Other Maps Are Such Shapes
October 3–30, 2013 | Littman Gallery
Reception: Thursday, October 3, 2013 | 5–8pm
Curated by Leif Anderson.
Featuring works from Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Matt Hilger, Perry Doane, Sean Schumacher, and Stephanie Simek.
This exhibition brings together six artists using systems of measurement. The map, the index, and the ruler give representation to ideas, objects, histories or their surroundings. What happens during the translation?
The map is 1 to 1. The ruler is personal. The idea is made concrete. The region is erased. Color becomes sound.
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen are an artist collective. Working together since 2005, their pieces and projects demonstrate a preoccupation with words, books, and the way that knowledge moves through bodies and discourse. Taking many forms from poster projects, drawings, and sculpture, to photographs, creative research, writing, and speaking their works have been seen at PDX Contemporary Art, Camp CARPA, The San Diego Art Museum, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Publication Studio, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Arts Festival, and the pages of NOON Literary Annual. They live in Portland, Oregon where they try to spend the majority of their time playing and reading with their 3-year-old son Calder.
Matt Hilger was born in 1986 in Chicago, IL and currently lives and works in Seattle, WA. He received an MFA from the University of Washington, a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and has also been a core member at The Bikery in Seattle since 2009.
Sean Schumacher’s works often make visible the unnoticed or forgotten structures and people that influence present urban environments, exploring the trespasses of the past into the everyday life. His projects often share a fragility with their subject matter, and he has previously attempted to outline the walls of a demolished home in a university space and to bronze a pair of abandoned shoes as a monument to their prior owner’s abandonment. In 2009, he received his MFA in Contemporary Art Practice from Portland State University and presently teaches in the PSU graphic design program. An Unexplored Region was first presented at the Strange Utility: Architecture Towards Other Ends symposium in Portland, Oregon in 2013.
Perry Doane is an interdisciplinary artist currently pursuing an MFA in Contemporary Art Practices at Portland State University. His present work examines methods for processing visual stimuli in relation to the American institution.
Stephanie Simek lives in Portland, Oregon where she has been creating experiments with sound, electronics, and natural materials. Recent projects include a room-sized crystal radio, Venus Flytrap activated kaleidoscopes, and a sign powered by bioluminescent algae.