subject matter references the “float tests” once imposed on women accused of witchcraft, as well as depictions of female bathers seen throughout western art history. Through abstraction and moments of magical realism, Roberts-Toney challenges the viewer’s gaze with opportunities to engage deeply with the works, moving toward reclaiming feminine power.

Fawn Krieger: Rebus Principle
October 30 – December 5, 2021
SE Cooper Contemporary
6901 SE 110th Ave (by appointment only)

NYC-based artist Fawn Krieger’s Rebus Principle, installed at SE Cooper Contemporary (a new family-dwelling-cum-gallery in Lents), considers the fraught relationship between culture and civilization. In particular, Krieger is concerned with how written language plays a role in defining civilization. The works in Rebus Principle were created in the wake of the Trump years, and were born from Krieger’s desire to “restore language…to image/pattern/form,” challenging the ways in which civilization developed alongside patriarchal societal norms.

Mesh
November 6, 2021 – May 8, 2022
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Ave (Wed-Sun 10 AM – 5 PM)

Portland Art Museum’s Mesh highlights vitally-important social issues of racial injustice, Indigenous land rights, and more with a series of powerful works by Native artists. Ka’ila Farrell-Smith, a Klamath Modoc artist, references graffiti and petroglyphs, illustrating the potential of combined text and image in acts of resistance. Lehuauakea, a Kanaka Maoli artist, approaches themes of racism and protest with traditional Native Hawaiian tools like ʻohe kāpala (carved bamboo printing tools), kapa (bark cloth), and natural pigments. Leah Rose Kolakowski, a member of the Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa, creates photographs that aim to highlight beauty and cultural strength despite persistent existential peril. Finally, Lynnette Haozous, a Chiricahua Apache artist and member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe with Diné and Taos Pueblo ancestry, has created a 20-foot painted mural that will be installed in the gallery space for the duration of Mesh. This is the first major exhibition at PAM for the Curator of Native American Art, Kathleen Ash-Milby.

Simone Fischer: OFFAL
November 13-30, 2021
Astoria Visual Arts
1000 Duane St, Astoria (Fri-Sun 12 PM – 4 PM)

OFFAL, organized by independent curator Laurel V. McLaughlin in collaboration with Simone Fischer and Astoria Visual Arts, is “part-leftovers, part-exhibition, part-model, and part-offering of an alternative food economy and ethics.” Portland-based multidisciplinary artist Fischer considers scarcity as a capitalism-driven ideology, creating sculptures, installations, steel etchings, and social practice works to consider the cast-offs of industrialized food production. How might this seemingly-unwanted refuse support us?

Katarina Zdjelar: Proximities, a rehearsal, an archive
October 29, 2021 – January 2, 2022
Oregon Contemporary
831 N Interstate Ave (Fri-Sun, 12 PM – 5 PM)

Serbian artist Katarina Zdjelar presents her first solo US exhibition with Proximities. In her work, Zdjelar explores the potential for change somatically via video-recorded rehearsals, emphasizing music, sound, language, voice, posture, and movement. For this exhibition, the artist was inspired by an all-women’s dance studio in post-war Dresden. The studio was founded by Dore Hoyer, a choreographer/dancer who was artistically influenced by Käthe Kollwitz. Zdjelar references this creative meeting between Kollwitz and Hoyer to consider solidarity, collective transformations, and more. Proximities, a rehearsal, an archive is the final exhibition in Lucy Cotter’s Turnstones, her program as Curator in Residence at Oregon Contemporary for 2020-21.

Faye Driscoll: Come On In
November 19, 2021 – January 15, 2022
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
15 NE Hancock St (dates and times vary, see website for details and timed entry)

Faye Driscoll, a New York-based choreographer, emphasizes the space between artist, performers, and audience in her works, summoning “the unnamed forces that surge between the viewer and the viewed.” Come On In, Driscoll’s first-ever solo exhibition, further investigates this space. Driscoll pairs tenderness with humor to consider the roles of audience, performer, and director, delving deeply into how each role might feel. Visitors to Come On In will choose a listening station, each featuring a spoken soundtrack of prompts and guided meditations by Driscoll.

Physical Education: Cold Flow, A Slower Fountain
November 5, December 3, and December 18, 2021
HOLDING Contemporary
Events scheduled online via Twitch

Performance-based group Physical Education will transform HOLDING into an artist workshop for Cold Flow, A Slower Fountain. Organized by Ashley Stull Meyers, this seven-week artist laboratory will reflect on the concept of movement within the COVID era of distancing. This workshop and series of public events will be presented online via Twitch, taking the form of gradually-growing wall installations and live-streamed performances. Find times for each performance on HOLDING’s website and go to https://www.twitch.tv/physical_education_life to view.

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Rethinking Fire
October 16, 2021 – January 9, 2022
High Desert Museum
59800 US-97, Bend (open daily 10 AM – 4 PM)

In 2014, artist Bryan David Griffith’s home and studio were threatened by the Slide Fire in Sedona, Arizona. After this experience, Griffith wrote and received grants to study fire with scientists; the experience informed his solo exhibition Rethinking Fire. This show at the High Desert Museum displays Griffith’s encaustic beeswax paintings, fire studies on paper, and large-scale burned wood sculptures, wherein Griffin uses fire as a medium to consider how humans attempt to assert control over nature.

1989
October 8 – November 28, 2021
MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture
2505 SE 11th Ave, Suite 233 (Fri-Sun 12 PM – 5 PM or by appointment)

MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture, a think tank and artist-run space, presents 1989, which explores the drastic shifts that happened that year. The exhibit features works in various mediums by an international range of artists including Fung Yee Lick Eric, Lenka Holíková, Hagen Klennert, Vladan Kuzmanović, Naomi Middelmann, Kasia Ozga, Nathaniel C. Praska, Rodrigo Prian-García, and Anna Syarova. 1989 explores the ways in which, depending on one’s perspective, this specific year may be seen as revolutionary, marking a new ideological era, or a symbol of collapse. Each of the nine featured artists consider the idea of life after collapse and the concept of rupture in their works.

Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience
November 19, 2021 – January 9, 2022
Oregon Convention Center
777 NE MLK Blvd (Tues-Sun 10 AM – 9 PM, tickets required)

Created by French-Canadian creative director Mathieu St-Arnaud, Beyond Van Gogh aims to immerse visitors in over 300 of the iconic painter’s works. St-Arnaud’s team referenced Van Gogh’s dreams, thoughts, and words to inform the narrative of this projection installation. Visitors will be immersed in floor-to-ceiling flowing projections of the artist’s masterpieces, and walk amongst larger-than-life versions of Van Gogh’s textural swirls. A symphonic score will resonate through the Oregon Convention Center’s cavernous space.