Full Cold Moon at Adams and Ollman

Artists: Dan Attoe, Katherine Bradford, James Lee Byars, Ellen Cantor, Joy Feasley, Tristin Lowe

Exhibition title: Full Cold Moon

Venue: Adams and Ollman, Portland, US

Date: November 26 – December 17, 2016

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Adams and Ollman

IM MEDIATE RELEASE | October 13, 2016, Portland, Oregon: Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce Full Cold Moon, a group exhibition featuring the work of Dan Attoe, Katherine Bradford, James Lee Byars, Ellen Cantor, Joy Feasley and Tristin Lowe. We will welcome the cold winter months and dark days, as we celebrate December’s full moon, known as the “Full Cold Moon” in Native American cultures, with a reception for the exhibition on Tuesday, December 13.

Dan Attoe’s (b. 1975, Washington) paintings, drawings and neon sculptures depict man in nature, often in a humorous and perverse way. Attoe’s landscapes are sublime, but tempered or interrupted by the presence of humans who exist awkwardly within the great beauty. In a new neon work, a nagging presence is suggested with text that hovers just above the surface of the moon.

New works by Katherine Bradford (b. 1942, New York) depict swimmers and divers who hover in vast dreamy, watery spaces. Barely differentiated from the water that surround them, her figures are subject to celestial forces, caught in moments of contemplation and stargazing.

Firmly rooted in craft and folk traditions, as well as science fiction and alternative belief systems, Joy Feasley’s (b. 1966, New York) small paintings can serve as a place of perception or revelation. With their reflective surfaces, crystalline geometries or sacred symbols, the works become, much like the moon, a place to gaze and go beyond the conscious mind.

James Lee Byars ‘ (1932 — 1997) ephemeral works on view in Full Cold Moon confront the viewer with statements such as “your presence is the best work.” Originally dispersed by the artist at the 1993 Venice Biennale, a group of round, ultra-thin paper gold coins echo the form of the moon as they hint at something we can’t really know or experience.

Ellen Cantor (1961 — 2013) distills images and dialogue from disparate sources — films, literature, texts and personal narrative — into unique works that explore the relationships between fiction and direct experience, testing the limits of grand na rratives against a personal, female perspective. In Remember Me, love, desire and madness are deeply felt against the backdrop of the sea and its relentless tide as Cantor narrates: “It is restless because of its love for its friend. Since the sea cannot find what it desires, how will you find there a resting place for your heart?”

Throughout his career Tristin Lowe (b. 1966, Boston) has mined the crude and rude, the absurd and abject, and the mundane and metaphysical in pursuit of tentative answers to deep questions about our place in the universe and the meaning of existence. Lowe’s sculptural works on view in the exhibition explore the mystical powers of the full moon on the human psyche.

Dan Attoe, There are ghosts, 2016
Neon light, wires, transformers, Edition of 2 + 1AP, 36 x 60 inches

Ellen Cantor, Remember Me, 1999
Video, 10:14 min, black and white and color, sound, Courtesy of the Estate of Ellen Cantor and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York