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 conjucntion 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.
|
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) |
