Pacific Northwest College of Art    Portland, OR

RVW | 2013 Faculty Biennial

RVW is a regular series of brief exhibition reviews written by PNCA students and alumni. They are published monthly and feature works and exhibitions by students, faculty, staff, and alumni. If you would like to suggest an exhibition for review, or would like to be an UNTITLED reviewer, please email the editors at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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Photo by Matthew Miller ’11.

Review

2013 Faculty Biennial

By Tyler Peterson, MFA AC+D ’15

I was lucky that my first visit to PNCA’s main campus building at PNCA coincided with the installation of the 2013 Faculty Biennial. The breadth and depth in both skillful handling of and conceptual concepts of the work in the show is astounding. There is a wide range of media represented including, but not limited to, painting, sculpture, ceramics, sound, and video. This Biennial has something for everyone and one would be hard pressed to find a piece that they didn’t connect with in the show.

My background being in painting, I was unsurprisingly drawn to many of the two-dimensional and mixed media pieces. In particular I connected with pieces by Seth Nehil, Yoshihiro Kitai, and Daniela Molnar. The two works by Nehil, the one by Kitai, and the one by Molnar are all sited close to one another along one of the eastern walls of the Commons. These four pieces act as an anchor for this side of the show as they interact, inform, and support one another. At first look, Kitai’s work in Gansai watercolor and repeating silver leaf dots may seem totally different and unrelated to Molnar’s painting of iris flowers and abstracted shapes rendered in gouache, casein, and acrylic. But when viewed in the company of Nehil’s indigo inked geometries with straight white-headed pins, one begins to see connections. Patterns, shapes, and areas of focal intersections begin to emerge. These similarities begin to tie the works together. The wave like pattern of silver leaf dots in Kitai’s piece is echoed by Molnar’s sweeping iris petals, and is echoed again in the organic shapes and washes of ink in the two pieces by Nehil.

These four pieces are only a fraction of the entire show, and the care taken to place these four in proximity to one another is manifest throughout the entire show. This massive biennial covers every wall of Swigert Commons and showcases the diverse community of faculty at PNCA. A companion publication was produced alongside the exhibition, which further diversifies the show as it contains fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and criticism written by PNCA faculty members. If ever there was doubt about the vibrancy and skill that is offered by PNCA, it would easily be dispelled by taking a stroll through the 2013 Faculty Biennial. Beware though, this stroll will quickly turn into an extended stay, so make sure you have enough time on your parking ticket.

The 2013 Faculty Biennial is on view in Swigert Commons at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR, through October 18, 2013.

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