Structures and Feelings: Adriana Lara and Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen

September 24 – October 30, 2016
Photos by Mario Gallucci

The first in a set of four exhibitions, Structures and Feelings brings together works by Mexican artist Adriana Lara and Portland-based Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen. The exhibition deals with elements of communicative behavior, specifically mechanisms behind the construction of thoughts and products which are dispersed through pop media, cultural forms, and technological platforms.

(interesting theories, pop songs, pdfs, powerpoints, Venice, the political unconscious, text-message spam, and the objects of the Communist Manifesto).

Adriana Lara is was born in Mexico City in 1978. She has had an interdisciplinary and self-taught practice; in 2002/3 she participated in a pedagogical program at Le Pavillon in Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

Lara has had one-person exhibitions at Air Paris, France; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Denmark; Komplot, Belgium; Indipendenza, Italy; 21er Haus-Belvedere, Vienna; Kunsthalle Basel; Germany; Algus Greenspon, New York; Artpace, San Antonio, Texas; House of Gaga, Mexico; and Galeria Comercial, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her work was included recently in group exhibitions at the Sculpture Center, New York; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Trust Festival, Copenhagen; Marrakech Biennial 5th Edition; Documenta (13), Kassel; Kunsthalle Basel, Germany; MUSAC, Spain; New Museum, New York; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and San Francisco. Since 2006 Lara has been editor-in-chief of Pazmaker, an art quarterly published in Mexico City.

Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen are two people who work together as one artist. They make objects, books, events, and ephemera, using art as an extended form of study and a testing ground for ideas about language, politics, and social life. Utilizing a range of media and contexts, their pieces and projects have appeared in many public places as well as at institutions such as The Renaissance Society, Chicago; The San Diego Museum of Art; Locust Projects, Miami; Camp CARPA, Joshua Tree, CA; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; Disjecta’s Portland2012 Biennial of Contemporary Art; and on the pages of NOON Literary Annual. In recent years they have been artists in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE; Oregon College of Art and Craft, Portland; and in the Mt. Hood National Wilderness through Signal Fire’s outpost residency program. The pair live in Portland, Oregon, where they work, teach, and raise their 6-year-old son, (a sometimes chipmunk by the name of Nutmeg Elements Bridger).