New Perspectives in Cave Painting – New work from Jason Traeger

New Perspectives in Cave Painting – New work from Jason Traeger

 
Exhibition Dates: Thursday, February 3, 2011 – Friday, February 25, 2011
Opening reception: Thursday, February 3, 2011, 5-8 p.m.
Autzen Gallery - Second floor, PSU Neuberger Hall, Room 205, 724 SW Harrison, Portland, OR  97201
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 10-5 p.m.


Exhibition Statement
 
Over 30,000 years ago it began in a cave somewhere...
 
As often as I can, I enter my cave, put on my painting clothes and clogs and lock the door behind me. While  the room warms up I start by looking. I look some more then I draw and write a little to focus the mind and psych myself up.
 
After that it comes down to brushes, solvent, medium, paint, a glove, a rag and “Lights! Canvas! Action!” I can’t believe I just used a pun in an artist statement. Forgive me.
 
The compositions and the mental processes used to achieve them follow a dream-logic which renders the border between the familiar and the fantastic a porous sieve through which I can filter that which is to manifest from that which will not be. I don't know if that makes any sense but it sounds right to me.
 
I have been asked before if there is a narrative running through my work and I can only say I hope there are at least as many narrative threads to be found on the canvas as there are cotton threads making up the weave of the canvas itself. It is my faith and my intention that each viewer sees a different painting and each that time the painting is seen it is different.
 
The phrase “the angel is in the details” popped into my head from time to time while I was working on this show.
 
This body of work is the result of a series of decisions and actions I have made in an attempt to express a visionary strategy of describing an extraordinary aspect of ordinary reality.

Biography
 
Before receiving a BFA in painting from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2007, Jason was a longtime veteran of the West Coast indie/punk scene working for independent record labels and touring the country as a musician and then as a stand-up comic. While at PNCA he was a founder of Oregon Painting Society, a multi-disciplinary art collective that has most recently shown work and performed in Portland 2010: Biennial of Contemporary Art and at the Tate Modern in London as part of the museum’s 10th anniversary celebration. His work continues today both as a solo artist and as a member of OPS.