For an Exchange Program: Doing, Undoing, Repeat | Surplus Space
August 5 - 27, 2015 | Littman Gallery
Reception: Wednesday, August 5, 2015 | 6 - 9pm
Curated by Gabe Flores in partnership with Surplus Space
Littman Gallery and Surplus Space are pleased to announce For An Exchange Program, a summer partnership where they are trading places for the month. Curated by Surplus Space’s Gabe Flores.
Works exploring themes of irreversible loss by artists Carolyn Hopkins, Gary Wiseman, Kelly McGovern, Lucy Lee Yim and Pam Minty.
“Im glad I got a second chanse in life like you said to be smart because I lerned a lot of things that I never even new were in this werld and Im grateful I saw it all even for a little bit. And I’m glad I found out all about my family and me. It was like I never had a family til I remembird about them and saw them and now I know I had a family and I was a person just like everyone.”
—Charlie Gordon in “Flowers for Algernon” (1966)
Gabe Flores is an artist/curator living in Portland, Oregon. His work often deals with reflections on identity-based ideologies and personal narrative. Flores’ artistic practice is relationally based; he thinks of his projects as explorations of sociology and political theory. He was the curator/director of Place, an installation-based gallery on the top floor of Pioneer Place Mall. Currently, Flores directs Surplus Space, an exhibition project utilizing each room of a small Northeast Portland home.
Carolyn Hopkins: My work questions the traditional cultural roles of the feminine and masculine as well as the tamed and untamed and creates outposts from which to reexamine a recognizable terrain. My studio practice is an ongoing expedition into familiar territories in search of new frontiers from which to draw.
The work featured in this show is an investigation into both my cavernous subconscious relationship with landscape as well as the bottomless history of geological time. This work acts in many ways as a meditation on time and memory, in both its tangible day-to-day embodiments as well as its more imperceivable depths. The drawings and sculpture featured in this show are the result of an unearthing of memories hidden within the crevices of a place, as well as those ensnared inside the confines of a conscious mind.
Carolyn Hopkins holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work questions the traditional cultural roles of the feminine and masculine as well as the tamed and untamed and creates outposts from which to re-examine a recognizable terrain. Her studio practice is an ongoing expedition into familiar territories in search of new frontiers from which to draw. Her work has been exhibited at the Cranbrook Art Museum, PS122 Gallery in New York, the Wignall Museum in Rancho Cucamonga CA, Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton NJ, and has been published in Sculpture Magazine.
Kelly McGovern: Daughter (running time approximately 7 minutes) is a performance based on the death of a child. This performance describes a reocurring dream that I have on the child’s birthday, each time this dream occurs the child is the age they would be had they not passed.
This story will be conveyed through a song that repeats itself, much like the dream. While singing about this recurring event I will be attaching birthday candles to my chest at my heart. I will then light and melt these candles as I sing; they will melt onto my chest and stomach.
What I hope to convey through this work is an irreversible and haunting sense of loss. I hope to evoke the viewer’s own memories of loss in order to create a sense of camaraderie in the face of devastation.
Kelly McGovern is a multimedia artist. Her work expresses a search for hope within the hopeless, camaraderie in isolation, and light in the dark. She has shown in several major cities including New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia and Portland. She received her BFA from Moore College of Art and Design and is a recent graduate from the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Pam Minty: Direct Route (2015, Super16mm/HD transfer, color, sound, 48:22) observes a blind woman navigating her domestic surroundings, alongside landscapes and recollections prior to losing her vision. Through conversations and word puzzles with her daughter, a story emerges about the relationship between memory, sense of direction, and the texture of experience.
Pam Minty’s work explores geography, home and community through still photography and motion pictures. Her work has been exhibited at Anthology Film Archives, Center for Documentary Studies, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Film Studies Center at University of Chicago, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, International House Philadelphia, Los Angeles Filmforum, Place, Portland International Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, UnionDocs, Vancouver International Film Centre, as well as other venues throughout North America.
Nothing in That Drawer*
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Gary Wiseman was born in Portland, OR where he continues to live and work. He is a multimedia artist whose repertoire includes curating, drawing, painting, food, video, photography, installation, performance, large scale event production, publishing, writing, and interviews. Most recently he collaborated with an iOS developer to create a mobile app (B-View) that allows the user to peer under the surface of the B-Paintings, a recently completed body of work.
*Robert Padgett’s “Nothing in That Drawer” from Great Balls of Fire (1990). In relation to Gary Wiseman’s piece.
burden trophy
history
//
This work is part of aggregate thoughts and feelings from a year’s worth of research for my performance project, entitled devastation melody. As it remains an ongoing conversation, burden trophy will be emphasized and completed through performative means, in line with devastation’s ethos. Perhaps what you are currently viewing is the residue and the aftermath of what was activated, destroyed, taken away or left behind at the time the show opened. Perhaps you are here early and the performance hasn’t started.
thoughts
//
Through this work I am re-imagining a lost history. I am not interested in recreating the past but rather the process of losing it. There is a space of loss between my body and the body of lineage that intrigues me. I will call it exiled. It bleeds from known logics and conditions towards misunderstandings and (de)generative spaces. It is full of broken language and playful dealings-with / a poetry unsure of assimilation. Things shine in their discorrectedness and losing means getting real punk about life. In this exiled space lies a celebration, an unapologetic fall towards imaginative voids which lead to finding the self, fragmented and peculiar and brutally matter-of-fact, even in its process of dying.
Lucy Yim (Portland, OR) creates performance work through a combination of experimental sound, poetry and somatic movement practices. Her creative process, founded in writing and improvisation, leads to metaphors and ideas performed as actions. Past collaborators include Enrico D. Wey, Jin Camou, Jesse Mejía and Physical Education (Takahiro Yamamoto, Allie Hankins and keyon gaskin). Support for her work has come through residencies from the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (Creative Exchange Lab), Performance Works Northwest (Portland) and Pieter Performance Space (Los Angeles). Lucy has performed in the works of choreographers Tahni Holt (Duet Love), Linda Austin (A Head of Time), Milka Djordjevich, Sally Silvers and Cydney Wilkes. Lucy is a part of Physical Education, a community engagement project concerned with performance with Takahiro Yamamoto, keyon gaskin and Allie Hankins.