Upcoming Exhibitions

Into Gentle Ruin
Opening: Friday, June 11th 6-9pm
By Appointment June 12th-June 30th

When we experience the past it is only through the present, never as it was. This is a very obvious thing to say, but then again we often act as though you can encounter the past as it was, with complete understanding. This is an origin of nostalgia: to re-experience is fundamentally a new experience, seductive in its feeling of safety and comfort.

Not unrelated: the New York Times reported that last summer a lot of us were watching movies made in the ‘90s; in the 18th century wealthy people would hire a garden hermit to live on their land as an ornamental reference to an ideal of lost free time; and bears have such an incredible sense of smell that they know not only where you are, but where you have been.

Into Gentle Ruin will feature works made by Alyson Provax from 2014-2021. With this deliberate mix of new and older pieces in our moment of change and reimagining she asks what we see of past feelings in today’s moment.

Provax will be showing original letterpress on paper, animations, mirrors, and billboard vinyl in the open air space of 1122 Outside. As the covid-19 pandemic is ongoing, masks and social distancing will be required for everyone’s increased safety.

Alyson Provax is an artist living in Portland, Oregon. She is interested in loneliness, uncertainty and memory. She uses the tools of printmaking, and her work has been described as “printmaking disinterested in the perfection based traditions that exist as a form of exclusion.” She often uses repetition as a drawing tool rather than to make multiple originals, and calls into question the certainty of a text with its visual presentation.

She has shown regionally at Agenda, Archer Gallery, Bridge Productions, Carnation Contemporary, Upfor Gallery, The Vestibule, Wolff Gallery, and the Whatcom Museum, nationally at A.I.R. Gallery and The Untitled Space in New York, and internationally at the Blueproject Foundation in Barcelona. She is also a member of the Portland-based Well Well Projects.

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The We In Wellness
Opening: Saturday, May 22nd 5-9pm
Closing: Friday, June 4th 6-9pm

Curated by Rachel Jones

Featuring:
Lettie Jane Rennekamp
The Ghost Ease
The Precarious Peoples Party
Heather McLaughlin and Kathy MacCrate
7 Flora Aromas
McKensi Payne

focusing on the WE in wellness
what does it look like to be well as an individual? as a community? as a city? as a nation?

as we slowly come back together how do we feel?
what have we learned?
how do we move forward as a community ?
have you changed your life path due to the pandemic?
due to the BLM movement?
due to environmental issues?
due to politics?
due to feeling unwell?

when you think of wellness what kinds of practices come to mind?
personal?
social?

for me, i’ve practiced self care and thought of wellness like many do, by focusing my attention on my personal habits and attending to diet, exercise, sleep all of which are important for my mental and physical well being but the missing component has been tending to the collective wellness, the WE in wellness

WE are at a pivotal point in history
WE have been mostly isolated and experienced a collective hardship
add onto that everything that has happened over the last year
and we have a lot of healing and work to do  in order to be a well community
WE have to come together and pave new paths 
forge new friendships expand our communities
WE can do it
WE can be WELL
Portlanders Welcome back

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View Past Exhibitions.