Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Fox Whitney, Alitzah Oros, Melika Sebihi, and Kaya Noteboom pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Shelley Turley: Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind
Helen’s Costume Fine Art, Portland, OR
August 10 – September 7, 2024
The show’s title is a reference to the chorus of a Seals and Crofts’ song Summer Breeze (1972). Though the gallery supplied different tunes, I sensed it playing somewhere out of frame in each figurative painting. Shelley Turley’s stylization of these canvases, through sound, hair, and clothes—or lack thereof—connotes the 1970s. Most of what I know about this time is from dramatized media representations. Documentaries like Wild Wild Country (2018) color the decades with sexual exploitation and spiritual tourism. Dazed and Confused (1993) offered something of a slice-of-life and Joan Didion’s The White Album (1979) imposed the sour taste of associative memory. These representations were further stylized by their own time and the act of remembering. Turley’s Blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind is yet another entry into this often returned decade.
Turley introduces a host of complex characters. Warrior II (2024) and Shady Lane (2024) feature lone contemplative subjects in nature caught with their guard down. Slouching in a shallow pond among trees, the guy in Shady Lane appears nostalgic for another time or is ruminating on an awkward orgy. Little sloshes of water kindly wash away his worries. The other, in Warrior II, is too far to project a feeling onto but the surrounding water seems less kind and more sublime. I imagine the immense effort to still one’s mind and muscles holding this pose on slippery rocks. Danger feels imminent in this picturesque scene.
Rather than pity or fear for his safety, another nude stands out as menacing. In Last Splash, Give Me All of Your Sunshine (2024), two men stand in a fluorescent lit living space. The nudist is square with the frame in tree pose. Here, Turley’s distinctive build-up of paint appears strategically placed—his penis is a thick and sharp textured mass. His eyes, by contrast, appear clawed out like paint has been stripped away to reveal a pair of dark airless rooms. The one who wears all white linens is turned away so we only see his profile, complicit in this exposure or another violence off-frame.
Turley’s representations of this time are ambivalent. They refuse to decide what the iconic seventies style “was all about” or what we could learn from them, offering an ironic and refreshing sense of clarity.
Reflection: What shows up when we hold open a door to the past?
Orbit, curated by WAVE Contemporary and Well Well Projects
Oregon Contemporary, Portland, OR
August 16th – October 6th, 2024
My mother, little sister, and I viewed five videos by different artists in the Raptures series—one of two that make up Orbit. I watched the videos projected onto the gallery walls alternately between my family’s reactions. At irregular intervals my mother would look over her shoulder to find my eyes, her cheeks hardened by stifled laughter. My sister’s eyebrows contorted in shock.
They were likely responding to Ilana Harris-Babou’s Decision Fatigue (2020). The sole actor, Sheila (Harris-Babou’s mother), performs skincare tutorials with a script that’s familiar until it isn’t. As are her tools and techniques which are familiar until they aren’t. Sheila’s “TV dinner” and “breastfeeding” beauty routines feature jade face rollers and handmade decorative soap bars. She shows the camera using postures and hand motions similar to social media influencers, describing the soaps with delectable detail. One contains delicate dried flowers and another—her favorite—Cheetos. Her delivery is unwavering in its silkiness. While raising questions of primordial beautification practices and modern standards, the specific and individual beauty of Sheila comes to the forefront. Her skin, my mother and I note, is exquisite.
Another film, SOS (2021) by Jordan Strafer, revels in the disturbing and comical power-play of puppetry. As puppet paramedics arrive on the scene of a seemingly fatal car crash, the veiny and ham-fisted puppeteer begins to gyrate their hips. A second tragic puppet, with long mousy colored hair and glassy blue eyes, is distressed and disoriented on a beach. What appears to be a rescue plane writes a jet stream message in the sky: “STUPID SLUT.” This is a bleak comedy that cuts. It reminds us that sometimes there is no repair at our disposal other than laughter.
This film series engages the mode of Adult Swim at its most soul-searching hour. Their playful and unnerving exploration of personhood—its unfolding and documentation—is rendered surreal, inchoate, and absurd. In turn, their ability to entertain and stir complex soups of emotion emerges as a valiantly beautiful effort.
Reflection: When was the last time you felt beautiful?