The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at Pacific Northwest College of Art is proud to partner with Converge 45, the Portland-based, non-profit arts organization, along with the Parallax Art Center and Stelo Arts to present Assembly, a curated fourteen–artist exhibition across Portland’s renowned Pearl Arts District, from August 24 to October 7, 2023. This exhibition is curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné as Converge 45’s 2023 Guest Curator.
Location: PNCA, 511 NW Broadway
Instagram: @ccac_pnca
Contact: Hannah Bakken Morris, Assistant Director CCAC, hbakken@willamette.edu
Gallery Hours: Monday – Saturday, 10am – 4pm
By Appointment: Please contact hbakken@willamette.edu
Opening Weekend August 24 – 27
Pearl District Gallery Tour, August 25th, PNCA Stop at 5pm
Assembly
/əˈsemblē/
1. a group of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose.
“an assembly of scholars and poets”
2. the action of gathering together as a group for a common purpose.
“a decree guaranteeing freedom of assembly”
As indicated by its title, Assembly brings together a diverse company of Portland-based and international artists across three venues located in Portland’s legendary Pearl District. These venues are the Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Parallax Art Center and Stelo Arts. Long known as the city’s most prominent gallery district and home to a number of its more important arts institutions, the Pearl District has an extensive record of fomenting experimentation for Pacific Northwest artists, as well as playing host to select national and global artists.
A fundamental part of Converge 45’s project of putting artists and works of art-as-a-social-form into active conversation, this group exhibition explores, among other values, ideas of identity, representation, inclusion, citizenship, labor, landscape, cityscape, ecology, trade, regionalism and globalism, at a time when the very meanings of these terms are shifting. Because Converge 45 views its participating artists—to borrow a phrase from the Romantic poet Percy Bysse Shelley—as the unacknowledged legislators of the world, Assembly has designed this group show as a series of colloquies. Each features creators and their artworks dialoguing across geography and difference. When viewed from the vantage point of our age of intolerance, this exhibition presents a collaborative model as a good in itself.
ASSEMBLY is a group exhibition ranging across three venues in Portland’s Pearl District. Participating artists are listed below by venue:
The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA): Adriene Cruz (b. 1953, Harlem, New York; lives and works in Portland, OR), Jeremy Okai Davis (b. 1979, Charlotte, NC; lives and works in Portland, OR), Patrick Hamilton (b. 1974, Louvain, Belgium; lives and works in Madrid, Spain), Karlo Andrei Ibarra (b. 1982, San Juan, Puerto Rico; lives and works San Juan, Puerto Rico), Brian Maguire (b. 1951, Dublin; lives and works Dublin, Ireland and Paris, France).
Parallax Art Center: Lisa Jarrett (b. 1977, Morristown, NJ; lives and works Portland, OR), Narsiso Martinez (b. 1977, Oaxaca, Mexico; lives and works Los Angeles, CA), Julian Gaines (b. 1991, Chicago, IL; lives and works Portland, OR), Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos) (b. 1976, Umpqua River Valley, OR; lives and works Portland, OR), Vo Vo (b. Wellington, Aotearoa aka New Zealand; lives and works Portland, OR).
Stelo Arts: Jessica Jackson Hutchins (b. 1971, Chicago, IL; lives and works in Portland, OR), Nicola Lopez (b. 1975, Santa Fe, NM; lives and works New York, NY), Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984, Moscow, Russia; lives and works Miami, FL), Judith Wyss (b. 1938, Spokane, WA; lives and works Portland, OR).
FOR QUESTIONS REGARDING CONVERGE 45 PROGRAMMING:
Hannah Bakken Morris, Assistant Director, Center for Contemporary Art & Culture
Rachel Roberts, Account Executive, Cultural Counsel for Converge 45
About CCAC and PNCA
The Center for Contemporary Art & Culture is a platform for cultural production including exhibition, lecture, performance, and publication. Housed within Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), the Center throws open its doors to the greater public to foster conversation and community. Pacific Northwest College of Art is the leading professional arts and design school in the Northwest; we are the heartbeat of learning and experimentation in Portland’s vibrant cultural ecosystem. We spark curiosity and sharpen skills so students can build creative careers anchored in innovation, justice and civic imagination.
About Christian-Viveros-Fauné
Christian Viveros-Fauné (Santiago, Chile, 1965) has worked as a gallerist, art fair director, art critic, and curator since 1994. He was awarded Bucknell University’s Ekard Visiting Fellowship in 2023, the University of South Florida’s Kennedy Family Visiting Fellowship in 2018, a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Grant in 2009 and named Critic in Residence at the Bronx Museum in 2011. He co-founded The Brooklyn Rail in 1999, wrote art criticism for The Village Voice from 2008 to 2016, was the Art and Culture Critic for artnet news from 2016 to 2018. He has lectured widely at institutions such as Yale University, Pratt University and Holland’s Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and curated exhibitions at leading museums in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. He currently serves as Curator-at-Large at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum. He is also the author of several books. His most recent, Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art, was published by David Zwirner Books in 2018
About Converge 45
Converge 45 is a non-profit arts organization that produces a Contemporary Arts Biennial in Portland, Oregon. In collaboration with a dynamic community of artists, organizations, galleries, corporate partners, alternative venues and a guest curator, Converge 45 develops a citywide exhibition across the metropolitan area every two years. The biennial intersects regional, national and international perspectives around art and the futures it seeks. Outside of the biennial program, the organization works in continued collaboration with community partners to support Portland’s creative ecosystem by promoting the work of artists & organizations in the Pacific Northwest and improving access to broader art discourses within our communities.