Core Sample: Portland, Oregon as a Rebel Base
Jeff Jahn
You’ve heard about Portland; you have
friends who are moving there and you’re wondering what’s going on?
Well, I have met your friends and we’ve taken over the place. Remember stories
of artists having the run of New York or Paris? That is what’s happening
in Portland now: art is the big game in town and it is being done pretty much
for its own sake. Events are staged in Dia-Beacon-sized warehouses, gas stations
or during the monthly First Thursday art walk where up to 10,000 people can flood
the streets. The sheer activity is startling. Portland is easily the most active
West Coast art city north of Los Angeles, and no other US metropolis with over
a million people can boast its broad per-capita participation for a collector
base. Yet, it is a city that remains just as iconoclastic as it was when Mark
Rothko grew up and trained here. Comparisons to the East Village, San Francisco
during the 50’s and Weimar have been made repeatedly. Think of it as a rebel
base.
So, when five museums from San Diego to
Vancouver decided to put on Baja to Vancouver as the first major survey of the
West Coast art in decades — but failed to do more than a handful of studio
visits in “PDX” — the scene self-organized a response on an institution-punishing
scale and called it Core Sample. Even the Whitney’s Larry Rinder has signed
on as essayist for the 200-page catalog. For good measure, Core Sample chartered
a high-speed “artist run” Amtrak train from Seattle to make the annoying
two and a half hour drive shorter and artier. Dubbed Override, the train will
feature regional cuisine and performances, including a special on-board safety
video by Miranda July.
Core Sample itself is an exhibition of exhibitions where over twenty curators
inhabit venues from giant warehouses to the posh digs of Ivy league Reed College
and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Physically, it is spread
from the Tony Pearl District to youthful hipster hangouts in the Belmont District
for a scant two-week run. With over a hundred participants, there’s a beguiling
diversity of shows. For example, “Flush” features painters Jennifer
Rhoads, Paige Saez, James Boulton, sound artist Gabriel Mandel and virtuosic
installation artist Chandra Bocci. Each explores the way seamless combinations
of styles and disciplines produce vigor while escaping from the ghettos of art
history. In architect Michael Graves’ seminal (but ergonomically challenged)
Portland building, installation artist Bruce Conkle presents Sasquatch
Feng Shui in an attempt to fix the building’s chi-sucking postmodern bathroom
interior and remove the curse Philip Johnson bestowed on the city employees.
Imagine Saquatch’s interior design signature as that of a rustic Hugh Hefner
aesthete where urban myths meet rustic legends. If you like very hairy men, this
is the premier bachelor pad to visit. New Yorkers familiar with Conkle know he
cut his teeth years ago installing for Leo Castelli. Another do-not-miss is musician,
filmmaker, and artist Johne Eschelman’s Traveling Cinema. The large
plywood box features moving images and live music. A crowd favorite PowerPoint
performance artist Amos Latteier will produce another one of his SCTV worthy
presentations called, “Populations”. It purportedly examines the interrelated
histories of statistical theory, gambling, biology, capitalism, voting systems,
social insects and standardized intelligence testing. You can stream the professor
at www.Latteier.com . Other shows like Crafty, Draw and Second Cycle deal with
considerations that are more formal. One artist on the move is Matthew
Picton who does things with candy, clear rubber, dried creek beds and slinkies
that your intensely imaginative mother warned you not to do. He has garnered
great reviews from LA to Seattle. Another participant, damali ayo whose
www.rent-a-negro.com landed her in Harpers, will be panhandling for slavery reparations
throughout the two week run as well. For a complete listing, check out www.coresample.info
.
If Core Sample seems like a version of
the 2001 Whitney biennial that might actually be good there is good reason: it
is self-organizing ecosystem. One reason it will work is the DIY and indie monikers
mean little in Portland where the traditional dealers are permeable and established
artists regularly mix and collaborate with the unproven but educated. Art history
has tales of a time when artists set the tone and critics scrambled to make sense
of it, institutional curators were rare and instead of the ghettoizing DIY term,
groups like Die Brucke or the Nabis collaborated with serious intent. Portland
is becoming that sort of place.
