CLAIM | William Pope.L

 

January 15 – February 18, 2014 | Littman Gallery

Reception: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 | 7pm

When we quantify, we point. We point with a wavering finger. Like a child. Like a drunk. Like a dyslexic. Like a palsied person. Like a college student filled with helium. Like an old person filled with wisdom, we point with a wavering finger. And of course we insist; we insist we know, we know where we are pointing.

Claim is a piece xxxx, an exhibition about making sense of things and concomitantly making nonsense of that. Claim uses simple, poetic counting and quantification strategies to gnarly up a discussion about making sense/nonsense. The hinge between sense and nonsense is consciousness, or, more precisely, intention. This is a weak hinge: intention is ‘pointed at’ in this exhibition, usually where things do or do not come together. It may seem visually reticent, yet even so, it is important for use and interpretation xxxxx.

William Pope.L is a media and performance based artist teaching at the University of Chicago. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University, and has been awarded grants from the Warhol and Rockefeller Foundations. Pope.L’s work addresses such topics as race and social inequality, and often involves collaboration with volunteers from local communities. Pope.L’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, among many other institutions. This is his first visit to Portland since his solo exhibition “eRacism” at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in 2003. Claim is presented concurrently with the PSU MFA Studio Lecture Series, supported in part by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and the PSU Speaker’s Board. Pope.L will speak about his work at Shattuck Hall Annex (1914 SW Park Ave) at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, January 15th.