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D.E. May and Jenene Nagy
The following description was submitted by the event organizer.
Featuring two solo exhibitions this month by artists D.E. May and Jenene Nagy.
“If there are five steps to building something, I am interested in steps two and three.” — D.E. MAY.
PDX CONTEMPORARY ART is pleased to present FROM THE ARCHIVES: NOTES AND PLANS, an exhibition of work selected from the archives of D.E. May.
During his life, D.E. May developed a distinctive body of work informed by pattern, process, and production. Using found pieces of wood, cardboard, and paper, May meticulously and methodically constructed two-dimensional compositions and small sculptures that reference architectural studies, incomplete proposals, and the weathered evidence of past projects. May focused on the process of making, often sourcing his inspiration from other types of work outside the realm of art: a carpenter's renovation, a shipbuilder's plans, architectural blueprints, or a tailor’s cutting board. Resembling found objects and preparatory documents for some long-ago half-completed project, the works bear traces of past lives: water stains, dog-eared corners, scuffs, glue residue, annotations, and flattened creases.
The exhibition highlights a selection of May’s notes and plans. Some are preparatory drawings for a project to come. Other pieces in the show are completed works, depicting and outlining the processes of different types of working. The exhibition focuses on May’s interest in the intermediary steps between beginning and end.
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PDX CONTEMPORARY ART is pleased to present a river with no banks, an exhibition of new paintings by Jenene Nagy.
During the 2020 pandemic, Nagy created a series of paintings with hand-drawn graphite grids with meticulously and intentionally painted gouache squares. The fragility of the materials and the precariousness of the mark-making imparts a preciousness, with each square materializing into a moment or an individual existence. The paintings document the need to exist in the present, each mark building on the one previous, culminating in something that is greater than our physical understanding of this world.
Nagy’s studio practice relies on her trust and instincts to allow the unknown to reveal itself — as the act of making transforms the materials into ritualized objects and personal cosmologies. By working with ideas of perception, Nagy urges basic materials into deeper conversations.