PEAKING
Rick Silva

22 April – 26 June 2022
Curated by Ashley Stull Meyers
Photos by Mario Gallucci
Gallery Guide

Video by Eric Mellencamp.

Oregon Contemporary presents PEAKING, a solo exhibition by artist Rick Silva (Eugene, OR). PEAKING is the second exhibition in our large-scale program Site, a series of exhibitions by Oregon artists replacing the Portland2021 Biennial. The exhibition centers on Silva’s newest video work of the same name, which visualizes over a million variations of a floating mountain peak interacting with fluctuating graph lines. Modeled from the granite and glacial formations of the Cascade Mountain Range, these virtual renderings are paced to mirror the geologic deep-time of our regional landscape. The visual language of “graphs” is abstractly leveraged, surging and dipping to mimic data sets often experienced on our screens: ocean temperatures, air quality, financial markets, viral variants, and heart rates. As the frequency of the formations in PEAKING escalate, so does the sentiment of “peaking” itself, in its sublime quantifications, ecstasies, and precipices. The environmental video installation is accompanied by a supplemental PEAKING INDEX, which serves as a primer to the visual language of PEAKING.

Rick Silva is a Brazilian-American artist who makes experimental 3-D animations that explore virtuality, futurology, and speculative ecologies. His works have been screened and exhibited internationally. Recent exhibitions include Hors Pistes at The Centre Pompidou, and State of the Art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. His work has been featured in publications such as WIRED Magazine and Rhizome’s book Net Art Anthology. Silva lives in Eugene, Oregon, where he is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Oregon.

Ashley Stull Meyers (she/her/hers) is a writer, curator and culture worker. She has curated exhibitions and public programming for a diverse set of arts institutions along the west coast, including those in San Francisco, CA, Oakland, CA, Seattle, WA, and Portland, OR. Stull Meyers has been in academic residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE) and the Banff Centre (Banff, Alberta). She has served as Northwest Editor for Art Practical and has contributed writing to Bomb Magazine, Rhizome, Arts.Black and SFAQ/NYAQ. In 2017 Stull Meyers was named Director and Curator of The Art Gym and Belluschi Pavilion at Marylhurst University, and the following year was made co-curator of the 2019 Portland Biennial. She is based in Portland, Oregon.

PEAKING is generously supported by The Ford Family Foundation. Oregon Contemporary is also supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation, VIA Art Fund and Wagner Foundation, the Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund, the James F. & Marion L. Miller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Community Foundation, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Other businesses and individuals provide additional support.