On Tuesday Nov. 10 at 11.30am Joseph Gallivan interviews Sara Krajewski and Betsy Konop of the Portland Art Museum. They will talk about Paige Powell: The Ride, and Kenny Scharf: Cosmic Cavern, which are at PAM through Feb. 21, 2016. They discuss Powell’s photographic style and the meaning of her ride in New York when she sold ads for Interview magazine and mingled with Andy Warhol’s art set in the 1980s. Krajewski also talks about Scharf’s mode of pop surrealism.
 
This show was recorded on Nov. 6 2015 and edited by KBOO volunteer Sam Parrish.
 
 
In 1980, Paige Powell, a fifth-generation Oregonian, left Portland for New York City. After landing at Interview magazine, where she rose to associate publisher, Powell became close with Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco and Alba Clemente, Tama Janowitz, Stephen Sprouse, and others who would come to define the New York art scene over the next decade. Camera in hand, she moved through the city, forming relationships with people and places that spanned across cultural and economic boundaries, capturing the city’s many realities.
Taking up video in the early ‘80s, Powell was one of the first in New York to adopt camcorder technology. After returning to Portland in 1997, she continued to embrace digital tools as she documented the rising careers of close friends such as Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini and filmmaker Gus Van Sant.
Until recently, Powell’s extensive collection of images, video, and ephemera from over a decade in New York lay tucked away in boxes. For the past two years she has been working with archivists, unearthing and cataloging her body of work.
Culled from this archive, The Ride comprises a three-channel video featuring never-before-seen recordings of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring; candid photographs of Powell’s friends including Warhol, Haring, and Basquiat; and Beulah Land, an interactive installation of over 800 images recreating a 1984 exhibition of Powell’s photographs, with sounds mixed by artist David LaChapelle.
The Ride continues the Museum’s commitment to showing video and new media, inviting visitors back to the video space created for last year’s Richard Mosse: The Enclave. The multi-part installation in the Museum’s Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art immerses visitors in the creative climate of 1980s New York, while the gallery adjacent to the video space displays Kenny Scharf’s companion exhibition Cosmic Cavern and the Link Gallery downstairs presents key works by other pivotal contemporary artists, including Warhol and Basquiat.
Co-curated by Julia Dolan, Ph.D., The Minor White Curator of Photography, and Brian Ferriso, The Marilyn H. and Dr. Robert B. Pamplin Jr. Director.
Co-presented with the NW Film Center.
 
 
 

Kenny Scharf: Cosmic Cavern

NOV 5, 2015 – FEB 21, 2016

Kenny Scharf’s Cosmic Cavern immerses viewers in a day-glo universe densely packed with graffiti tags, detritus, and everyday objects reimagined as cartoon personalities. This surreal world comes to life under the fluorescent black lighting reminiscent of clubs and discos of the 1980s, a central inspiration for this party environment turned art installation. In 1981 Scharf created the first version in the closet of the small New York apartment he shared with artist Keith Haring. Since then, he has transformed basements, galleries, museums, RVs, and even suitcases into this psychedelic, multi-sensory experience.
Cosmic Cavern exemplifies Scharf’s brand of Pop Surrealism, a blend of graffiti writing, cartoon imagery, dreamy futuristic environments, and bright, saccharine colors. A playful spirit and an offbeat sense of wonder abound in this democratic approach, which Scharf intentionally contrasts to the seriousness often assigned to “high art.” But his work is not without an edge. A critic writing in the early 1980s described fun as Scharf’s anti-catastrophe aesthetic: “a post-apocalyptic aesthetic for the survivors of an end that has already come following the fragmentation of culture caused by today’s material and technological reality.”
Scharf was among the tight circle of artists that included Paige Powell, the photographer and video artist whose multimedia installation Paige Powell: The Ride (also opening November 5) immerses Museum visitors in that creative climate. Powell and Scharf’s friendship continued after both departed New York in the 1990s. In Portland, Powell played a key role in advocating for the installation of the Tikitotmoniki Totems—the 2001 public art work Scharf designed for Jamison Square in the city’s Pearl District.
 

About Sara Krajewski, Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Curator of Modern and
Contemporary Art:
http://portlandartmuseum.org/new-curator-modern-contemporary-art/

About Paige Powell: The Ride (curated originally by Brian Ferriso and
Julia Dolan, but in Sara's curatorial purview):
http://portlandartmuseum.org/exhibitions/paige-powell-the-ride/

About Kenny Scharf: Cosmic Cavern:
http://portlandartmuseum.org/exhibitions/kenny-scharf-cosmic-cavern/
 
 
From the press release:
 
 
 
Joseph Gallivan has been a reporter since 1990. He has covered music for the London Independent, Technology for the New York Post, and arts and culture for the Portland Tribune, where he is now w full time business reporter. He is the author of two novels, "Oi, Ref!" and "England All Over" which are available on Amazon.com
josephgallivan@gmail.com