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Museum And Gallery

PMA show highlights MoMA’s influence

Defining the canon
It's a peculiarly American irony that the same man who basically invented the advertising model for the business of broadcasting radio and later television would have amassed a significant collection of modernist art.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | May 16, 2013

Andy Verzosa’s re-thinking at Aucocisco

Changing parameters
Owner and director Andres Verzosa is showing 13 three-day two-person shows this season. Verzosa is perfectly aware of the disappearance of hierarchy and authority that I would maintain is not only taking place in the art world, but has already happened in art criticism and publishing.

By: BRITTA KONAU | May 09, 2013

James Marshall escapes flatness at icon

Leaping off the wall
In the first show of the season at the always engaging Icon Contemporary Art, James Marshall's collection of new works breathes life into the paper bag. Literally.

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | May 03, 2013

Designtex staffers strut their stuff at SPACE

Workplace creativity
"Surface Tension," the fantastic exhibit at SPACE Gallery, is a gorgeous set of oddities, surfaces, and structures, and issues a strong challenge to visual perception using remarkable techniques re-imagining the limits of texture, conception, and color.

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | April 24, 2013

Stop making sense

The implied narratives of Per Kirkeby
The current show by the highly-acclaimed Danish artist Per Kirkeby at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is a broad survey of his work, with examples of his paintings and sculpture from the 1960s up to a few years ago.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | April 17, 2013

Small scale yields big impact

Little drawings deliver deeper truths
Medieval towns, towers and turrets, flocks of birds, and blazing fires could easily be the subjects of fairytales or kitsch. Not so in the hands of Dozier Bell, who has plunged deeply into her imagination and masterfully realized what she found there in visual terms.

By: BRITTA KONAU | April 18, 2013

Small scale, big impact

Little drawings deliver deeper truths
Medieval towns, towers and turrets, flocks of birds, and blazing fires could easily be the subjects of fairytales or kitsch. Not so in the hands of Dozier Bell.

By: BRITTA KONAU | April 10, 2013

UNE’s Women Pioneers deepen inquiry

Joining disunity
Third of four in the UNE Art Gallery's series of Maine Women Pioneers, the curators describe "Worldview" as an exhibit of artists "who are connected to their world . . . inspired by ethics, emotions, and existential holistic themes, as activists, healers, and visionaries." That's a definition with a pretty broad reach

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | April 04, 2013

Inside the bellies of the beasts at ICA at MECA

Species Going Distinct
Harbored inside walls of burlap cloth draped from the ceiling of the ICA's darkened back room comes the terrific pull of "Bump," the impressive installation of suspended whale bones found and arranged into a sort of mausoleum by Maine brothers Frank and Dan DenDanto.

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | March 27, 2013

Marking mud time in Portland galleries

An afternoon’s wander
Galleries tend to hunker down for the annual Maine economic recession, and are more or less vamping until full spring. Which is OK, since they are often picking from gallery inventory, and they have some good things.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | March 20, 2013

Exploring new and old landscapes

Having it all
The nature-inspired work of Lydia Badger, Hilary Irons, and Erik Weisenburger, on display at Rose Contemporary under the name "The New Landscape," is undoubtedly new — powerfully conceived, refreshingly innovative, and scrupulously executed — but the three are also happy to be part of a long tradition.

By: BRITTA KONAU | March 13, 2013

Institutionalizing single works at IFAA

Looking closely
In another look at Portland's growing number of atypical studies within the art world, we spoke to Southern Maine Community College art history professor Christopher Stiegler, founder of the Institute for American Art, a curatorial space he runs from his home on Smith Street in Bayside. This is an edited transcript.

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | March 07, 2013

A public conversation probes art deeply

Thought experiment
The Peninsula School is a weekly art discussion forum open to the public launched within the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA by graduate sculpture student Rob Doane.

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | February 27, 2013

Crossing the sea to go below the surface

Have ideas, will travel
The world is, as Tom Friedman has noted, flat, which doesn't take much label-reading to ascertain.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | February 20, 2013

Natasha Mayers’s wide-ranging vision

Postcards from the conscience
For outspoken artist and activist Natasha Mayers, art, politics, and life are seamlessly interconnected for mutual benefit.

By: BRITTA KONAU | February 13, 2013

Blending Lovecraft and modern art

Inspired darkness
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | February 06, 2013

Astrid Bowlby opens the black box

Drawing encyclopedia
To consider "Everything," the new installation by artist Astrid Bowlby, consider what we know about the sausage maker.

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | January 30, 2013

Lois Dodd’s first career retrospective showcases a bright abstractionist

A brilliant example
"Lois Dodd: Catching the Light" is the kind of show that reminds you why you got interested in art in the first place. The paintings are terrific and the big, first-floor gallery at the Portland Museum of Art has never looked better.

By: KEN GREENLEAF | January 23, 2013

Cynthia Davis uses space, line, and the color of cartography

Mapping a trajectory
Geographical maps describe space — its qualities, boundaries, hierarchies, ownership, and ways of traversing it.

By: BRITTA KONAU | January 16, 2013

Corrigan + Gardiner at Mayo Street Arts

Coordinated states
While there's no easy way to tie together the respective art forms of Pat Corrigan and Jennifer Gardiner, the community hub of Mayo Street Arts is a fittingly off-center venue for their latest work, which fuses discrete processes and subjects for a modestly sized showcase.

By: NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | January 09, 2013