CAP Auction

Tomorrow is the CAP Auction, which is a very big art event in this town. Every year since 1990, CAP has hosted the art auction and party to raise money to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and to provide services. There's a gala event and a dinner. The live auction is only part of an immense art show, with just about every kind of art available. This year's live auction features 15 pieces from artists such as Jacques Flechemuller, Sherrie Wolf and Tom Cramer. I've been asked to be the Art Narrator this year, which is a big honor. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night!

Cutters Edges at Gestalten Space in Berlin

James Gallagher is my hero. We were both in Paper Chase, curated by Jenny Strayer, at Guestroom years ago. Since then he has curated me into three international collage shows, all of them with the word Cutters in the title. On the 28th this month a new gallery opens in Berlin. Gestalten Space will open with a Cutter show which will exhibit three of my Targets. Gestalten used Target No. 6 (Natalie) as the invitation image! Beefmaster detailed the opening info, as did Core77.

Jim Neidhardt on KBOO

This week I will have Jim Neidhardt on Art Focus. He has a show of photographs up at Blackfish. Neidhardt captures the museum ritual of photographing the art experience rather than actually having one. Or maybe the intimate relationship we have with our cameras is deeply imbedded in whatever art experience we have, for better or worse.

(Review in the Vanguard.)

Color Moves

Sonia Delaunay at Cooper Hewitt was the perfect show for me. She’s a crossover dream in more ways than one. I have a foot in paint and another in graphics. Not everyone is at ease with this. But she was like Let’s Go Dancing, yanking both feet.

While some of the paintings didn’t hold up that well, the textiles are unbeatable – they truly can compete with any quote-unquote serious painting. In fact right before I saw Delaunay, I saw Thorton Willis (below) at Elizabeth Harris. There’s a shared vitality and rawness - he of course is many generations away from DeStil, while she’s rubbing elbows with it. And of course she’s a monarch of Simultaneity, a favorite touchstone. The show is called Color Moves, in reference to her finesse at fluid color bending. I love that title, may have to steal it someday.

Holly Andres on KBOO

Listen to the interview here. On Tuesday I'll have Holly Andres on Art Focus. Her new show at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, "The Fall of Spring Hill ," continues her examination of a personal feminine narrative. In large-scale, lush color images, the artist ponders the brevity of childhood, the fleeting nature of memory, and female introspection. As in her previous work, this new series is concerned with revisiting, recreating and preserving history, the interweaving of fact and fiction and finding a place in which biography and fictitious narration come together. Andres choreographs all her tableaus - she dresses her people and puts it all together. The above piece is rather singular as there are no people at all. It reminds me of the many juicy images you can find in Ladies Home Journals from the 1940s or 50s, images I've looked at all my life.

Cris Moss on KBOO

Listen to the interview here. I’m back at KBOO this Tuesday with an interview with Cris Moss, who curates at Linfield College. Opening this month is Bearing Witness: Daniel Heyman. Heyman is a storyteller. The exhibition features portraits of individuals who have endured great personal hardship — former Abu Ghraib detainees, African-American fathers who have been in and out of jail, and new immigrants to the United States. Linfield will also host a public Frazee Lecture with Daniel Heyman in Ice Auditorium on the Linfield campus Tuesday, April 5, from 7:30–9 p.m. An extension of the exhibition will be hosted by the White Box Gallery at the University of Oregon in Portland from April 5 – May 14, 2011, with a First Thursday Opening Reception on April 7 from 6–8 p.m.