By Joseph Gallivan
R.B. KITAJ, A JEW, ETC., ETC. Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE), Portland, Jun 7 – Sep 23
OJMCHE presents the first Northwest overview of work by painter R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007). Kitaj, from Ohio, was educated in England and California. He was influenced by Matisse and Pop Art, and remained friends with David Hockney. Kitaj was known for his bright figurative paintings, which belied the sordid reality he experienced in his own life.
VARIOUS ARTISTS Sisters Gallery and Frame Shop, Sisters, various dates
From Michael Stasko’s gauzy Prismacolor colored pencil landscapes, through Kimry Jelen’s colorful acrylics, to Jodie Schneider’s heartfelt animal watercolors, Sisters Gallery represents artists who are able to capture the unsentimental heart of the western natural world. Sisters is a key venue in the monthly Fourth Friday art walk in this town of 20 galleries. Up to 600 people take part in the walk, most of which happens along Hood Avenue. Walk this way.
JULIE GREEN: FOOD, FASHION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT Upfor Gallery, Portland, June 7 – Jul 28
Julie Green’s paintings on gessoed Chinet (paper) plates look like European Delft china, but hold messages about identity, security and bias from a female perspective. Exploring domesticity is an art world staple, but Green pairs it with ideas about decoration, art history, food and social justice. Ask about her giant piece on capital punishment, The Last Supper. Bon appetit.
CONVERGE 45 Various venues, Portland, Aug 9 – 11
Spearheaded by Ninth Avenue gallerist Elizabeth Leach, Converge 45 (as in the 45th parallel) has grown into an exciting showcase of avant-garde work scattered across the Portland region. The theme for 2018, in its third and final year under curator Kristy Edmunds, is “You In Mind”, which refers to the needs of artists as well as those of the audience. converge45.org
ALYSON PROVAX: YOU I EVERYTHING ELSE Wolff Gallery, Portland, To Jul 1
Printmaker and animator Alyson Provax’s solo exhibition, you i everything else, is about inherited memories and behaviors. It draws upon the language of the TV show The Bachelor (as does another Portland artist, Hannah Piper Burns). Letterpress prints, light boxes, animations, and mirrors isolate words and phrases often repeated by participants on the show, from season to season. As Provax points out, “Loneliness exists not in solitude but in concealment.”