{"id":1399,"date":"2009-12-22T14:17:48","date_gmt":"2009-12-22T22:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/12\/ten_top_exhibits_in_seattle_on\/"},"modified":"2009-12-22T14:17:48","modified_gmt":"2009-12-22T22:17:48","slug":"ten_top_exhibits_in_seattle_on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/12\/ten_top_exhibits_in_seattle_on.html","title":{"rendered":"Top 11 exhibits in Seattle & one in Tacoma"},"content":{"rendered":"

1.<\/b> Michael Darling’s Target Practice<\/i>: Painting Under Attack, 1949-79<\/i><\/a><\/b> at the Seattle Art Museum<\/a>. From my review<\/a> in Modern Painters<\/i>: <\/p>\n

“Target Practice” focused on artists who saw painting as a closed world and attempted to pry it open. With single and multiple works by 40 talents from Europe, Japan, North America, and South America, it engaged what remains a fresh chaos of ragged representation and stands as the best contemporary-art survey in the museum’s history.
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2.<\/b> The Old Weird America: Folk Themes in Contemporary Art<\/b><\/i><\/a>, curated by Toby Kamps for the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston<\/a>, had its last stop at the Frye Art Museum<\/a> and continues through Jan. 3. From my reviews<\/a> on this blog:<\/p>\n

Also
\nterrific in this show are Jeremy Blake’s cloudy mixtures of memory,
\nguilt and loss; Matthew Day Jackson’s post-Rauschenberg book of
\nphotographic imagery trailing across a wall like a diagrammed sentence,
\nand Brad Kahlhamer’s rush of signs and symbols hurtling across the
\npaper like a river intent on a flood.

<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3. Roger Shimomura<\/a><\/b> at the Wing Luke Museum<\/a>. From my review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Dapper white boys and comely white girls enjoyed themselves in the
\ncomic-strip version of college life until the late ’60s generation
\npopped the bubble. In Frat Rats<\/i>, Roger Shimomura painted the
\nprelapsarian experience but added another icon dear to the hearts of
\nthe greatest generation: Racism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4.<\/b> Dan Webb, Jeffry Mitchell, Claude Zervas and Joseph Park<\/b> in From<\/i> Whence the Rainbow Came<\/i> at Ambach & Rice<\/a>. From my review, Seattle’s gang of four<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n

What is constructed, found and constructed again is the theme of From Whence The Rainbow Came<\/i> at Ambach & Rice<\/a>, featuring four of the Northwest’s top artists: Claude Zervas<\/a>, Joseph Park<\/a>, Dan Webb<\/a> and Jeffry Mitchell<\/a>. It’s the best group show in a Seattle gallery in years, proposed and shaped by the artists themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

5. Heide Hinrichs<\/a> and Debra Baxter<\/a><\/b> <\/b>at Howard House  (also, Hinrichs at the Seattle Art Museum<\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Baxter<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Her sculptures are the dead end of romance. If jukeboxes played visual art, Baxter could turn Jerry Lee Lewis inside out: You broke my will, what a thrill<\/i><\/a>. <\/p>\n

Hinrichs<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Fuse Eva Hesse<\/a> with Richard Tuttle<\/a> and you’ve in Heide Hinrichs<\/a>
\nterritory. She has Hesse’s love of the ungainly protuberance and the
\nheavy edit of Tuttle’s subtlety. In my mother’s darker moments, she
\nliked to say, “I wish they’d drop the bomb so we could go underground.”
\nHinrichs is an artist of the solitary’s apocalypse. Those who stagger
\nback into the light after losing everything would be lucky to find her
\nsculptures on the floor, the flayed skin of soccer ball bladders hung
\non a wire or deflated inner tubes curled as if smoked in a fire. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

6.<\/b> SuttonBeresCuller<\/a> at Lawrimore Project<\/a><\/b>. From my SBC review, Blowing in a Blocked Wind<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Every fan whirs away, generating nothing. It’s not easy being the joker
\nin the pack, the sane man in King Lear’s court, the forward momentum
\nsurrounded by inertia. Even artists who play it straight are surrounded
\nby what opposes them, be they those rarities encased in success or the
\nmore common breed, hearing the echo of their actions bounce off the
\nwalls of empty rooms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

7.<\/b> Karen Ganz<\/b> at Howard House. From my review, The Cult of the Loser<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n

In the mythology of American success stories, a go-getter rarely turns
\ninto a goofball. Anybody who is up and at ’em can count on cashing in
\nstock options in the not-too-distant future, which is why American
\ncomic strips celebrate the cult of the loser.
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

8. Grant Barnhart<\/a><\/b>, Beg For It<\/i> at Ambach & Rice. From my review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Although there are narratives here in an Eric Fischl<\/a>
\nvein, Barnhart isn’t interested in creating a common thread.  Fischl
\nwould never put such a range of paintings together in one show. He hits
\na theme and explores it. Barnhart’s disregard for connectives
\napproaches Martin Kippenberger’s<\/a>.
\nBarnhart believes in the vibrational field of a painting, and the idea
\nthat vibrations on the same frequency tend to fuse. His do. Beg For It<\/i> at Ambach & Rice<\/a> is a force field.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

9. Akio Takamori<\/b> at James Harris Gallery<\/a>: From my review, At home in the wide world<\/i><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Akio Takamori’s figures are nearly always lost in thought, caught in
\nthat moment when the body pauses and the mind drifts freely across its
\nmental sky. Born and raised in Japan, he pays his country of origin the
\nhonor of taking it lightly. Bold and loose, his figures include
\nJapanese spirit babies with oversize heads, priests, warriors, peasants
\nand royalty with the folds of their gowns flapping and more recently,
\nfigures drawn from the larger world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

10. Alice Wheele<\/b>r, Women Are Beautiful<\/i><\/a> at Greg Kucera Gallery. From my review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There’s an upbeat, irrepressible refusal to
\njudge in her work, a determination not to call anybody a freak, unless
\nas a compliment, and an inability to accept a depressing scene as a
\ndowner. She’s the kind of person who’d read The Metamorphosis<\/i><\/a> and think it’s a comedy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

11.<\/b> Parenthesis<\/i><\/b><\/a> at Western Bridge. From my review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Breath is proof that the father lives, at
\nleast for the duration of the video. The proof that matters is the
\nevidence of love. (Neil) Goldberg conceived this piece after his mother’s
\ndeath and while his father, now dead, was failing. By participating,
\nhis father reassured him. The video is the father wordlessly proving
\nthat he’ll be there, even after he’s gone, in every breath his son
\ntakes. Look, he’s saying. It’s easy, and it will never end.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


One from Tacoma:<\/b><\/p>\n

Eli Hansen<\/a> and his friend, the chemist and botanist Joe Piecuch, took the top spot at the now defunct Helm Gallery. From my review<\/a>:<\/p>\n

They treated Tacoma like a science experiment, taking core samples of
\nthe place distilled into gruesome forms of theoretically drinkable
\nbeverages.
\nIn all manner of glass test tubes (blown by Hansen), they mixed an
\nalcohol base with Western red cedar, brick fragments from Ted Bundy’s
\nchildhood home and soil from Port Madison; coyote blood, beard hair,
\nbeeswax and butterfly wings; blackberries, club moss from the Hoh rain
\nforest and hydrogen cyanide; soil from Lewis and Clark’s Cape
\nDisappointment camp site, concrete from the Boeing plant in Everett
\nflavored with hobo urine, and brick chips from Francis Farmer’s
\nchildhood home with paint flecks from Curt Cobain’s final abode on Lake
\nWashington<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. Michael Darling’s Target Practice: Painting Under Attack, 1949-79 at the Seattle Art Museum. From my review in Modern Painters: “Target Practice” focused on artists who saw painting as a closed world and attempted to pry it open. With single and multiple works by 40 talents from Europe, Japan, North America, and South America, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}