rainbow

Curator's Statement:

Fresh Trouble is a wide-ranging visual art exhibition exploring the current moment where artists act as a kind of a redefining vanguard in the cities where they live (often far from New York now that the art world has fragmented). Although international in scope Fresh Trouble showcases some of the local artists most responsible for reimagining Portland as an almost frantically busy art city. Many are more lauded outside of Oregon and constitute a serious block of the city's talent.

The exhibition is timely since a Portland milestone concurrs with the opening of the Portland Art Museum's new Center for Modern and Contemporary Art along with the affair art fair. Fresh Trouble brings edge to a city that needs to make further strides now that it has come so far so fast. These are some of the artists most responsible for this dramatic change.

In Fresh Trouble themes of cities, destruction, ironic utopias, exquisite joie de vivre, nature, dislocation/remote locations, paranoia, baby boomer youth fetish, cheap Mexican labor, delight and design as a way to change ones world are in abundance. Also, the exploration of natural/manmade disaster as well as a somewhat European acknowledgement that very little is actually new (only its context is different) is in effect.

Like most large biennale-style group shows Fresh Trouble asks some basic questions... in this case about freshness (why do we value it so?) and trouble, which the multifaceted artists each expound upon, ultimately complicating the discussion rather than making it more tidy... such is life, this isn't TV Fresh Trouble is zeitgeist sampler.

This international exhibition highlights artist who bravely seek to change or redefine the world they live in, even if it is similar to the effects of butterfly wings kicking up storms farther away. Some are ironists who point out the lack of change; some are visionaries who make objects that lift one above the everyday and effect change one viewer at a time. Most engage both strategies.

-jeff jahn