It’s 2021 at last! Although much of daily life still hangs in the balance, we can emerge from the post-holiday fog with a fresh round of art exhibitions. January’s events are imbued with themes of hopefulness, illumination, imagination, and visions of change. Head to North Portland for a double-viewing at Disjecta and Carnation Contemporary, snag your chance to handle Alyson Provax’s works directly in Old Long Since, or stay in your pajamas for a range of online exhibitions. Whatever you choose, this month’s happenings offer viewers an invigorating beginning to the new year.
TIMELINES FOR THE FUTURE: Christine Howard Sandoval
January 8 – February 21, 2021
Disjecta
8371 N Interstate Ave (Fri-Sun 12-5, or by appointment)
Curated by the renowned Lucy Cotter, Christine Howard Sandoval’s TIMELINES FOR THE FUTURE is a selection of the artist’s new and recent works revolving around a process of “unlearning” via walking on uncertain and disputed lands. Memory, landscape, politics, and ecology intertwine in Sandoval’s visions of future place. In this solo exhibition, Sandoval uses video, sculpture, drawing, site-specific materials, and sustained research to highlight complex narratives of inhabitation and migration in the American West and Southwest. Themes of Hispanic and Native agrarian histories, migratory pathways, Indigenous sacred sites, and Spanish missionization are woven throughout.
CARSON ELLIS: Transmundane Tuesdays
Online exhibition debuted December 4, 2020; drawing session with Carson Ellis on IGTV January 5, 2021, at 10 AM PST
Nationale
Virtual
Carson Ellis’s online exhibition at Nationale, on view now, will be supplemented by a special IGTV drawing session on January 5. The brilliantly feel-good artist/illustrator found visual themes for the work presented in Transmundane Tuesdays through a random prompt process, resulting in a series of drawings that feel folkloric, mystical, and imaginative. Ellis encouraged collaboration by creating the hashtag #quarantineartclub, where viewers can find visual responses to Ellis’s art prompts by artists all over the world.
Almost Paradise: Outback Arthouse
January 2 – January 17, 2021
Carnation Contemporary
8371 N Interstate Ave (Fri-Sun 12-5)
Almost Paradise includes works by Katie Holden, Kristen Hough, and Julian Tan. The trio are the founding members of Outback Arthouse, a curatorial project aimed at creating experimental exhibition opportunities for emerging artists. Although the exhibition statement leaves some room for mystery, this upcoming show seems to reflect on technological access, performance and the quest for perfection, and the omnipresence of entertainment.
Sponsor
Domestic Landscapes: Zemula Barr, Bethany Hays, Colin Kippen, Rachael Zur
December 1, 2020 – January 29, 2021
Chehalem Cultural Center, Parrish Gallery
415 E Sheridan St, Newberg (closed to the public, private appointments available or view works online)
In Domestic Landscapes, artists working in varying mediums share diverse perspectives on domestic and interior realms. Zemula Barr pairs quiet photographs of interiors with reflective writing, which contrasts wildly with Colin Kippen’s abstracted, glowy sculptures, loosely referencing domestic objects like mops and mattresses. Highlights of the show include Rachael Zur’s Matriarch, a highly tactile found pillow sculpture, and Bethany Hays’s Her Majesty, with towering stacks of clothing depicted in watercolor.
NO SANCTUARY
December 17, 2020 – February 4, 2021
Fuller Rosen Gallery
1928 NW Lovejoy St (Thurs-Sun 12-5, or by appointment; masks/distancing required)
The two-person exhibition NO SANCTUARY, by Panteha Abareshi and Kayley Berezney, is rooted in the artists’ health and bodily experiences. Abareshi explores the realities of chronic pain via video and performance, while Berezney thinks about body-as-objective-material through sculpture and painting, zooming in on moments of the body at rest as inspiration. Berezney’s sculptures document gestures like a head on a pillow, using foam to reference weight and exhaustion. Abareshi’s videos traverse dichotomies of power/disempowerment, human/subhuman, body/machine, and organic/inorganic, focusing on the range of emotions inherent to the experience of chronic illness.
Alyson Provax: Old Long Since
January 16 – February 21, 2021
Agenda
4505 SE Belmont, Ste A (by appointment)
“Old Long Since” is a direct translation of the Scots language “Auld Lang Syne,” a traditional song for moments of beginning and ending. In titling this show, Provax references feelings of nostalgia and the uncertain nature of memory. By-appointment viewers of Old Long Since will be allocated 15-minute time slots to handle Provax’s textural, lively letterpressed works with gloved hands. These gloves, which Provax has also printed with varying phrases, are free gifts for each participant.
Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956–1965, Japan’s Women Printmakers
September 24, 2020 – April 11, 2021
Portland Art Museum
1219 SW Park Ave (currently closed; works viewable online)
Sponsor
This exhibition highlights significant works by Japan’s first printmaking society for women artists, the Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, which was comprised of nine printmakers creating etchings, relief prints, and lithographs. The Joryū Hanga Kyōkai artists staged triumphant group shows in the 50s and 60s before independently moving into successful solo careers. Although their works are rarely seen today, they represent a significant chapter in the history of printmaking.
Haley Darya Parsa, The sun leaves me to find you
December 4, 2020 – January 8, 2021
Third Room
707 NE Broadway, Ste 205 (by appointment)
Artist Haley Darya Parsa creates cyanotype prints and repurposes newspaper imagery to create an exhibition that vacillates between the dreamy and the utterly real. In The sun leaves me to find you, themes of memory, family, and connection weave together through references to the sun (requisite to create cyanotypes) and tactility (Parsa prints on silk and other fabrics, making ghost-like images of familiar objects). The pieces feel resonant in times of pandemic uncertainty and global warming. Viewers of the exhibition can purchase or download a zine containing a conversation on the works.
Megan Murphy: Incarnate
January 6 – 30, 2021
PDX Contemporary
925 NW Flanders St
Incarnate is quiet and mysterious. Murphy’s works are reminiscent of a calm ocean with untold happenings just underneath the water’s surface. Although they may appear simple at first, the pieces in Incarnate are multilayered, created using photography, laser cut lettering, glass, layers of pigment, oil, and wax. The material usage is suggestive of an excavation process that humans experience in our efforts toward illumination, clarity, reflection, and peacefulness.
