Review: Minor Threats
http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/blogs/culturephile-portland-arts/art-minorthreats-derekfranklin/
by: Lisa Radon on Nov 18, 2009 at 09:00AM
If what passes for punk in 2009 is dropping in under the Burnside Bridge or hopping a train to NorCal, its Kraft® processed cheese food version is in the Manuel Izquierdo Gallery at PNCA at the moment, and I feel fine. Matt Green’s simple gesture of embedding a single chrome pyramid stud in the wall at eye level for Minor Threats made my night on First Thursday, as a tiny, minimalist sculpture that also happened to be a postcard from the past (the studs of course littered many a shoulder on a black leather jacket 2-3 decades ago) and a reminder that eventually every trapping of rebellion will be packaged and sold in a denatured version in the mall. Surf culture, skate culture, and punk were all converted into commodities years ago, and its only the more insulting that the mass market reprocessors of cultural signifiers mix their chocolate with their peanut butter and put the trappings of punk on the shelves next to the trappings of goths and the kids don’t give a shit. Artist Philip Iosca remarked that he’d have liked it more if the stud had been recast into a different metal. Yes, that would further decontextualize (and fetishize) it, but I thought about that and concluded that the stud symbolizes the fact that not only every signifier of punk, but punk itself have been recast often enough that the stud itself functions as its recast model might as both a more pointed* and a watered-down comment on itself. This is all acknowledged, of course, in the title of the exhibition curated by Derek Franklin, where Minor Threat, iconic hardcore band that spearheaded straightedge is drastically diluted with the simple gesture of an “s.”
So what are a bunch of young artists doing making art that refers to punk tropes as with Green’s Pepsi bottle with the Suicidal Tendencies sticker on it? For Green at least, it makes sense that his explorations of recent American masculine cultural expressions (see his MFA thesis show performance—rocker or roadie—on top of a giant black “stage”) would lead to punk. It’s a man’s world. One might forget, thanks to riot grrls that Penelope Houston of the Avengers was a rare bird. The Dead Milkmen could sing, “You and me punk rock girl,” in the 80’s but the girl likely wasn’t holding a mic. Israel Lund, having titled his Tumblr “Youth Against,” might be expected to address punk’s archetypal youthy againstness, and he has made previous work with punk-on-paper, the zine.
Brad Troemel’s short video “Sprinting from Back to Bed to the AT&T Store” documents Troemel doing just that, dashing across a mini-mall parking lot. This is best in show, recalling task-based pieces like Barry Le Va’s “Impact Run.” If suburban living was fertile ground for punk, Troemel’s sprinter looped into speeding nowhere again and again is the kid who never got out.
The edition produced for the show acknowledges punk’s end of the line in brilliant and subtle ways. On the postcard with the Ramones logo on it, all of the names but Tommy’s have been erased. And Israel Lund’s zine with its solid black copied pages couldn’t be any more punk, any more anti-, the negation negating the negation, a symbol of an end game for a game people won’t quit playing.
Well played, Derek Franklin, and thanks for bringing Troemel’s work to Portland.
*pun unintended but acknowledged
Divide Entices Interaction
by Brian Libby
The Oregonian
February 9 2007
New American Art Union owner Ruth Ann Brown has embraced the group show, but with a twist.
She's invited five established Portland-area artists to curate shows in 2007 focusing on new talent. "Do No Harm vs. Step Up," the debut exhibit curated by Jacqueline Ehlis via an open call, features almost exclusively artists whom neither Ehlis nor Brown knew or had heard of beforehand. But many of the works demonstrate just how many young Portland artists are out there waiting for a chance to show off their talents.
Ehlis separates the group show in two. In the back of the gallery are the "Do No Harm" works, which are hung salon-style (bunched together) and are more personal, less ambiguous pieces. Facing each other on two front walls are the "Step Up" works, which largely are more minimal and abstract, but often playfully so. The idea, Ehlis says, is for the "Step Up" works to prompt interaction -- both with the audience and with each other -- while the "Do No Harm" works function as observers, mirroring society's activists and silent
The division encourages audience interaction, but sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the two groups. The "Do No Harm" pieces often exhibit a frank political nature that the supposedly more provocative camp doesn't necessarily have. And in two cases, each section has similar works by the same artist. But the curator seems to welcome these ambiguities and contradictions. "I was thinking of the gallery as an arena," Ehlis says.
The "Do No Harm" section is anchored by Kim McKenna's large oil-on-canvas painting "Concorde." Resembling Gerhart Richter's "Phantom Interceptor" from 1964, it portrays the now-retired supersonic passenger jet with colorful, expressive awe. But McKenna additionally inserts into the frame -- much like the picture-in-a-picture window on a TV -- a cluster of small rooms with chairs and a sofa. The juxtaposition renders the spectacle of the Concorde's fiery takeoff as an absurdity.
Similarly, another painting by McKenna called "Lounge" portrays a luxurious home, complete with Matisse painting and Mies van der Rohe-designed Barcelona daybed in the foreground. Visible through the house's floor-to-ceiling window is a massive, ominous cloud of smoke, like the Los Angeles riots seen from a Case Study House.
Hung simply, without framing, the twin watercolor paintings making up Rebecca Shelly's superb "Labor Day in the Gorge" portray in white silhouette a smattering of tourists dwarfed by a vast brown mass of subtly transforming hues and shades. In the middle a crevice of light casts a striking, godlike presence.
The "Step Up" section features numerous minimalist works by Derek Franklin. A trio of square-shaped white paper prints over steel have been stenciled with innocuous phrases: "Rabbit Drawing," "Cute Pink Doodle" and "Andy Warhol Faker." Minimalism is usually austere but these works are fun. Franklin's wall-mounted "Santa Monica Pier" resembles coffee mugs hanging over a checkerboard. Yet it's not corny because Franklin's style embodies critic Clement Greenberg's definition of minimalism as a reduction to surface and materials.
One of the artists with pieces in both halves of the exhibition, Catherine Hood, is 17 years old (Ehlis taught her at Portland Community College). Displayed wrapped around a wall in the "Step Up" section, Hood's "Migration" is a latex and acrylic painting on a rough, massive unstretched canvas. The abstract cluster of painted zigzagging angles and curves feel like tectonic plates shifting and colliding at breakneck pace.
Group shows can be difficult to pull off. If one simply chooses the best pieces, they might not go together well or share any larger sense of meaning. If too concept-focused, the curator risks leaving out superior artwork. Ehlis takes an ambitious turn by splitting the works as a commentary on art's role in its own community and the larger society. Ultimately one can take or leave that invitation because Ehlis has done her initial job well: She's chosen many gems by lesser known artists. Besides, the real debate may be over which of these lesser known artists seizes the spotlight in the future.
Do No Harm Vs STEP UP
by John Motley
Do No Harm Vs STEP UP
New American Art Union, 922 SE Ankeny, through March 4
When an artist curates a show, it's tempting to interpret the art she selects as a kind of sum total of her own artistic strategies. But the scattershot Do No Harm Vs STEP UP, curated by painter Jacqueline Ehlis, sheds little light on what makes her lovely abstract paintings tick. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the show—which includes more than a dozen artists from Oregon, Washington, and New York—would benefit from more focus. Running the gamut from Mack McFarland's cartoonish portraits of local politicians to the high concepts of Derek Franklin's installation work, there's no real thread of subject to bind the show together.
One thing Ehlis does especially well, though, is create dialogue between works through resonant juxtapositions. In one of Franklin's installation pieces, three white panels hang, each embossed with a different phrase: "Rabbit drawing," "Cute pink doodle," and "Andy Warhol faker." Franklin's scathing critique of ubiquitous "types" in today's art world suggests that a categorical descriptor carries equal weight to the tired retreads each panel identifies. Interestingly, the show contains examples of these very types. Next to Franklin's installation, Mamie Korpela's "Collateral Damage" presents a patchwork quilt, screenprinted with drawings of bunnies and foxes. On an adjacent wall, Erin Paterson's untitled acrylic painting—an amorphous form resembling a twisting piece of coral—fulfills the "cute pink doodle" quotient.
The two best works among Ehlis' selections are undoubtedly Portlander Kim McKenna's two beautifully painted canvases, both jarring amalgams of unrelated images. In "Lounge," McKenna presents a modern penthouse apartment. But in this apartment, the adjoining room is a meticulous re-creation of Matisse's "The Red Studio," while a mushroom cloud spews in the night sky, seen through an enormous picture window. By incorporating Matisse into the painting's dimensional landscape, McKenna playfully pays homage to art historical tradition, while also relegating it to "the spare room." The explosion also figuratively blows up the notion of the picture plane—providing the painting with the kind of connecting logic the rest of the show so sorely lacks.
Volunteering for the Arts
by Barry Johnson, Ultimate Northwest magazine
Saturday April 25, 2009, 6:00 AM
Derek Franklin
He volunteers for Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, where they "treat you like you're part of it."
You learn the background story, their history, and that shows through in the work.
What he does for PICA: Derek Franklin, 27, started as a volunteer for the organization's yearly Time-Based Art (TBA) performance festival four years ago. Mostly involved in PICA's visual arts program, he works on installations and things that require construction work. As a printmaking student at Pacific Northwest College of Art, he has helped with PICA's "Prints for PICA" fundraiser quite a bit: "I get presses, set them up and help the artists make prints." After high school in Scappoose, Franklin worked as a sheet-metal worker before getting involved in art at Portland Community College and then transferring to PNCA.
Best part of working at PICA: "The artists in residency -- sometimes you get to build a relationship with them over time. You learn the background story, their history, and that shows through in the work." He also interned last summer with Kristan Kennedy, the head of PICA's visual arts program. That led him to act as curator of two shows of his own in the past year, because he'd learned some of the basics such as how to get works on loan from galleries, security, insurance, installation of work.
Why PICA? "I made a conscious choice of who I wanted to volunteer for in town." Franklin liked the short-term exhibitions put into fresh, unusual spaces. "It's important to keep it going in Portland, to keep contemporary art surviving."
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
-- Benjamin Disraeli