Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) presents Policing Justice, an exhibition and related programming with local, national, and international artists. 

Opening Reception: Friday, February 23, 2024 / 4:00 – 8:00 p.m. Exhibition Dates: February 23 – May 19, 2024 

Symposium: March 9, 2024 

Price: Exhibition, Free / Workshops & Performances, free or sliding scale

Website: pica.org/events/policingjustice 

Portland, OR - Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) announces a major  forthcoming exhibition Policing Justice. Guest curated by Nina Amstutz, Associate  Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon, and Cleo  Davis, local social construct artist, designer, educator, historian, and community leader,  this exhibition examines policing practices in Portland, Oregon, and their relationship  to longer local and national histories of oppression through the lens of artists who call  Portland their home and those who have witnessed and documented police brutality  across the globe. 

The extended George Floyd protests in 2020, which lasted longer in Portland than  in any other city in America and were met with over 6000+ documented instances  of police use of force, serve as a point of departure to explore Portland’s history of  policing in relation to racial, environmental, spatial, and juvenile justice. 

Local artists and activist groups reflect on these situated histories through a series  of commissioned installations, including work by Don’t Shoot Portland, Master  Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. in collaboration with Blue, and Cleo Davis  and Kayin Talton Davis in collaboration with Robert Clarke and Kimberly Moreland.  Complementing these regional collaborations, a selection of works on loan by  Alfredo Jaar, Sandy Rodriguez, and Carrie Mae Weems will situate what happened in  Portland in a national context. Policing Justice will also showcase a three-part video  installation by the British research and arts organization Forensic Architecture, which  includes a recent investigation into the Portland Police Bureau’s use of tear gas against  protesters in 2020 and its environmental and health impacts. The exhibition will be  accompanied by an active programming schedule, including a symposium, film series,  workshops, and panel discussions, which center on locally impacted communities. 

PICA thanks the American Art Dealers Association and the University of Oregon,  College of Design’s Tinker Hatfield Award for Innovation for supporting this exhibition.  

Artists

Alfredo Jaar, Blue, Carrie Mae Weems, Cleo Davis, Don’t Shoot Portland, Forensic Architecture, Kayin Talton Davis, Kimberly Moreland, Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr., Robert Clarke, Sandy Rodriguez 

Curators: Nina Amstutz and Cleo Davis 

Consulting Curator/Producer: Kristan Kennedy 

Exhibition Design: Erté deGarces 

Curatorial/Production Assistant: Liz “L” Quezada 

after / time collective gallery is pleased to announce its next exhibition: ABOLITIONIST Art Show in collaboration with Defense Fund PDX. This group show will exhibit 47 artists currently or formerly incarcerated in the Oregon State prison system with over 200 artworks made by hand. In an artworld driven by the imperatives of spectacle and of Capital, this exhibition maintains that artists can and do make art regardless of the systems of control and biopolitics that seek to determine their respective identities and destinies. As a clarion call for justice for all the incarcerated and for an end to the prison-industrial complex that goes hand-in-hand with systemic racism and classism - underwritten by self-dealing legal policy and by hedge funds - this exhibition provides a public forum for their respective voices to be heard. The Abolitionist Art Show is a collection of over 200 pieces by artists who are currently or formerly incarcerated. For many of the artists, this work is both a creative outlet and a way of connecting with others. Our primary goal for this show is to pay artists for their work. Proceeds go directly back to the artists and allow those still in custody to buy commissary items and have funds to communicate with people outside.

Defense Fund PDX is a Portland-based non profit that believes in total abolition, which means nobody should be behind bars, but for now we hope to get our artists some funds to make their lives in custody or post-custody a little easier. All artworks will be for sale, and all proceeds from sales will go to provide for their commissary and for their future. This offers all the opportunity to support these incredibly gifted artists in their practices, their commissary and for their futures. Opening Reception: Thursday, February 1, 2024 Public Programming dates and times to be announced shortly. (This exhibition was made possible through the generous support of RACC and Prosper Portland)

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 11-5 pm

In his current series, Beginner Nudes, Chris Lael Larson transforms discarded student figure paintings into immersive installations, still-life photographs, and paintings that continue the original creative idea of painting — moving an abandoned impulse forward in time and giving it new life, meaning, and value. In this series, he reclaims and interprets the paintings and combines them with large-scale photographic prints, paint, fabric, natural elements, and hand-built wooden shapes that expand the paintings' narrative and context. Next, Chris constructs an in-studio installation from the elements that is finally photographed. The final presentation of the work integrates both the built installations as well as the photos and paintings created in the process to illuminate the evolution of the image through a range of perspectives.

COLOR/TIME, Portland Artist Jessica Poundstone’s First Solo Show of Paintings, Opens January 20 at A Sometimes Gallery

Opening Party: Saturday, January 20, 5-8 pm, featuring cocktails, music and color exploration worksheets

Hours: Opening January 27, 5-8; After That, By Appointment

ADDITIONAL FUN TIDBITS:
- Jessica’s artwork can be spotted in the upcoming Mean Girls Movie (release date January 12, 2024): three pieces “Color Space 27”, “Big Feelings 17” and “Klein Blue Sphere: Soft Geometry” are all in Regina George’s room.

- Jessica is teaching a free class at the Bodecker Foundation for 14-18 year olds on February 2. Details are here.

- Jessica’s work was recently featured in an article on neuroaesthetics in Medicinal Media titled “Looking at Colorful Art Helps Our Brain Improve Its Well-Being”

BODY:
Portland, Ore. — January 3, 2024 — A Sometimes Gallery is pleased to announce COLOR/TIME, an exhibition of paintings by Portland artist Jessica Poundstone. This will be Poundstone’s first solo show of paintings, and her second show with A Sometimes Gallery.

In this body of work on canvas, formal geometric structures mix with whimsical, intuitive color palettes, creating physical spaces for contemplation. The pieces encourage multiple meditative viewings, and serve as icons — containers, touchstones, totems — for the meaning, memories and meditations we bring to them.

From her artist statement: “With apologies in advance for a rhyming list of three...I have found that making and looking at these paintings has helped me slow (shifting to a different experience of time), know (accessing my intuition through form and color choices and relationships) and grow (taking in the meditative, positive vibes that happen when a piece clicks together). I hope collectors will share in some (or all!) of these experiences as they bring the pieces into their spaces.”

A Sometimes Gallery will also be releasing a poster for the show, available exclusively through the gallery at www.asometimesgallery.com

ABOUT JESSICA POUNDSTONE
Jessica Poundstone is an abstract artist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work combines color, structure, and softness to create spaces for contemplation, comfort and connection. Poundstone’s art has been featured by Louis Vuitton, SFMOMA, and Architectural Digest. Learn more at www.jessicapoundstone.com

ABOUT A SOMETIMES GALLERY
Curated and operated by Amy Rowan in a found space within (and donated by) artist Lisa Congdon, the gallery offers affordable art while building a strong community for and around artists. Previous shows include Anis Mojgani, Kate Bingaman-Burt, and Jason Sturgill.Learn more at www.asometimesgallery.com

Hours: Wednesdays – Fridays, 12-7pm, Saturdays, 12-5pm

Please join us for the opening event and artist lecture for Trace Extractions, on Friday, January 19, 2023 at Paragon Arts Gallery, Cascade Campus. The gallery will open at 5pm with a 45-minute gallery talk at 6pm, during which the artists will discuss their works within the exhibition.

Exhibition Statement:

Home is a destination, a refuge, a place of respite and inviolability. Hegemonic roles of women have historically placed them as responsible for daily acts related to domesticity — cooking, cleaning, laundry, kin-keeping, and more — this is Invisible Labor. This exhibition holds space for collective autobiographical narratives during the pandemic, how “home” changed. Exhibiting artists Stephanie Serpick, Victoria Smits, Stefani Byrd document these experiences through modern technology and traditional materials including intimate reflections in oil on panel, records of GPS tracking etched into acrylic, and scanning technology and digital photographic prints. The artists each employ a decidedly feminist lens in framing the experiences of the pandemic through how it disproportionately affected the lives of women

Serpick’s paintings of windows and bedding connote extraction from the outside world; they are devoid of human presence while intensifying awareness of grief, solitude and healing.

Smits’ etched acrylic GPS records of invisible labor document exertion and dysregulation of domestic acts historically falling on the shoulders of mothers, made more acute during the pandemic.

Byrd uses LIDAR tools to archive the commonplace while exploring stasis during a global crisis, abstracting and recording the formal qualities of space and volume, as well as absence and presence.

PPSTMM is quite happy to announce its inaugural public moment with an exhibition and performance from Edward Jeffrey Kriksciun. Opening Jan 12, 6-6pm.

Hours: by appointment

This group of two and three dimensional works are brought together under the title Mauve Fog. The foggy future of 2024 asks us to eschew the sentimental forecasting in favor of a glassy eye gaze into the question: “what’s next?” As a means of accessing the marbles in his mind Kriksciun has taken to rummaging in his memories for clues and cues, finding drawings that are un-singed from the candlelit sepia, and yet do share in an overall achromatic vibe.

Edward Jeffrey Kriksciun's lifelong creative pursuits of skating, drawing, music, and hanging out have led to an enigmatic style filled with colorful gestures, formal puns, and sly observation on his own presence in the world. Colorful, reverent, and cagy, the images seek recognition, empathy, and a smile. His works have been featured in Portland venus such as Lowell, Nationale, Free Spirit News Car Hole, Half & Half, Holocene, and many others, as well as Printed Matter, NYC, Big Medium, Austin, TX and can be found in his publications: Fragile Jazz, Pretty Ugly, and Ngôi Dánh Hoang,