Ctrl Alt Glry
four DIY galleries to keep an eye on in PDX
“One problem with gentrification is that it always gets worse.” —Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
“‘Keep Portland Weird’ isn't just a slogan: it's a promise to not fall for the trap of homogeneity and art is the only way to do that. Especially as AI is stealing all original thought and regurgitating censored nothingness: physical spaces for people to be *human* and create new ways of thinking and being and doing are more important than they've ever been.” —Leila Haille, director of Ori Gallery
Two summers ago, I went to an art show inside a pantyhose warehouse in Queens, NY. The artist Alex Tatarsky, who also performs as a (very good!) clown, had created a multi-part exhibition with their collaborator, Ming Lin, around the idea of counterfeiting. Their project is called Shanzhai Lyric, and it focuses on the accidental poetry created when the text on luxury knockoffs goes awry. The pair also created a fake organization to document their work, calling it Canal Street Research Association. As I sat on a wobbly stool on the concrete in the dark middle of the warehouse, enjoying the pair’s artist talk, I admired the layered ways that their work toyed with the concepts of authenticity and authority.
The word Shanzhai is known from the novel Outlaws of the Marsh, a Chinese Robin Hood story of “stealing from the empire and redistributing goods among people on the margins.”1 Shanzhai literally means something like mountain stronghold in Chinese, but in practice it signifies counterfeit.
Inside the warehouse, there was a poorly marked visual exhibition whose works were found by exploring the aisles, shelves, and ceilings of the space. It wasn’t always clear what was art. A fashion show inspired by counterfeit luxury goods also wound around piles of boxes. They served cans of seltzer and cheap beer in trash cans full of ice to keep us from expiring in the heat. After a time of undirected wandering, visitors were asked to gather for a short artist talk followed by a lecture on the history of industrial sabotage. Did I mention we had been driven there in an off-market shuttle bus?
It’s this same seditious spirit that animates the alternative galleries in Portland—the garages, studios, sheds, and yards of a post-gentrified city where affordable space becomes increasingly fugitive. These alternates, to their more monied and institutionally affiliated counterparts, are sites of the ongoing proletarian battle against private equity, venture capital, and real estate development. They also show great work, often selling it at prices working people can afford.
I don’t think gentrification or income equality are going to get better in my lifetime, but I do think artists are going to continue to undermine the hegemony of the market. Some will run their own galleries, some will create conceptual pieces that resist commodification (like Dieter Roth’s moldy fruits), and others will make work that mocks the art world’s morally dubious or outright absurd elements, sometimes with clown-like levity. Best of all is when the money, if there is any, stays with the artists themselves. The billionaire class and their henchmen are going to keep buying stuff and ruining it, and we’ll keep finding ways to go on. I am sick to death of this dynamic. Like a child, I often wish there was a reset button. Since there isn’t, I’ll busy myself with the art.
Old Fashioned Garage Gallery
see also: hospitality, dads, giant roll of tape, regionality, time-sensitive
It was fruit falling season. The artist Jodie Cavalier was grilling a shit ton of vegetables out back. Alley, her partner, had a catering gig that day and the two were preparing. Jodie talked to me while I wandered around the gallery which is also the garage and, since it’s summer, the pergola and part of the yard.
The garage gallery cohered around the ideas of hospitality and curating people or experiences (as opposed to objects). Each opening includes food that Jodie and Alley cook to share with the art-lookers. They wanted this project—which has the support of their landlord— to echo old Portland, with its punk houses and its galleries in closets and parking spaces, what it was before Cascada and the regularity of multi-million dollar real estate transactions.
The gallery will close after the fall. It was always meant to last a year with four shows, one for each season, plus the grant money will run out. Learning this made me want to linger a little longer.
I really liked the work, especially one sculpture by Catie Hannigan called TRAILER PARK ILLUMINATION and another by Jordan DeLawder that was gloopy with a metal spiral inside it. Much of what shows at the garage is sculptural, even when it’s a painting or photo (Cavalier’s sculptures are themselves arresting, she had a show this year at PPSTMM gallery).
In the garage, the extension cords were visible. They’d hung white cloth to hide whatever was on the shelving. As I turned toward the door to say goodbye, an apple dropped with startling speed and bruised itself on the concrete.
SATOR and Dump Magazine
see also: print’s not dead, fallow fields, PNCA students go rogue, windows, poetry
SATOR projects is a migratory curatorial enterprise by Jess Nickel that hosts art events wherever it can find vacant space. Since 2021, they’ve curated shows at 1607 SE 3rd Ave. I find them excellent. I still think about the wet, fleshy paintings and clever merchandise from last year’s [ all de watermillion fr’um heabun ] by Christine Miller. In July, SATOR hosted DUMP Magazine’s Issue 3 exhibition: Correspondence, which featured a set of fabricated conical speakers playing music from a discman, large abstract works made from construction materials, and poems stuck to the windows.
DUMP is a self-funded, self-published magazine that platforms fine art students and emerging artists. Their biannual print issues always launch with a curated show spanning visual, sonic, and written work as well as performance. When I went to the closing, a drag queen greeted me at the door wearing a meticulously hand-jewelled dress with a matching mask. She told me she began making the masks because she worked late on weekends and had to take the bus home, leaving her with too little time to get ready before the shows started. The masks became her makeup, then they became her art practice. This was one of the best stories about art and labor that I’d heard in a long time.
Helen’s Costume
see also: near and far, go big, merch
Curator Steve Brown stopped reading Fear and Money by Isabelle Graw and got out of his hammock to greet me. The merch table had new sweatshirts and art books since I’d last visited. He gave me a seltzer and told me about the work that was up in the garage at his house (he prefers “domestic space” over “garage gallery”), which included furry, fake-nailed sculptures by Eleanor Randl and a series of surreal photos staged and shot by Chase Allgood.
Brown started this project in 2020 when the pandemic suddenly closed pretty much all the arts spaces and he perceived a more level playing field. “Galleries were posting, but not doing,” Steve said. It was time to bring art to the people.
Brown and his partner Sarah opened their kitchen as a gallery space. People entered through the sliding glass door of their duplex rental and lingered to chat in the yard. When the couple moved to their current house, one bonus was the detached garage-now-gallery, which faces a gravel alley. No more sliding glass art intruders!
Brown takes this curatorial project seriously—it’s not just a venue to show his friends but rather a true representation of contemporary art that compels him. They do four shows a year. Each one features one local and one visiting artist. This year, they’re attending Other Places, a fair in California also alternative in spirit.
SOCIETY and 7-11 Studios
see also: odd refreshments, dumpster diving for old TVs, groupthink (non-derogatory)
In August, I went to an open studios event at 7-11, above the new Mother Foucault's space on SE Grand Ave. According to some lanky interns I talked to downstairs over a bowl of whole cucumbers, the Central Eastside is the real Portland, what the rest of the city should still look like: musical, messy, and working-class. Above us, dozens of people milled around the artists’ workspaces, admiring drawings laid out on cluttered desks, paintings propped against the wall, and sculptures tacked up next to shelves cluttered with fabric scraps and old electronics. The vibe was fun and intimate. The art was technically excellent despite its casual presentation.
SOCIETY operates inside one of the studios in 7-11. Run by artist-curator Ido Radon, the small space currently hosts “Having no talent is not enough,” a body of conceptual objects by Christian Alborz Oldham. They include a replica designer sweater hand-knit by one of the artist’s friends that hangs in a vacuum sealed bag on the wall and a reproduction from one of China’s painting mills. SOCIETY also puts out a print magazine and runs heady, art-nerd events. It’s an alt gallery to watch.
JAYDRA JOHNSON (b. 1988 Springfield, Oregon) is a writer, visual artist, and educator who splits her time between Portland, OR and NYC. Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, Epoch Review, Guernica, and Sedition magazines, among others, and she has shown her visual work in NYC, LA, Portland, and Columbus, OH. At Hunter College, she co-edited the journal Solar while earning her MFA in Creative Writing. She was also a grateful recipient of the 2022-23 Creatives Rebuild New York grant. Johnson is the author of Refuse Report, a bi-monthly newsletter exploring the tension between high and low art, currently hosted on Substack. You can find more of her work (or get in touch <3) at www.jaydrajohnson.com and on Instagram @jaydranicole.
Index and Other Galleries
Helen’s Costume: https://www.costumeintl.com/
Old Fashioned Garage: https://oldfashionedgaragegallery.wordpress.com/
Dump Magazine: https://dumpmagazine.com/
7-11 Studios/SOCIETY: https://societysocietysociety.com/
Ori: https://oriartgallery.org/
PPSTMM: https://www.instagram.com/ppstmm_203/
SE Cooper Contemporary: https://www.secoopercontemporary.com/
Happy Anyway: https://wearehappyanyway.com/
Elbow Room: https://www.elbowroompdx.org/
Hide & Seek: http://hideandseekgallery.com/
Virtua: https://virtua.gallery/
A Sometimes Gallery: https://asometimesgallery.com/
Congress Yard Projects https://www.instagram.com/congress.yard.projects/?hl=en (unclear if this is still active)
False Front: https://www.falsefrontstudio.com/
Jeffers, Juliette. “Meet Shanzhai Lyric, the Art Collective Celebrating New York City’s Digestive Tract.” Interview Magazine, December 11, 2024. https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/meet-the-art-collective-shanzhai-lyric.
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