Bonnie Lucas, And This Too Will Pass, 1983, assemblage on fabric, 35 x 16 inches

ILY2 is honored to present Bonnie Lucas 1978-2023, the first solo exhibition on the West Coast for this New York-based artist. This survey exhibition features several bodies of work developed over the last four decades. Together, they offer a comprehensive view into Lucas’ complicated exploration of the aesthetics and ideologies of traditional femininity in allegorical works that are at once celebration and critique as filtered through the most accessible strata of commodity culture. The exhibition opens Saturday March 25, with a public opening from 12pm to 4pm.

Bonnie Lucas 1978-2023 is the inaugural exhibition in ILY2’s new home at 925 NW Flanders in Portland’s Pearl District. The 1660 square foot gallery, formerly housing the venerable PDX Contemporary, has been redesigned as a multi-use space by Andee Hess and Makrai Crecelius of Osmose alongside Allie Furlotti. Maintaining the unique flexibility produced by the existing rotating walls, the redesign reflects ILY2’s refusal of business-as-usual with distinctive wall-to-wall mirrored ceilings reflecting warm wood floors and more importantly, custom state-of-the-art lighting that is tunable for exhibition and performance. The office has been transformed into a welcoming, cocoon-like cove with a resource library for the community. The gallery is dedicated to the memory of Hilary Tisch.

Bonnie Lucas was born in 1950 in Syracuse, New York. She completed a B.A. in Art History from Wellesley College and an MFA from Rutgers University. In the decades that have followed, her work has been exhibited throughout the United States (New York, Cambridge, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Oakland) and abroad (Netherlands, Finland, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia). In the 1980s, she presented a series of solo exhibitions with the Avenue B Gallery in New York. Her work has been included in projects at the Drawing Center, the International Studio Curatorial Program, Sideshow Gallery, the Painting Center, Art in General, the DeCordova Museum, the Dutch Textile Museum, and Bellevue Art Museum among other institutions. In 2011 Lucas was interviewed by MSNBC.com, and her work has been written about in Artforum, ARTnews, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, and USA Today. In 2014 her work was the subject of a survey exhibition at Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Gallery, an artist-run space in New York. Following on this extensive survey, Lucas presented solo exhibitions at JTT, 17ESSEX, and RUSCHWOMAN. Lucas lives and works in New York City.

Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday - 11 am - 6 pm and by appointment