The Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art is closed for the summer and will reopen on September 8, 2009.

Broadcast
September 8-December 13, 2009

Broadcast is an exhibition that explores the ways in which artists since the late 1960s have engaged, critiqued, and inserted themselves into official channels of broadcast television and radio. This is the first exhibition of its kind to explore this engaging subject and to examine this provocative body of work.

Image: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Search (En Busquedad), 2001. Chromogenic print mounted to Plexiglas, audio recording of broadcast; 8 hours; courtesy of the artist and Max Protetch Gallery, New York

Slideshow image: Doug Hall, Chip Lord, and Jody Procter, The Amarillo News Tapes, 1980. Single-channel color video with sound; 25:52 minutes; Courtesy of the artists and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)

The Dregs
Brandy Cochrane and Paul Middendorf

Gallery 2:
The Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things
Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen

Preview Reception: Sunday, January 10, 3 to 5 PM
Exhibition: January 11 –Feb 11, 2010
Gallery talk: Thursday, February 4, Noon

Transference
Andy Paiko and Ethan Rose
November 19, 2009 – January 9, 2010

Through movement and light, Transference is an exploration of the material and aural properties of glass. Portland-based artists Andy Paiko (glass) and Ethan Rose (sound/composition) collaborate to create a kinetic-sound installation reinterpreting the glass armonica, a nearly forgotten instrument. Popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the armonica employed a series of glass goblets, water and friction to create a sound evoking a "singing" wine glass. This exhibition combines the strangely ethereal qualities of the armonica with the visual and physical sensations of dozens of spinning glass bowls, wired to rotate in an intentionally random sequence. Paiko and Rose worked together to select and place bowls in response to each vessel's natural aural qualities; in essence, making the glass the third collaborator in the project.



Image: Andy Paiko and Ethan Rose, Transference (work-in-progress), 2009. Photo: Heather Zinger

To Those Who Will Not Know the Way: New Works by Ryan Pierce
February 4-February 25, 2010, with an opening reception on Thursday, February 4 from 4:00-7:00PM

To Those Who Will Not Know the Way Book Launch and Reading
Sunday, February 7, 2010 from noon-2:00PM
Partially supported by a project grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council

Pierce’s new series of lurid, large-scale acrylic paintings depict the regeneration of a post-industrial world. At the core of this vision is the ecological theory of bioregionalism, which mandates a redrafting of the world’s borders to reflect and preserve natural systems. Unlike many apocalyptic visions, Pierce’s is both bright and dark: the survivors face hardships, but the resiliency of nature is relentless.

Pierce's work, inspired by Jerry Kosinski’s classic Holocaust novel The Painted Bird, utilizes Kosinski’s dark and violent text to form visual corollaries from a post-global warming environment. Ryan Pierce is represented by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery.


Image: Ryan Pierce
Slideshow image: Ryan Pierce

Portland Art Dealers Association (PADA) includes the state's foremost contemporary art galleries committed to the highest standards of representation. One will find the region's leading artists exhibited alongside renowned national and international artists.

PADA hosts city-wide public receptions on the First Thursday evening of every month.

Members are Augen Gallery, Beppu Wiarda Gallery, Blackfish Gallery, Bullseye Gallery, Butters Gallery Ltd, Froelick Gallery, Fourteen30 Contemporary, Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, New American Art Union, PDX Contemporary Art, Quintana Galleries, The Laura Russo Gallery, 23 Sandy Gallery.

Image: Augen Gallery; Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Bright Beach, 2008, direct to plate photogravure and aquatint, 37½ x 36 inches, edition of 50

China Design Now
October 10, 2009 – January 17, 2010

China Design Now is an immersive, multi-sensory experience reflecting the new Chinese urban environment and encapsulating the scale, speed, and energy of change in China today. The exhibition brings together a broad range of compelling contemporary graphic design, high fashion, interior design, and the spectacular architecture projects created in the new China. Focusing on the creative output of three cities—the thriving manufacturing center of Shenzhen, the prosperous international city of Shanghai, and the historic political and cultural center of Beijing—China Design Now presents a rapidly changing cultural landscape that is transforming China and our collective definition of urban life.

Presented in cooperation with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Host curator: Brian J. Ferriso, the Marilyn H. and Dr. Robert B. Pamplin, Jr. Director

Image: Ji Ji, Hi Panda, 2006 © Pole Design
Slideshow image: Days on the Cotton Candy #4 © Maleonn

Prints for PICA: The Seventh Annual Monoprint Marathon and Sale
Each year, PICA enlists over 100 Portland artists for an all-day collaborative printing marathon. With a team of accomplished printers, free flowing ink, and lots of coffee, they will turn stacks of fresh paper into a floor-to-ceiling studio art sale. Build a personal art collection with work from Portland’s vibrant artist community.

Originally conceived by artist Stephen Hayes, the 7th Annual Prints for PICA moves to a storefront location in the Pearl District for a day-long printing blitz, followed by a one-week holiday pop-up shop. Ranging in price from $100-$250, prints are sold on a first-come, first-served basis. All proceeds to benefit PICA’s Artistic Programming. The kick-off sale will run on December 12, from 6-9 pm - before the ink has even had a chance to dry.

Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA)
PICA is about the activity generated by a community using its energy. Since 1995, we have been committed to presenting diverse works by artists in various disciplines from all over the world. PICA develops exhibitions and residencies, stimulates conversation, commissions new work and encourages the simmering of new ideas.

Sandow Birk’s Depravities of War and American Qu’ran
November 5–January 8, 2010
First Thursday Opening | Thursday, November 5, 6:30 pm
PNCA Feldman Gallery + Project Space, 1241 N.W. Johnson St.
Gallery Hours: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily

PNCA’s Feldman Gallery + Project Space is proud to present two projects from the award-winning Los Angeles-based artist Sandow Birk from November 5, 2009 through January 8, 2010.

In Depravities of War, Birk draws on Jacques Callot’s “Miseries and Misfortunes of War” to create a series of monumental woodcut prints, each measuring 48” x 96,” commenting on the debaucheries of contemporary warfare. Printed in collaboration with master printer Paul Mullowney of HuiPress in Makawao, Hawaii, this body of work features traditional woodblock printing techniques on Japanese paper.

In the series American Qur’an, Birk hand-transcribes and illuminates the Holy Qur’an with scenes from contemporary American life. Birk’s version of the Qur’an is based on traditional manuscripts—chapter headings are decorated and the pages are illuminated with miniature paintings in full color, using inks, acrylics, gouache, pencil, and metallic paints.

Image: Courtesy of the Artist

The Language of the Nude, Four Centuries of Drawing the Body
September 1 - December 5, 2009

An exhibition of rare Old Master drawings from the collection of the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

For centuries, the nude body was the highest expression of human aspiration. Religious figures, gods and goddesses, heroes, and even personifications of abstract ideals found visible form in the undraped human figure. This exhibition of sixty rarely seen drawings from the Crocker Art Museum examines the nude, its place in the artist's process and the ideals—and desires—it expressed in European art. Tracing how artists saw the body, for example the influence of Michelangelo and Raphael in the sixteenth century and French Academy nudes in the eighteenth, it also examines the body's context in Christian art, Classical mythology and literary subjects.