Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Mariah Green, Vanessa Perez Winder, Jas Keimig, and Sam Wrigglesworth pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Jesse Murry: Rising
Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, Oregon
August 24-December 2, 2023
Rising at the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery presents Jesse Murry’s (1948–1993) landscapes for the very first time on the West Coast. Created during the last five years of his life, these poetic paintings embody a complicated existence as Murry grappled with his own impending death from AIDS-related illness.
These works center around floating horizon lines and subtle shifts of color. Like being caught in a storm, we are disoriented in space. Rather than situating us within a landscape we may be asked to reflect on our own interiority—or to be catapulted into a dream.
Reflection: What practices help you feel expansive?
Richard Mosse: Broken Spectre
Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon
August 24-December 15, 2023
Broken Spectre is a four-channel video that defies easy categorization. Using a variety of scales to represent the violence of the shifting Amazon rainforest—close-ups of teeming plant life, aerials from helicopters, and the scale of the human through the life of cowboys and Indigenous people—this film is part documentary, conceptual art piece, and western.
Throughout his career, Irish-photographer Richard Mosse has utilized imaging technologies that embed histories problematically within what is being represented, something he refers to as “aggravated media.” In Broken Spectre, portions were captured using multi-spectral cameras that typically assist scientists in analyzing environmental damage that is not visible to the naked eye. However, these technologies are simultaneously used to strategize exploiting the land for agriculture and mining. Representation can produce a target.
Reflection: How do you relate to the social histories inherent to the media you interact with, like the device you are reading this on?