Walter’s Daydream
Renowned Gallery, 811 E. Burnside St.
Walter’s Daydream is a group project curated by the amazing Justin B. Williams, which takes a look into the hopes and dreams of a fictional character named Walter. The group of artists, featuring A.J. Purdy, Andy Rementer, Andy Dixon, Andrew Dick and Williams himself, uses the tiny renowned space to explore what it is that makes Walter, or really any one of us, tick. The show is pretty high concept for a group of illustration-heavy artists, but the project oozes love, and Walter himself has won my heart.
The Romance Between 0 and 1 – Eric Sanberg and Justin Wood
Compound Gallery, 107 N.W. Fifth Ave.
Not to keep dropping the Compound bomb, but every offering at the dunk-worthy gallery this month is golden. Professional-type illustrators Eric Sandberg and Justin Wood offer a trippy, sometimes computer-generated world of layered images, natural and unnatural, floating in a space of velum, transparencies and cut plastics. The combination of materials, as well as the mix of naturalistic and distinctively sci-fi images, makes for an entertaining dichotomy, and the addition of handmade elements in most pieces save what could be really dated-feeling computer-generated work.
Portland Modern
Portland Art Center, 32 N.W. Fifth Ave.
At first I was hesitant to visit this show since PAC sold out the Eastside to move to the Pearl, but pettiness is ugly, and I am anything but that, so if you haven’t encountered Portland Modern, the tiny magazine of brilliant P-town work, you have no idea where all those MFAs are going. This show of Portland Modern artists features a variety of work from such disparate artists as TJ Norris and PM cover artist Marc Manning. Norris’ work was as good as ever, exploring the textural aspects of photography, reducing objects and landscapes to disorienting layers and surfaces. Not as impressive, conceptually, is the landscape photo work of Chris Payne. His eerie nighttime shots of abandoned industrial districts would make for some amazing cinematography, but leaves me dry in stills. The video work of Marina Tres makes one wonder why, in the age of cheap, easy professional editing software, work can still turn out so trite. Manning’s hit-and-miss oil pastels convey well an intended sense of disaster, but the execution, loose and quick, comes off as just that.