Clik here to view.
- Damien Gilley and Ethan Rose's Approximate, co-curated by Jenene Nagy
2010's been a big year for Jenene Nagy. She kicked things off in January with her solo show at Disjecta, Tidal, described by the artist as an examination of containment: Jagged pink sheets of drywall grew up the walls and into the rafters above, looming over the viewer like a wave. If Tidal was a thesis on containment— the room shaping the art object— then Nagy's contribution to the Portland2010 biennial was its antithesis. In the basement of the Templeton Building, Nagy literally broke through walls. Garnished in fluorescent tube lights, her pink sections of sheetrock penetrated the room's partitions in shards and chunks. In the months after Portland2010, Nagy prepared for her June-through-August residency at Raid Projects in Los Angeles, which is now coming to a close.
But in this whirlwind of activity, Nagy's curatorial ambitions were left on the back burner. From 2006-2008, Nagy proved her strong eye for emerging talents as co-curator of Tilt Gallery and Project Space (alongside her husband, Josh Smith), though eventually abandoned the stationary gallery model, organizing pop-up shows at existing exhibition spaces under the TILT Export: moniker. The most recent TILT Export: exhibit, hosted by galleryHOMELAND back in April of 2009, combined Damien Gilley's architectural line-drawings and Ethan Rose's spatially-oriented soundscapes. After more than a year of curatorial silence, Disjecta announced last week that Nagy has been appointed as their 2011-2012 curator-in-residence.
I emailed Nagy a few questions about her upcoming Disjecta programming, and she kindly sent along answers. While she wasn't able to reveal many details, she gave some clues as to where things are headed over at Disjecta for the 2011-2012 season. That Q&A is after the jump, and for those of you who prefer bullet points, here's a super-quick summarization of what Nagy told me: She hopes to "foster greatness" through "a series of solo exhibitions and maybe one two-person show," with the intention to "specifically address the space in some way." In the way that Nagy's own work addresses space, I expect big installations from some exciting local and national artists.
