at RECESS, August 25th, 18:00 - 23:00.
Phun with Phonemes© is a text-based show coming to SE Portland’s RECESS gallery on August 25th. Through investigating memory and writing, text as spectacle, logo confusion, and conversational attention spans, Phun with Phonemes© is one of the many tools a child needs to become a good reader. The child who learns to use phonemes will be a step closer to reading. While text on gallery walls may not seem most titillating to some of you, RECESS has promised to uphold its tradition of alchemy, turning something as base as language into “pure gold.”
Lori Gilbert will be showing new works at this show, including some t-shirts parading around as “art objects.” Again, one might be tempted to raise an eyebrow, and raise an eyebrow you should, so that you can get a closer look at the nuance with which Gilbert explores recontextualizations and misunderstandings. An advocate of uncertainty interested in making value judgments, “Gilbert comes to conclusions through collecting, sorting and drawing.”
Jesse Malmed’s work bears the influence of an unending engagement with language's myriad facets, the liminal spaces between thises and thats, conceptual poetics, bi-fi psychedelia and the history of avant-garde media art. He’ll be exhibiting the well-loved “Conversational Karaoke” – an interactive,
multi-channel, mixed media installation, mobile party-game from the future and partipatory song poem. Then there's kind of like a poem hidden in layers of video (and sound?) to effect what seems to be a 4-D Magic Eye piece. “Some adjectives that I've heard applied to it: mesmerizing, layerful, maximalist and meditative,” writes Malmed.
Delphine Bedient has planned to appropriate some diary pages onto transparencies, which will be suspended from the ceiling, and floating in view-space. Will you be able to read them in such a format? Will they flutter everywhere like butterflies when passersby are exuding their energetic influence on the piece? What kind of diary is this anyway? Is it really a diary in the first place, or was it constructed for this show? Bedient's attention to craft and concept make her work a breath of fresh air in a world overrun by myopics and half-baked foutre-quoi’s.
Marc Saleme is supposed to have a slide projection of a “heart-rending” story told in the form of a concept map. Is the story-board the best translation of literature into visual story-telling? Well, that's part of the story on the floor beneath your feet. It will require a collaborative effort on the part of the attendees in order to continue reading the narrative thread—as in, “Could you move just a little to the side please? I want to read what's under your shadow.”
Andy King is a Portland native who's back after a sojourn in Los Angeles. He says that he's extremely disappointed by art, and the ambition of his contribution to this exhibit shows it. He is a craftsman of high caliber, with work experience in the wonderful world of advertising. For Phun with Phonemes© at RECESS, he is making words and (...) not really destroying them, so much as dramatically modifying them while you watch, and then removing them, leaving you with the remainder. The performance will be coming to a climax around 7:30; it's a show-stopper, and if you miss it, you'll be sad.
Phun with Phonemes© opens at RECESS Wednesday, August 25, at 6:00 p.m. After this opening, the show is viewable during RECESS open hours, every Tuesday from noon to 4:00 p.m. Press affiliates are welcome to contact RECESS to schedule advance viewings.
