Storm Tharp "We Appeal to Heaven" at PDX Contemporary Art

There is something terribly unnerving about Storm Tharp's latest batch of drawings. A kind of double-edged unnerving; grotesque in it's own right, and also unsettling because of your own reaction too it. These figures which bring to mind equal parts Francis Bacon and Modigliani, J. K. Huysmans and Dennis Cooper, are bleeding, dissolving, mutating. And yet each grotesquerie is executed so beautifully, and contributes so seemlessly to the work's atmosphere, that they inspire awe rather than horror. But what exactly are the terms of these figurative ruptures and excesses? Skin: traditionally painting is the perfect medium to capture the fleshy essence, and naked skin the proof of an artist's technical chops, hence the classical nudes. Fast forward to Kiki Smith's sculptural rhyming of handmade paper and the frail boundary of skin that marks the distinction between inside and outside. One might imagine, in Tharp's compositions, that this fragile layer has been ripped away, and we are left with a volatile interaction between what was formerly internal and external. The glue that holds figuration together has dissolved, and we are left with something much more interesting. Each work has multiple registers: passages rendered in painstaking detail (that doesn't FEEL painstaking), seemingly spontaneous artmarks, rigid abstractions, confident gestural contours, and richly modulated planes of color. The artist slips in and out of each method as easily as he switches mediums, using watercolor, pencil, ink, and paint with confidence and purpose. And yet there is a palpable tension to each work: the passages rendered the most exactly draw in your gaze, threatening both spatially and temporally to exceed their bounds. The most spontaneous-seeming marks are employed so specifically that one marvels at the artist's foresight and control. It as if Tharp has harnessed the forces of entropy inherent to artmaking, but the outcome of this mastery is recalcitrant and threatening. Because each portrait is not merely a passive subject, the armature upon which the artist might exhibit his craft; rather each creature seems to demand a specific handling, to pose different problems, to smugly challenge the artist, to tease the viewer. In "Einstein," pretty colors and soft renderings of cloth and hair frames the mushroom-cloud bacteria of the inky flesh, producing a tension which presents a stable whole that is constantly at war with itself. In "The Ex-King," the fine details of the figure's dress shirt and bloom wrapped about it's neck overwhelm the attention of the viewer, as the splotchy blooms of the face and hand are inexplicably contained by the invisible bounds of the background. Recalling Tharp's sculpture at the recent biennial, a tumerous growth blossoms from the head of the figure, though he seems nonplussed. "Rare Bird" seems to be slipping farther and father into abstraction, as her torso becomes a biomorphic blob, and her necklace seems to want to be geometry more than jewelry. So why the appeal to heaven? Tharp inhabits the paradigm of artist-as-creator uneasily; equal parts hostile and utterly enamoured with his creations, who in turn are perfectly capable of formulating their own existential stances from their chaotic armature of paint, pencil, ink, of figuration and abstraction, of realism and expressionism. They are untouched by the mortal questions of skin and blood, unconcerned that they have been wiped away and smudged, made host to any number of unnatural growths; instead they each add a voice to the chorus: "we die conceptually."

POW! Pictures of Women- at Quality Pictures

I caught the tail end of the opening of this exhibit on First Thursday, but had to go back and revisit. Something about it really grabbed me, and left me wondering why. What should have been predictable, obvious, and more or less successful on kind of boring terms- wasn't. I am terribly interested in curatorial projects with a feminist or queer sensibility, but am also prepared to be disappointed when they inevitably fall flat. But this show at the brand new Quality Pictures WORKS, and I want to figure out how and why.

The title of this exhibition, via clever acronym, packs a ontomonamiac punch, so to speak. Within "Pictures Of Women" is a metaphorical kick. Of course, punning is usually not an indication of greatness, but this show manages to pull it off. Because the punch is no comic book warrior princess hyper sensitive stereotyping. In fact the whole issue of stereotypes, positive/negative imagery and relentlessly, and all that GLAD shit, is totally bypassed in favor of something much more wonderful. The show treats its subject so deftly that we forget the heaviness of thematic that tends to haunt and overwhelm typical "woman and art" exhibitions. In fact, it is hard to remember that the works are tied together by being, each and everyone, pictures of woman. They are, of course, and a large portion are by women as well- but in almost every instance the work is so well selected and strong that it demands to be viewed on its own terms. This dynamic is extremely fruitful- each work is engaging, and the whole becomes richer than the sum of its parts. There is no laundry list of diversity, for better or worse. Conventional and somewhat normative beauty is on display here, but as a vehicle for something much more interesting than either the mythologized female form or a trite attempt at substitution, revaluation, or contestation of said form. Often this means attention is being drawn to process and posing, yearning and fabrication- of pictures, of women. Photography looms large here, but not exclusively, collage, painting, and drawing are all present. In fact it is encouraging that a show so heavy in photography bypasses the dangers of the form to fall into over simplification and sensationalism. Instead, the diversity of media pulls in an extra dimension to the show- what is the relationship of pictures of women to the type of picture in question? Does the camera lie? What about the painter? The Sue De Beer stills look fabulous, managing to be inexplicably haunting despite the fact that her work is much more powerful in it's originally moving format. The somewhat candid feeling to these stills (but candid only in that highly constructed sense- what did Wynne Greenwood say once about the difference between a video still and a paused video?), contrasts nicely with the meticulous and joyful staging of Chris Verne and Holly Andres (who reminds me, in some sense, of new German cinema-ist Fassbinder). The mad-woman-in-the-attic thematic is employed to some interest in Elizabeth Huey's swirling acrylics- where hysteria becomes a highly choreographed dance- and her collages. In "Broken Leg" the addition of silhouettes, hand-shadows, and porno imagery brings in questions of projection in an especially interesting way. And her disembodied heads floating on the abstract planes of several collages, is equal parts Hannah Hoch and Marie Antoinette. Bigshots like Nikki S. Lee, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Saville, and Kara Walker are all here, and look great, but rather than overshadowing local and emerging talents, just serve to show how strong the rest of the works are. And so I will pause here, unable to pull out some master narrative about the show or what pictures of women- in 2006, in portland, in photography- entail. Instead, the show leaves me with the feeling of being led through a post-feminist haunted house...with the shock and satisfaction of a close encounter with the productive uncanny. Being led through some very challenging and beautiful rabbit holes, emerging in the sinister daylight without a firm conclusion, but with exquisitely posed questions.