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.
checkmate
Nationale, Portland, OR
December 7, 2024 to December 29, 2024
Tiles. Tables. Horses. Queens. Castles. A scaling-down to the hand-held. These motifs show up across a wide swath of mediums in a group-show inspired by the game of chess and the social lives it organizes.
Despite the almost overwhelming variety of styles represented, all the pieces seem to hang-out together well. Some could even be interpreted as scenes from the same party. For instance, in paintings by Ty Ennis and Daniel Long, sultry characters pose in tile-floored rooms dynamically engaged with knights riding in on a breeze or a cloud. I picture them as separate recollections of one event or similar exchanges occurring in different rooms of the same house.
Perhaps more than chess, another theme could be the party: a place where flirtation, light-hearted competition, and antics abound. This show functions dually as a synopsis of the gallery’s multi-facetted aesthetics and the social scenes it facilitates. Alongside the exciting names of Nationale’s past, present, and future rosters are artists like Megan Ladd, Momo Gordon, and Nadia Almond-Chaparas. These are Portland figures who possibly frequent the curator Kate Shannon’s traveling creative-directed social installation, chess haus, which Nationale hosted last summer. How the game of chess became the centerpiece of last summer’s most photogenic party series (you had to see the Instagram stories) still confounds me. But seeing its checkerboard and iconic pieces filtered through this exhibition affirms its rebranded relevance.
Reflection: What games, of the mind and otherwise, are you playing?
Iván Carmona | Trozos
PDX Contemporary Art, Portland, OR
December 4, 2024 to December 28, 2024
In surprisingly small, softly curved, and colorfully flash-painted ceramics, Iván Carmona’s sculptures absorb their surrounding light to appear dimensionless at a distance. In a lot of modernist work, with electric hues and unnaturally smooth shapes, there’s an immediate allure that fades fast. But as I got closer, I grew more attentive.
Actually, I became attached. Their ceramic surfaces were ribbed like tines of a comb had been passed over them. Small heaps of excess clay had been undisturbed here and there. I pictured the hand that tended to these textures like a god’s or a parent’s. Care comes with risk, as was the case of the glass works where Carmona acted against the advice of master gaffers to make some inches long scratches, texturally unifying between mediums.
These are said to be the material presences of Carmona’s nostalgia, memories of Puerto Rico, and sentimental attachments to landscapes elsewhere. A black piece on the wall consisting of three interlocking shapes in differing lengths, I later hear, was inspired by memories of snuggling with the artist’s parents. Though my chest swelled at the anecdote, it wasn’t necessary. The marks and physical orientations were enough. Working in a tradition where I least expected to find it, Carmona’s modernist-inspired sculptures evidence the bittersweet risk always involved when we dare to love.
Reflection: What is the shape, color, and texture of your love?