Seattle Art Museum
November 23, 2015, 9:18am
Museum Admission: Brenna Youngblood at the Seattle Art Museum
When I walked into Brenna Youngblood’s (NAP #103) abstracted realities, at the Seattle Art Museum, I thought this would be a show about its painted subjects. The eight works’ contents—an oversized “x”, a confetti of dollar-bill signs, a dripping map, a Chuck Taylor sole atop a pyramid—held so much depth on their own. Knowing her also to be an artist whose practice extends to mediums rooted in physical objects, including sculpture, collage, assemblage, and photography, objects at first seemed to be the heart of the matters here. — Erin Langner, Seattle Contributor
Chuck Taylor, 2015, Brenna Youngblood, American, b. 1979, color photograph
and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery.
December 17, 2014, 10:51am
Rothkos in Space and Paintings of Dumpsters: The Absurd Worlds of Ralph Pugay
Out-loud laughter is not usually something you hear at a paintings show, particularly one inside of a museum. However, this is the reaction I saw over and over again, as I stood among Portland artist Ralph Pugay’s (NAP #97, #115) paintings, at the Seattle Art Museum. Filling a small but highly trafficked gallery that was wedged between exhibits of glass and of traditional nineteenth and twentieth century American art, the artist’s small canvases excelled at catching people off guard. The flattened, cartoonish scenes captured the eyes of people en route to another space, who would wander towards them with looks of befuddlement. The point at which the artist’s frank titles, absurdities and language games began to sink in was the moment the laughter began.— Erin Langner, Seattle contributor
Ralph Pugay | Rothkos in Space, acrylic on canvas, 24"x24", 2013. Image courtesy of the artist.
September 25, 2014, 9:21am
Erupting Unknowns: Ryan Molenkamp’s Fear of Volcanoes
The first time I came to Seattle was to board a cruise ship, the same reason so many other Northwest outsiders first experience this city. Since I had been traveling with family (not to mention thousands of other cruisers), the only time I recall being alone on the trip was during the cab ride back to the airport, after we returned to port. Sitting in the backseat, moving alongside the lines of cars traveling southbound on I-5, the faint image of Mount Rainier floated among the license plates. It was among this swarm of rendered, friendlier mountains that I first saw the real Rainier, looming seventy miles away, above the mass of clouds that coated the passenger-side window.
Although I have lived here for nine years, and few things I saw during the cruise visit look the same to me now as they did fresh off the ship, Mount Rainier still radiates the same sense of severe immensity, even during its sunniest appearances. Walking into SAM Gallery’s Made in the Northwest show, I was met with a similar hum of severity—this time coming from Seattle artist Ryan Molenkamp’s (NAP #97) painted volcanoes. — Erin Langner, Seattle contributor
Ryan Molenkamp | View from Mt Erie, acrylic on panel, 30 x 40 in., 2014. Image courtesy of the artist.
October 11, 2011, 9:00am
Building a Form for Space: Dirk Park Discusses Prole Drift Gallery
Prole Drift stands within an older mixed-use building, angled between the top and bottom of a steep hill in Seattle’s International District. Much in the same way its name references a connection between the upper and the working classes, Dirk Park’s new venue inhabits a space of intersection somewhere between a traditional gallery, a studio and an open place for artistic experimentation.
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