Atlas

Curated by Marcelo Fontana, Rachael Zur, and Jason Triefenbach

December 5 - December 19, 2021

Opening Reception

Saturday, December 4th, 5-8pm*

Open Hours

Fri-Sun 12-5pm*
drop in or by appointment 

Email Info@carnationcontemporary.com
to schedule a visit


*Masks required inside the gallery

Exhibition Statement

The Oregon art community poses unique challenges for artists in the region. Suffering from a lack of space, unstructured market, recent loss of university programs, implicit biases, and lack of institutional support, in addition to the larger challenges of continuing gentrification, real estate speculation and more create a vacuum of leadership to envision new futures for our society. Amidst this ecosystem, artist-run spaces play a fundamental role in cultural production and promotion. Even with the challenges of funding, opportunity, and reach for member-run initiatives, artist-run spaces play an outsized role in Portland’s visual art scene by creating challenging and generative programming. In Atlas, Carnation Contemporary collaborates with other artist-run spaces and initiatives to address the issues listed above.

We believe galleries and artist communities with presence as a physical space have a responsibility to take risks and present exhibitions that capture the city's collective imagination. Carnation's gallery will become a place for reflection on how culture is produced. With this in mind and inspired by Didi-Huberman’s show Atlas: How to Carry the World on One's Back?, at Reina Sofia Museum, Spain 2011, Atlas is a collective curatorial construction presenting a mix of sculptures, projections, paintings and photographs. Our focus is to create a presentation of differences, while focusing on the link that binds us together – spaces enduring to collectively create culture. More than a logic of organization, archive, or a mechanism of research, the exhibition will be a process of discovery on how culture is produced here in Oregon, and how to build and harness a city or community’s collective imagination and create connections between seemingly disparate works.

As Ana Luisa Almeida stated in the book Wishes and Cities "[from] the perspective of identity as a collective construction...it remains to reflect on the responsibility that lies with each one of us. We all are builders of this imagination and the role of our decisions, our behaviors and values determine our social space, who is our city."

Atlas is a collective effort by 1122 Outside, After Time, Ditch Projects, Fuller Rosen, Gallery 114, Gallery Blue, IPRC, Tropical, Small Talk, Wave, Well Well, and Zymoglyphic.