R.I.P. presents Greta Rybus
We believe we come from nature and when we die we return to nature, India, 2018
August 1 - August 31, 2019 in the Maine Mall Food Court
R.I.P is pleased to present a photograph by Maine artist, Greta Rybus during the month of August in the Maine Mall food court. The image on display is part of a collaboration with Kamalan Travels for Lodestars Anthology.
Greta Rybus is a full-time freelance photojournalist specializing in editorial portraiture, travel and documentary photography. She is currently based in Portland, Maine where she lives with her sweetheart and her scruffy sidekick, a dog named Murray.
Born in Boise, Idaho, Greta studied Photojournalism and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Montana. Her first book, Handcrafted Maine, about people in Maine working with art land, and sea, is now in bookstores. She has a goal to spend one month of every year living and photographing in a new place and is currently working on an ongoing project exploring how climate change impacts individuals and communities. Thus far, she has worked on the project in Senegal, Panama, Norway, and Idaho. She has lived in Japan, the Netherlands, the San Juan Islands, Montana, Seattle, the Sawtooth Mountains, and Berlin, Germany.
Greta Rybus is a full-time freelance photojournalist specializing in editorial portraiture, travel and documentary photography. She is currently based in Portland, Maine where she lives with her sweetheart and her scruffy sidekick, a dog named Murray.
Born in Boise, Idaho, Greta studied Photojournalism and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Montana. Her first book, Handcrafted Maine, about people in Maine working with art land, and sea, is now in bookstores. She has a goal to spend one month of every year living and photographing in a new place and is currently working on an ongoing project exploring how climate change impacts individuals and communities. Thus far, she has worked on the project in Senegal, Panama, Norway, and Idaho. She has lived in Japan, the Netherlands, the San Juan Islands, Montana, Seattle, the Sawtooth Mountains, and Berlin, Germany.
R.I.P. presents John Sundling
Untitled (floral sculpture), 2019
August 13 - 15, 2019 in Highland Memorial Cemetery
R.I.P. commissioned John Sundling (Portland, ME) to make a botanical-based sculpture on our grave site in the Highland Memorial Cemetery, which was unveiled on Tuesday, August 13th.
John's work explores the intersection of floriography, ritual, death, and environmentalism. The piece was designed to droop & decay over one week, dying for its audience and constantly changing as it began to turn back into dirt. Nodding to the role that flowers play in contemporary funerary rites, the untitled sculpture invited audiences to consider the role that preservation plays above and below ground.
"Flowers and Death are intrinsically linked," Sundling writes. "We kill flowers because they are so beautiful yet keep them artificially alive afterwards. These living dead things are then asked to communicate unspeakable emotions for us, often as a the deceased lays nearby. The body and the flowers are both pumped full of preservatives and kept in controlled environments to help create the illusion of life while decay sets in. Neither are alive nor quite gone yet, existing in a place between realms. The return to ashes and dust delayed by formaldehyde, acid, and bleach."
On Thursday, August 15, an unknown person or group removed the cellophane wrappings from the flower installation and reassembled the piece on an adjacent grave site. In accordance with the artist's wishes, the work was removed from public view that evening , just two days after its unveiling. Instead of having the piece slowly decay over the course of a week through natural processes, human intervention ushered in an abrupt end. We asked John if he would like to craft a statement addressing the issue. His response is below:
“Today I decided that it was time to consign this sculptural installation to the ash bin a number of days early. This morning the piece was partially dismantled and moved by the grounds crew to be used for a memorial service at the cemetery. As a professional florist I do understand why people thought this was the right move (it was covered in white flowers after all), but I wasn't creating this as a memorial in a traditional sense and don't see the move as respectful to my work or the grieving family having this thrust upon them. Though in some ways I see this reuse as in-line with the life cycle of the piece, ultimately it no longer reflects my thoughts and goals for this project in its current state.”
John's work explores the intersection of floriography, ritual, death, and environmentalism. The piece was designed to droop & decay over one week, dying for its audience and constantly changing as it began to turn back into dirt. Nodding to the role that flowers play in contemporary funerary rites, the untitled sculpture invited audiences to consider the role that preservation plays above and below ground.
"Flowers and Death are intrinsically linked," Sundling writes. "We kill flowers because they are so beautiful yet keep them artificially alive afterwards. These living dead things are then asked to communicate unspeakable emotions for us, often as a the deceased lays nearby. The body and the flowers are both pumped full of preservatives and kept in controlled environments to help create the illusion of life while decay sets in. Neither are alive nor quite gone yet, existing in a place between realms. The return to ashes and dust delayed by formaldehyde, acid, and bleach."
On Thursday, August 15, an unknown person or group removed the cellophane wrappings from the flower installation and reassembled the piece on an adjacent grave site. In accordance with the artist's wishes, the work was removed from public view that evening , just two days after its unveiling. Instead of having the piece slowly decay over the course of a week through natural processes, human intervention ushered in an abrupt end. We asked John if he would like to craft a statement addressing the issue. His response is below:
“Today I decided that it was time to consign this sculptural installation to the ash bin a number of days early. This morning the piece was partially dismantled and moved by the grounds crew to be used for a memorial service at the cemetery. As a professional florist I do understand why people thought this was the right move (it was covered in white flowers after all), but I wasn't creating this as a memorial in a traditional sense and don't see the move as respectful to my work or the grieving family having this thrust upon them. Though in some ways I see this reuse as in-line with the life cycle of the piece, ultimately it no longer reflects my thoughts and goals for this project in its current state.”
John Sundling is an artist, designer & builder living in Portland, Maine. He runs Plant Office, a houseplant store and design studio that specializes in flowers and live events. He also dabbles in public art, theatrical design, and installations. His work has recently taken him to Alaska, Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, Ireland, and across the great state of Maine.
Follow John on Instagram - @plant.office
Follow John on Instagram - @plant.office
R.I.P. presents Bingyang Liu
Burned "Paper Money" in front of the Grave, 2015
July 1 - July 31, 2019 in the Maine Mall Food Court
R.I.P is pleased to present one photograph by Bingyang Liu, an artist based in California and China. Bingyang Liu's work considers social relationship under contemporary status through photography, often engaging with ancient art and ancient culture as part of long-term projects. Follow Bingyang on Instagram - @brianliu2008
Pop-Up Party & Book Drive
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Works by Brendan Shea
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In honor of our time in Suite 309, we hosted a pop-up party and book drive for the Maine State Prison featuring works by:
Brendan Shea (ME) Brian Doody (ME) Ruby Jackson (NY) + Emma Post (NY) Cobra McVey (TX) Hayley Barker (CA) As always, a portion of proceeds were donated to the Indigenous Action Network. |
R.I.P. presents Brian Doody
Untitled (Tree), 2017
June 1 - June 30, 2019 in the Maine Mall Food Court
R.I.P launched with a photograph from Maine-based artist, Brian Doody in the Maine Mall Food Court.
Brian Doody is an artist currently living in Portland, ME. Their work has been published in the form of zines and book throughout the years, as well as appeared in numerous publications and group shows. They are the recipient of a 2017 Kindling Fund Grant and will be a resident at Hewnoaks Artist Colony come August 2019.
Brian’s past work explored themes of working class, technology, online presence, queer communities, and relationships of people. Brian’s current work continues to explore identity, with a deeper look into food insecurity, earth decay, bodies, and grief. With an exploration into traumatic social structures, childhood fantasy realms, and death, the artist hopes to uplift and support the people and places that are often left in the dark.
Brian Doody is an artist currently living in Portland, ME. Their work has been published in the form of zines and book throughout the years, as well as appeared in numerous publications and group shows. They are the recipient of a 2017 Kindling Fund Grant and will be a resident at Hewnoaks Artist Colony come August 2019.
Brian’s past work explored themes of working class, technology, online presence, queer communities, and relationships of people. Brian’s current work continues to explore identity, with a deeper look into food insecurity, earth decay, bodies, and grief. With an exploration into traumatic social structures, childhood fantasy realms, and death, the artist hopes to uplift and support the people and places that are often left in the dark.
Absent Myths: Watercolors by Greg Jamie
April 6 - May 31, 2019
Border Patrol presented Greg Jamie's first solo exhibition of watercolor paintings in its last exhibition in the State Theatre Building. The exhibition at Border Patrol was the first in an ongoing series of paintings that play with folklore as a dreamlike, non-nostalgic and immediate form. Inspired by self-taught artists Martin Ramirez, Henry Darger, Carol Rama, Bill Traylor, and John Lurie, Greg Jamie works to create his own symbolic language and unspecific mythic beings caught in nightmarish landscapes. In Jamie's work, an odd juxtaposition of vibrant colors and muted tonal settings depict abstract and childlike creatures consumed by nature and wandering outside of their parameters. The symbolism has no frame of reference and the myths are not established, yet Jamie's paintings depict vibrant fairy tales that are endless.
Greg Jamie lives in Portland, Maine. A songwriter and musician, Jamie has released albums under his own name and with his bands, O’Death and Blood Warrior. He holds a BFA in film from the film conservatory at SUNY Purchase. He is a partner and programmer at the Apohadion Theater. A closing reception for Absent Myths with live music by Drab Pony took place on Friday, May 31st.
Follow Greg on Instagram - @gregjamie
Greg Jamie lives in Portland, Maine. A songwriter and musician, Jamie has released albums under his own name and with his bands, O’Death and Blood Warrior. He holds a BFA in film from the film conservatory at SUNY Purchase. He is a partner and programmer at the Apohadion Theater. A closing reception for Absent Myths with live music by Drab Pony took place on Friday, May 31st.
Follow Greg on Instagram - @gregjamie
Photos by Joel Tsui
Flavor Profile Closing Reception and Reading with Brenna Quinn
Saturday, March 23rd
3 - 4pm at Wild Burritos
4 - 6pm at Border Patrol
Border Patrol hosted a reading with B. Quinn at Wild Burritos on occasion of the closing of Flavor Profile, curated by Meg Hahn. B.Quinn read from her text-based work, 116 Actions in 24 Hours with a Purple Cabbage in Johnson, Vermont, which was included in the exhibition. The piece was originally conceived and created while Quinn was in residence at the Vermont Studio center in March 2018. In the review "Food, Mundanity, Devotion: Flavor Profile at Border Patrol," Olivia Canny observes “there is a comical and unsettlingly familiar quality to Quinn’s anthropomorphization of the cabbage...the dynamics of the narrator’s relationship with the cabbage offer introspection into how value and turbulence function within interpersonal relationships.” Just like in the artist’s everyday life, banality, dark humor, uncertainty, and obsession were present in this performative reading. Border Patrol also screened the short film, Food by Jan Švankmajer on the restaurant's television during the event.
Flavor Profile
Curated by Meg Hahn
January 19 - March 23, 2019
Flavor Profile was a group show curated by Meg Hahn and featuring works by Jarid del Deo (ME), Ruby Jackson (NJ), Dustin Metz (CA), Cat Quattrociocchi (ME), B. Quinn (IL), and Kemar Wynter (NY). The works dislayed in the exhibition use food as their source, directly and indirectly, as representational and abstract forms. On occasion of the exhibiton, Border Patrol produced Flavor Profile Cookbook, a publication that included original writing, recipes, and artworks by participating artists. Flavor Profile Cookbook is an edition of 65, risograph printed by Wing Club Press.
Food involves labor. It is a material and an object whose combinations can create a composition. It can be elevated in its presentation and used to mediate borders. Food represents and measures the cycles of life, from germination, to fruit, and eventual decay. Its presence can be humorous, sentimental, and deeply reactive. The artists in Flavor Profile embody these ideas by demonstrating food’s universal humanist understanding, reflecting our own idiosyncrasies, culture, and histories. Using food as its source, both directly and indirectly, each artist’s contributions create an overarching show, or meal.
--Meg Hahn, January 2019
Full text available in Flavor Profile Cookbook
Please email us for more information on how to purchase
Food involves labor. It is a material and an object whose combinations can create a composition. It can be elevated in its presentation and used to mediate borders. Food represents and measures the cycles of life, from germination, to fruit, and eventual decay. Its presence can be humorous, sentimental, and deeply reactive. The artists in Flavor Profile embody these ideas by demonstrating food’s universal humanist understanding, reflecting our own idiosyncrasies, culture, and histories. Using food as its source, both directly and indirectly, each artist’s contributions create an overarching show, or meal.
--Meg Hahn, January 2019
Full text available in Flavor Profile Cookbook
Please email us for more information on how to purchase
Night Guard Recruitment Day
Performance by Prudence Ho
November 17, 2018 2 - 4pm
The Museum is hiring! We need YOU to guard our pretentious, I mean, precious, art. Do you want to be the keepers of treasures? Do you want to be part of us? Do you want a cool badge that make you feel you belong? The Museum needs you! You can too be the chosen one! Join us now!
Night Guard Recruitment Day was a participatory performance in which guests were invited to step into a day in the life of a museum night guard on occasion of the closing of THE WE. THE YOU. THE US. Mimicking recruitment events sponsored by The Museum, Ho led visitors through a series of tasks related to the exhibition that included hiring, working, and resigning--duties typically assigned to a night security guard. This participatory performance references cult religions and a sense of belonging. It is an exploration of the purposeless purposes and the forced engagement towards hierarchy.
Image by Prudence Ho
THE WE. THE YOU. THE US
Curated by Baxter Koziol
September 29 - September 15, 2018
The we. The you. The us.
Derived from the inclusive vocabulary in so many ad campaigns, this title also encapsulates how I felt about my curatorial approach. Curation is built on branding, gathering an inanimate crowd with commonalities. Artists are so regularly boiled down to a brand to assure quality in recognition and repetition in the financial and social marketplace. I saw this multiplication of the self, a projection of one’s body into concurrent body objects, giving them a history. I also saw in these artists an ability to coexist as maker, consumer, and critic of their own enterprise. They actively participate in an inevitable distillation process, and they use its momentum to further communicate and inhabit the brand others see them as. Their artworks have an element of wearability wherein they become avatars to play out this artistic brand, or just to take our place when we want to do something else.
--Baxter Koziol, curator
September 2018
Featuring works by Magnus Gitt-Henderson, Prudence Ho, Terrance James Jr., Baxter Koziol, Dave Munson, and Brian Trelegan
Derived from the inclusive vocabulary in so many ad campaigns, this title also encapsulates how I felt about my curatorial approach. Curation is built on branding, gathering an inanimate crowd with commonalities. Artists are so regularly boiled down to a brand to assure quality in recognition and repetition in the financial and social marketplace. I saw this multiplication of the self, a projection of one’s body into concurrent body objects, giving them a history. I also saw in these artists an ability to coexist as maker, consumer, and critic of their own enterprise. They actively participate in an inevitable distillation process, and they use its momentum to further communicate and inhabit the brand others see them as. Their artworks have an element of wearability wherein they become avatars to play out this artistic brand, or just to take our place when we want to do something else.
--Baxter Koziol, curator
September 2018
Featuring works by Magnus Gitt-Henderson, Prudence Ho, Terrance James Jr., Baxter Koziol, Dave Munson, and Brian Trelegan
Video and Sound Works
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Prudence Ho
Together We Can Rule the Galaxy, 2018 Digital video Running time: 6 min. Please note this video contains nudity. |
Brian Trelegan
Excerpt from Putt-Putt Forgets What the Zoo Was Like, 2018 Sound piece (stereo) Full running time: 41 min. 45 sec. FMI: visit Brian Trelegan's website |
New England Art Book Fair
October 5 - 6, 2018
Border Patrol returned to the New England Art Book Fair at SPACE Gallery, a two-day event featuring independent publishers and artists from across the country. Visitors explored the convergence of publishing, identity, art, and storytelling. We sold artworks, music and texts by Hayley Barker , Nick Benfey, Big Blood, Demian DinéYazhi', Sandra Erbacher, Nat Evans, Baxter Koziol, Jake Nussbaum, Seven Count, Brendan Shea, and others. A portion of proceeds went to support the Indigenous Action Network and we collected books for the Maine State Prison Library in Warren, ME.
LADY-LIKE
Curated by Beth Kleene
August 4 - September 5, 2018
Definition of ladylike
1 : becoming or suitable to a lady
2: resembling a lady in appearance or manners : well-bred
3 a : feeling or showing too much concern about elegance or propriety
3b : lacking in strength, force, or virility
Lady-Like, a group exhibition curated by Portland, Maine artist, Beth Kleene. Featuring works by Anne Buckwalter, Jaime Bull, Stacey Elder, Elizabeth Kleene, KC Crow Maddux, Kayla Mattes, and Cobra McVey, Lady-Like seeks to question accepted definitions of femininity and what it means to make work that is “feminine.” The show hopes to present the idea of femininity as a broad spectrum that extends beyond traditional expressions of the feminine, encompassing interpretations of ladylike behavior and gender that defy convention.
Images by Justin Levesque
1 : becoming or suitable to a lady
2: resembling a lady in appearance or manners : well-bred
3 a : feeling or showing too much concern about elegance or propriety
3b : lacking in strength, force, or virility
Lady-Like, a group exhibition curated by Portland, Maine artist, Beth Kleene. Featuring works by Anne Buckwalter, Jaime Bull, Stacey Elder, Elizabeth Kleene, KC Crow Maddux, Kayla Mattes, and Cobra McVey, Lady-Like seeks to question accepted definitions of femininity and what it means to make work that is “feminine.” The show hopes to present the idea of femininity as a broad spectrum that extends beyond traditional expressions of the feminine, encompassing interpretations of ladylike behavior and gender that defy convention.
Images by Justin Levesque
Backwards Dive
New Works by Emilie Stark-Menneg
June 9 - July 14, 2018
"These recent paintings are storyboards for an impossible film—cue the monsoon, catch the shark, release the mermaids. I don’t know how to animate, so my movie-making decisions are largely based on real-life circumstances and DIY green-screen effects. In the past, I’ve celebrated the humor of the shoddy production, of the self-conscious reveal. But increasingly I am interested in being enraptured. What are the mechanisms at work, when one sits in a movie theater and becomes completely engulfed in the story? And how does the cinematic play out in painting? Reluctantly, I’ve decided to give illusion, light, depth and atmosphere a second chance. I’m beginning to look back, to admit to my love of Renaissance painting and Gothic romance. This descent makes me squeamish, because I’ve been so obsessed with breaking the rules and making work that looks weird and new. I don’t know what I’ll find, but I’ve always been terrified of diving backwards, so here it goes."
--Emilie Stark-Menneg
May 2018
Images by Joel Tsui
--Emilie Stark-Menneg
May 2018
Images by Joel Tsui
POP-UP SHOP!
Saturday, June 23, 2018 10am - 4pm
Border Patrol hosted a pop-up shop on Saturday, June 23 from 10am - 4pm during the Pickwick and Friends 3rd Annual Print Fair in Congress Square Park. Both the pop-up and print fair were free and open to the public. A portion of sales went to support the Indigenous Action Network. Texts and works by: Hayley Barker, Nick Benfey, Big Blood, Ryan Burghard, Demian DinéYazhi', Sandra Erbacher, Nat Evans, Baxter Koziol, Jake Nussbaum, Seven Count, Brendan Shea, and Emilie Stark-Menneg.
TIIC
March 16 - May 12, 2018
Border Patrol presents TIIC, a satellite project by Sandra Erbacher in conjunction with her exhibition, Geometry of Oppression, on view at SPACE (538 Congress St.).
For TIIC, Sandra Erbacher presents a suite of seven formal portraits of both Nazi officials and IBM managing directors. Collectively known as Faces of Fascism and Bureaucracy, the portraits are part of an ongoing series of graphite drawings that the artist initially created as a response to Edwin Black’s book, IBM and the Holocaust, which charts the business connections between IBM and the Nazi regime. In the process of drawing, the artist's initial concern to chart the parallels between fascism and bureaucracy--evident here in the authoritative expressions, formal business attire and homogeneity of race and gender--extended to an interest in the assumed status of the archive as a neutral container for an objective, historical truth.
Erbacher aims to construct an archive that casts the boundaries between fact and fiction into doubt; in fact, the portraits of IBM directors and Nazi officials appear almost interchangeable. The work poses questions about the ways in which dominant power relationships are tied up with the creation and governance of an archive or narrative history and how such an archive shapes one’s relationship to the past, present and future.
The more deliberately obscure exhibition title, TIIC (an acronym for The Idiots in Charge) is taken from the eponymous neon artwork in the gallery’s back room. Extracted from its particular corporate context, TIIC alludes to business jargon, occupational acronyms, and corporate communications. This commonplace if not irrational class of language is traditionally employed by government agencies as a tactic of abstraction and reinforced by the gallery’s intentional resemblance to an office waiting room.
Images by Joel Tsui
For TIIC, Sandra Erbacher presents a suite of seven formal portraits of both Nazi officials and IBM managing directors. Collectively known as Faces of Fascism and Bureaucracy, the portraits are part of an ongoing series of graphite drawings that the artist initially created as a response to Edwin Black’s book, IBM and the Holocaust, which charts the business connections between IBM and the Nazi regime. In the process of drawing, the artist's initial concern to chart the parallels between fascism and bureaucracy--evident here in the authoritative expressions, formal business attire and homogeneity of race and gender--extended to an interest in the assumed status of the archive as a neutral container for an objective, historical truth.
Erbacher aims to construct an archive that casts the boundaries between fact and fiction into doubt; in fact, the portraits of IBM directors and Nazi officials appear almost interchangeable. The work poses questions about the ways in which dominant power relationships are tied up with the creation and governance of an archive or narrative history and how such an archive shapes one’s relationship to the past, present and future.
The more deliberately obscure exhibition title, TIIC (an acronym for The Idiots in Charge) is taken from the eponymous neon artwork in the gallery’s back room. Extracted from its particular corporate context, TIIC alludes to business jargon, occupational acronyms, and corporate communications. This commonplace if not irrational class of language is traditionally employed by government agencies as a tactic of abstraction and reinforced by the gallery’s intentional resemblance to an office waiting room.
Images by Joel Tsui
Over Land Art Book Fair
May 5, 2018
Border Patrol was pleased to participate in the Over Land Art Book Fair at Waking Windows. Organized by pop-up art space Overnight Projects and Burlington-based Flatlander Press, Vermont celebrated its first and only art book fair. OLABF presented a curated selection of regionally-based sellers and small presses. A portion of sales went to support the Indigenous Action Network. Texts and works by: Hayley Barker, Nick Benfey, Big Blood, Seven Count, Demian DinéYazhi, Sandra Erbacher, Nat Evans, Colleen Kinsella, Baxter Koziol, and Brendan Shea.
LOVESEAT
January 27 - March 10, 2018
Border Patrol kicks off 2018 with Loveseat, an exhibition of new works by Brendan Shea and Nick Benfey. An opening reception with the artists will be held on Saturday, January 27 from 3 – 6 PM.
Shea presents paintings, sculpture and architectural interventions to the space on occasion of Loveseat. He displays an acute understanding of what he describes as painting’s “congealed histories.” Balancing material exploration with an awareness of the medium’s ability to construct empathy through sustained looking, Shea explains:
“Painting is unique because upon viewing you simultaneously perceive an image and the materials that construct the image. It is a platform for illusion that is attentive to its material reality. When an object articulates this type of awareness it can affect us on a different level, it can make us feel things more deeply. My intent is to promote a general sense of awareness and an aptitude for feeling.”
Nick Benfey’s work also rewards prolonged study. The figures that appear in his paintings exist as a generic “type,” a cypher for the imminently relatable situations into which they are placed. He succeeds in translating personal moments into glimpses of a universal. Transparency of method and intention is similarly crucial for Benfey:
“I’ve been through enough to know that many people live on a precarious edge of mental and emotional stability. Painting is my way of exploring that edge. In my work, which is almost entirely focused on people, I enjoy slipping back and forth between orderly waking life and an anarchic dream world, between selfless giving and insecure withholding, between agonizing fear and joyful confidence, between exposed vulnerability and tender care. My art is a reflection of what I value in my personal experiences, and my only criterion for a painting worth making is whether it comes from an honest and meaningful place.”
Such concerns for the conditions of viewing betray an unshakeable confidence in the connection between looking and acting. Benfey and Shea celebrate bodies, objects, and moments both mundane and sparkling, mediated and exposed, agonized and joyful. Loveseat is on view through Saturday, March 10.
Images by Joel Tsui
Shea presents paintings, sculpture and architectural interventions to the space on occasion of Loveseat. He displays an acute understanding of what he describes as painting’s “congealed histories.” Balancing material exploration with an awareness of the medium’s ability to construct empathy through sustained looking, Shea explains:
“Painting is unique because upon viewing you simultaneously perceive an image and the materials that construct the image. It is a platform for illusion that is attentive to its material reality. When an object articulates this type of awareness it can affect us on a different level, it can make us feel things more deeply. My intent is to promote a general sense of awareness and an aptitude for feeling.”
Nick Benfey’s work also rewards prolonged study. The figures that appear in his paintings exist as a generic “type,” a cypher for the imminently relatable situations into which they are placed. He succeeds in translating personal moments into glimpses of a universal. Transparency of method and intention is similarly crucial for Benfey:
“I’ve been through enough to know that many people live on a precarious edge of mental and emotional stability. Painting is my way of exploring that edge. In my work, which is almost entirely focused on people, I enjoy slipping back and forth between orderly waking life and an anarchic dream world, between selfless giving and insecure withholding, between agonizing fear and joyful confidence, between exposed vulnerability and tender care. My art is a reflection of what I value in my personal experiences, and my only criterion for a painting worth making is whether it comes from an honest and meaningful place.”
Such concerns for the conditions of viewing betray an unshakeable confidence in the connection between looking and acting. Benfey and Shea celebrate bodies, objects, and moments both mundane and sparkling, mediated and exposed, agonized and joyful. Loveseat is on view through Saturday, March 10.
Images by Joel Tsui
Artist Talk and Silk Screening Workshop with Demian DinéYazhi'
Saturday, October 28, 2017 Co-presented with Pickwick Independent Press
R.I.S.E. founder + director, Demian DinéYazhi' spoke on the artwork, concepts, and socially engaged projects organized by the Indigenous artist + activist initiative on occasion of the closing of WILD FAMILY. Most notably, the #DecolonizeFeminism poster series, Indigenous Queer/Decolonize Yr Luvvv posters, and a recent collaboration with Winter Count collective and Postcommodity for the Land-based exhibition, Nothing is Natural.
Demian DinéYazhi´ (born 1983) is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Whether he is broaching topics adjacent to Decolonization, Survivance, & Queerness in written or visual language, Demian is caught in a narrative that is informed by romanticized notions of belonging & the alienation experienced through centuries of forced assimilation to White Supremacist Capitalist Heteropatriarchal Colonization. His practice is rooted in Radical Indigenous Queer Feminist ideology, landscape representation, memory formation, HIV/AIDS-related art & activism, poetry, and curatorial inquiry. He received his BFA in Intermedia Arts from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2014. Demian is the founder & director of the artist/activist initiative, R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment, which is dedicated to education, perseverance, & evolution of Indigenous art & culture, as well as co-director for the forthcoming zine, Locusts: A Post-Queer Nation Zine. DinéYazhi was an artist-in-residence at Institute of American Indian Arts (2016), and is a recipient of Crow’s Shadow 2017 Golden Spot Residency and the 2017 Brink Award. He has received grants from Evergreen State College (2014, 2016), PICA – Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (2014, 2016), Art Matters Foundation (2015), and Potlatch Fund (2016).
Images by Joel Tsui
Demian DinéYazhi´ (born 1983) is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Whether he is broaching topics adjacent to Decolonization, Survivance, & Queerness in written or visual language, Demian is caught in a narrative that is informed by romanticized notions of belonging & the alienation experienced through centuries of forced assimilation to White Supremacist Capitalist Heteropatriarchal Colonization. His practice is rooted in Radical Indigenous Queer Feminist ideology, landscape representation, memory formation, HIV/AIDS-related art & activism, poetry, and curatorial inquiry. He received his BFA in Intermedia Arts from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2014. Demian is the founder & director of the artist/activist initiative, R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment, which is dedicated to education, perseverance, & evolution of Indigenous art & culture, as well as co-director for the forthcoming zine, Locusts: A Post-Queer Nation Zine. DinéYazhi was an artist-in-residence at Institute of American Indian Arts (2016), and is a recipient of Crow’s Shadow 2017 Golden Spot Residency and the 2017 Brink Award. He has received grants from Evergreen State College (2014, 2016), PICA – Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (2014, 2016), Art Matters Foundation (2015), and Potlatch Fund (2016).
Images by Joel Tsui
Wild Family
August 18 - October 28, 2017
WILD FAMILY is a group show dedicated to memories, representations, and imaginings of matriarchy. Named after a 1510 drawing by artist Albrecht Altdorfer, this exhibition imagines a world in which women rule.
Altdorfer was an accomplished German Renaissance painter, architect, city planner, and wine maker, credited with inventing the genre of western landscape painting. Unlike his contemporaries, Altdorfer prioritized depictions of the natural world over idealized human bodies. Many of his works feature lush foliage and atmospheric cloudscapes. Figures, when present, do not exploit the natural environment but rather participate within it. His early works in particular aligned more with pagan traditions than Christian ones; in addition to thick forests, Altdorfer depicted feral humans, witches, and other apparitions in his compositions. His is a world in which woman and man, child and adult, soil and flesh churn and pulse on the same horizontal plane.
The exhibition uses the drawing as a framing mechanism, as both an alternate history and as a dissection of patriarchy. Like Altdorfer, the works on display de-naturalize current power relationships while conjuring the arrival of a transformed landscape. Assuming that historical representations contain kernels of worlds to come, WILD FAMILY stumbles toward a suffusion of female energy.
Featuring works by: Elizabeth Atterbury (Portland, ME), Erin Elyse Burns (Seattle, WA), Demian DinéYazhi (Portland, OR), Nika Kaiser (Tucson, AZ), Courtney Kemp (Portland, OR), Zakkiyyah Najeebah (Chicago, IL), Elizabeth Spavento (Portland, ME), and Cammie Staros (Los Angeles, CA)
Images by Joel Tsui
Altdorfer was an accomplished German Renaissance painter, architect, city planner, and wine maker, credited with inventing the genre of western landscape painting. Unlike his contemporaries, Altdorfer prioritized depictions of the natural world over idealized human bodies. Many of his works feature lush foliage and atmospheric cloudscapes. Figures, when present, do not exploit the natural environment but rather participate within it. His early works in particular aligned more with pagan traditions than Christian ones; in addition to thick forests, Altdorfer depicted feral humans, witches, and other apparitions in his compositions. His is a world in which woman and man, child and adult, soil and flesh churn and pulse on the same horizontal plane.
The exhibition uses the drawing as a framing mechanism, as both an alternate history and as a dissection of patriarchy. Like Altdorfer, the works on display de-naturalize current power relationships while conjuring the arrival of a transformed landscape. Assuming that historical representations contain kernels of worlds to come, WILD FAMILY stumbles toward a suffusion of female energy.
Featuring works by: Elizabeth Atterbury (Portland, ME), Erin Elyse Burns (Seattle, WA), Demian DinéYazhi (Portland, OR), Nika Kaiser (Tucson, AZ), Courtney Kemp (Portland, OR), Zakkiyyah Najeebah (Chicago, IL), Elizabeth Spavento (Portland, ME), and Cammie Staros (Los Angeles, CA)
Images by Joel Tsui
Boston Art Book Fair
October 20 - 22, 2017
Border Patrol took part in the inaugural Boston Book Art Fair, organized by Boston Center for the Arts and Bodega. The Boston Art Book Fair is an innovative and cutting edge event where international and local artists, thinkers, collectors, publishers and anyone drawn to the rich intersection of text and image convene to celebrate and trade print in all forms—including art books, zines, prints, catalogs and analog recordings. Border Patrol accepted book donations for the Maine State Prison library at our table. A portion of sales went to support the Indigenous Action Network and Portland Outright. Texts and works by: Demian DinéYazhi', Nat Evans, Zakkiyyah Najeebah, Ryan Burghard, Angus McCullough, Keijaun Thomas and more.
New England Art Book Fair
October 6 & 7, 2017
Border Patrol took part in the New England Art Book Fair at SPACE Gallery, a two-day event featuring independent publishers and artists from across the country that explores the convergence of publishing, identity, art, and storytelling. We shared a table with our friends Grammar Center Press from Orlando, FL. Border Patrol accepted book donations for the Maine State Prison library and donated a portion of sales to the Indigenous Action Network. Texts and works by: Demian DinéYazhi', Ryan Burghard, Nat Evans, and more.
Invitation
May 19 - June 19, 2017
Air enters through the nose, deposits oxygen into the bloodstream via the lungs, and is pushed out again through the mouth, vibrating a reed, passing through a modifiable architecture of valves and bells, and re-entering the atmosphere as CO2. As musicians, we know this linear account is both true and false. The air we breathe is thick with old sounds, already processed by ancient lungs, still resonant. Our breathing is a re-performance, a cover, of when the first lung synchronized its existence with the first fern. The songs we play are rumors of what they were, and shells of what they are trying to be.
Invitation is a collaborative installation by artists and musicians Angus McCullough (Bennington, VT), Jake Nussbaum (Brooklyn, NY) and Adam Tinkle (Saratoga Springs, NY) that attempts to crystallize these phenomena. Through collective improvisation (intellectual, musical, performative, sculptural), we research experiences of time and space that are non-linear, confounding, and bent. We meditate on how they are are already present in our lives, and how they lead us towards new performances, recordings, and broadcasts.
Invitation is a place to continue this research, and we invite you to join us as participants in this limitless, modifiable series of openings. The deal is: we learn something from you, and in exchange we learn something from you. We can play your records, we can scan your documents, we can listen to your theories, we can read your Tarot cards. Become an antennae. Articulate an interior shadow-form and photocopy it. Join us in the ongoing study of participatory ethics. The horn is a transmitter. Radio waves are sanctified. The room is an amp. We want to tell you what we've found and spark new findings into momentary existence. We'll be at work in the space for some time, so please consider this your Invitation.
Seven Count is a group making improvisational music featuring Angus McCullough, Jake Nussbaum and Adam Tinkle. Listen here.
Invitation is a collaborative installation by artists and musicians Angus McCullough (Bennington, VT), Jake Nussbaum (Brooklyn, NY) and Adam Tinkle (Saratoga Springs, NY) that attempts to crystallize these phenomena. Through collective improvisation (intellectual, musical, performative, sculptural), we research experiences of time and space that are non-linear, confounding, and bent. We meditate on how they are are already present in our lives, and how they lead us towards new performances, recordings, and broadcasts.
Invitation is a place to continue this research, and we invite you to join us as participants in this limitless, modifiable series of openings. The deal is: we learn something from you, and in exchange we learn something from you. We can play your records, we can scan your documents, we can listen to your theories, we can read your Tarot cards. Become an antennae. Articulate an interior shadow-form and photocopy it. Join us in the ongoing study of participatory ethics. The horn is a transmitter. Radio waves are sanctified. The room is an amp. We want to tell you what we've found and spark new findings into momentary existence. We'll be at work in the space for some time, so please consider this your Invitation.
Seven Count is a group making improvisational music featuring Angus McCullough, Jake Nussbaum and Adam Tinkle. Listen here.
Ladyboy
April 15 - May 12, 2017
Ladyboy is a solo exhibition featuring new works by Derek Jackson (Portland, ME).
"I want to talk about trans and gender narratives that aren’t featured in the mainstream. I want to talk about cross dressing. I want it to be about genitals, just for one day. And sex work. And faces. Beautiful faces. And gender expression that isn’t about craft or identity, that isn’t an end but a means.
These are the stories we aren’t supposed to hear or tell. They subvert our fight to not be murdered just for being who we are. I feel honored to be an artist and to hold these stories. I feel compelled to make them beautiful, to embellish and seduce. To convince you that this is ok. Then I remember, it’s not about pleasing the audience or being ok. It’s about Ladyboy.
I'm going to draw and paint the fuck out of this painting with an urgent need to engage in pleasure and expression without persecution. I don’t care if it’s the same painting over and over. I don’t care if I’m good at drawing hands. I don’t care if it’s a simple expression of a couple of ideas. I need to do this.
I'm reflecting the desire to dress, to cross dress, as a way to get to a different place. To be different than I was before, than we were, before. Maybe drugs or alcohol makes it easy for you to go there. Maybe it’s a place you return to on occasion or every day. But this isn’t just about totems either. I'm finding humanity and strength in the simple play with things I love. I am handling materials like lumber and sheetrock--stereotypically thought of as masculine--in a way that subverts their intended use, regardless of validation or whether any house was built. Am I holding up a roof caving under the weight of expectations around respectability? Does this show do anything to make it safer for anyone? I so desperately want it to. This world is not safe. I would be kidding you if I believed a painting could change that. But this isn’t about the world. This is about Ladyboy.
This is about life in the shadows and on the fringe. This is about your brother, father, coworker or friend. This is about being a tech geek during the week and letting down your long black hair as an androgynous goth lord on the weekends. This is about transforming pain into a flawless ability to serve contour for days. This is about a big load from daddy all over your face because you’ve been a good girl. This is about violence and beauty living side by side in the perfume of sex for sale. Ladyboy is here and she’s dressed for you."
-Derek Jackson, March 2017
"I want to talk about trans and gender narratives that aren’t featured in the mainstream. I want to talk about cross dressing. I want it to be about genitals, just for one day. And sex work. And faces. Beautiful faces. And gender expression that isn’t about craft or identity, that isn’t an end but a means.
These are the stories we aren’t supposed to hear or tell. They subvert our fight to not be murdered just for being who we are. I feel honored to be an artist and to hold these stories. I feel compelled to make them beautiful, to embellish and seduce. To convince you that this is ok. Then I remember, it’s not about pleasing the audience or being ok. It’s about Ladyboy.
I'm going to draw and paint the fuck out of this painting with an urgent need to engage in pleasure and expression without persecution. I don’t care if it’s the same painting over and over. I don’t care if I’m good at drawing hands. I don’t care if it’s a simple expression of a couple of ideas. I need to do this.
I'm reflecting the desire to dress, to cross dress, as a way to get to a different place. To be different than I was before, than we were, before. Maybe drugs or alcohol makes it easy for you to go there. Maybe it’s a place you return to on occasion or every day. But this isn’t just about totems either. I'm finding humanity and strength in the simple play with things I love. I am handling materials like lumber and sheetrock--stereotypically thought of as masculine--in a way that subverts their intended use, regardless of validation or whether any house was built. Am I holding up a roof caving under the weight of expectations around respectability? Does this show do anything to make it safer for anyone? I so desperately want it to. This world is not safe. I would be kidding you if I believed a painting could change that. But this isn’t about the world. This is about Ladyboy.
This is about life in the shadows and on the fringe. This is about your brother, father, coworker or friend. This is about being a tech geek during the week and letting down your long black hair as an androgynous goth lord on the weekends. This is about transforming pain into a flawless ability to serve contour for days. This is about a big load from daddy all over your face because you’ve been a good girl. This is about violence and beauty living side by side in the perfume of sex for sale. Ladyboy is here and she’s dressed for you."
-Derek Jackson, March 2017
Now Burning
January 6 - March 3, 2017
Now Burning is a group show featuring incense and burners made by over thirty artists from the United States and Canada. Artist-made Incense will be burned in each artist-made burner over the course of the exhibition. Invoking the pragmatic and mystical properties of scented smoke, the exhibition will ceremoniously cleanse the space of previous occupants’ residue. This non-visual announcement will cultivate a meditative, mildly psychoactive atmosphere and prepare the ground for subsequent exhibitions.
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Hayley Barker (Los Angeles, CA)
Mike Bray (Eugene, OR) Ryan Burghard (Portland, OR) Sara Clendening (Los Angeles, CA) Bruce Conkle (Portland, OR) Brooks Dierdorff (Orlando, FL) Matthew Clifford Green (Los Angeles, CA) Tannaz Farsi (Eugene, OR) James Herman (Los Angeles, CA) Elisabeth Horan (Portland, OR) Courtney Kemp (Portland, OR) Christina Kenton (Vancouver, BC) Kylie Lockwood (Detroit, MI) Jeffry Mitchell (Seattle, WA) Donald Morgan (Eugene, OR) Dylan Neuwirth (Seattle, WA) |
Nicholas Nyland (Tacoma, WA)
Virginia Overton (New York, NY) Laura Piasta (Vancouver, BC) Ralph Pugay (Portland, OR) Wendy Red Star (Portland, OR) Lydia Rosenberg (Philadelphia, PA) Jack Ryan (Eugene, OR) Anna Sew Hoy (Los Angeles, CA) Brendan Shea (Portland, ME) Dave Siebert (Philadelphia, PA) Rob Smith (New York, NY) Jesse Sugarmann (Bakersfield, CA) Gabriel Temme (Portland, OR) Audra Wolowiec (New York, NY) Elizabeth Zvonar (Vancouver, BC) |
