THE PARIS REVIEW NOW IN + SPECIAL AK INTERVIEW

Don’t miss this issue of the Paris Review, now in the shop, with our beloved Aidan Koch on the cover (+ an extensive portfolio). Couldn’t help but feature it here with some of Aidan’s sculptures–available in the backroom–from her 2013 show at Nationale, The Marble Hand.

From the Paris Review’s blog: On Aidan Koch’s cover for our Summer issue, six panels depict a woman lounging and reading and ruminating at the shore. Each panel exists both as a discrete event—here, she looks at her book; here, she shades her eyes—and as one sentence in a paragraph about the woman’s day at the beach. The issue also features Koch’s comic “Heavenly Seas,” the story of a woman who travels to a tropical location with a man she doesn’t love. It is twenty-eight pages long and contains just over a hundred words of dialogue and no narration. The difference between “Heavenly Seas” and the cover sequence is like the difference between Lydia Davis’s long short stories and her very short ones.

Koch, a native of Olympia, Washington, is the author of three book-length comics—The Whale, The Blonde Woman, and, most recently, Impressions. She also makes sculptures, ceramics, and textiles that reinterpret the classical motifs that appear in many of her comics. Her narratives are elliptical, fragmentary, and open-ended; it seemed appropriate to include “Heavenly Seas” in an issue that is largely about translation. Last month, I met Koch at her studio, in the basement of a tatty mansion she shares with eight other artists and a corn snake named Cleopatra, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Read more HERE

DANIEL LONG: INSTALL SHOTS

Thanks to everyone who attended Daniel’s reception yesterday. What a lovely afternoon we had. A Peanut in a Suit Is a Peanut Nonetheless is on view through September 14, 2015. Make sure to come see the work in person.

AMY BERNSTEIN JOINS NATIONALE

On the day of her birth (!!!), we are happy to announce that Amy Bernstein is joining our roster of artists. She co-curated Highlighter back in 2012 and most recently had a solo show, Notes, at our Burnside location. Her exhibition with Patrick Kelly opens October 21, 2015. Welcome on board, Amy. And Happy Birthday!

CHARLOTTE CHARLOTTE CHARLOTTE

The new issue of The Travel Almanac is now available in the shop and online HERE

FEAT. CONTRIBUTIONS BY AND CONVERSATIONS WITH : 
- Charlotte Gainsbourg, Collier Schorr, Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, Scott King, Diane Pernet, Sophie + LA Gyms, TART Fishing in the UK, Philosophy Schools of Athens, and much more … 146 pages / $ 18

YOUNG COLLECTORS RAFFLE

As many of you already know, we are currently hosting “Sensitive”, a pop up with Jeffrey Kriksciun featuring his bleached t-shirts and murals made during his short residency at Nationale, as well as work from his 2011 show “Bone Less”. What you may not know is that we are also having our first ever Young Collectors Raffle with the chance to win one of Jeffrey’s framed pieces from “Bone Less”. We will draw the lucky winner on August 5th. Tickets are only $10 and the winner will get to pick their favorite of three paintings!

COLLECT CALL MEN'S MESH SHORTS

Collect Call (AKA Ryan Boyle) low-crotch, men’s mesh shorts are now in the shop throughout the run of Sensitive. Limited availability guys, so hurry in! 

JEFFREY KRIKSCIUN: SENSITIVE!

It’s been such a blast spending time with Jeffrey this past week and watching him work on his Sensitive pop-up for Nationale. A huge thank you to Brian Mumford of Dragging an Ox Through Water for his beautiful performance yesterday during the reception and to Spielman’s Coffee for the treats. It was just the feelings we needed to claim back about Portland.

The show runs through Monday, August 3rd. T-shirts are $30 and mural panels $200 each. We are also doing a special young collectors raffle next week. Get a $10 raffle ticket for a chance to win an original framed piece by Jeffrey Kriksciun!

SOFT SERVE UP THROUGH SATURDAY

Kate Towers’ pop up Soft Serve will be up through this Saturday (7/25)—only a few days left to check out these amazing pieces. Also, she’s replenished the rack with some new gems, and is offering all Soft Serve items at a 10% discount! Thanks to our lovely intern Emma Lou for modeling Kate’s rad terrycloth dress!

FREDRIK AVERIN

Loving our selection of Fredrik Averin books currently in the shop. Follow him on Tumblr HERE.

SOFT SERVE RECEPTION LAST NIGHT

Thanks to everyone who showed up last night to celebrate Kate Towers and the new creations she made for our special July pop-up, Soft Serve. We are hoping to replenish the rack by Wednesday, but there’s still a few little gems up for grabs…

FAVE3: JONATHAN CASELLA

Luc Tuymans exhibition catalog published by SF MoMA/Wexner Center for the Arts/D.A.P. ($60, signed by the artist)

Luc Tuymans exhibition catalog published by SF MoMA/Wexner Center for the Arts/D.A.P. ($60, signed by the artist)

“I saw this show 5 times in SF and I wish I could paint like him and as fast.” 

 

WWWW tote bag by MODERNWOMEN LA ($20)

WWWW tote bag by MODERNWOMEN LA ($20)

“Raised by a single mother—womyn are the world.”

 

Emily Counts, Transponders, 2015, stoneware, porcelain, platinum luster, cotton rope, 11 x 25.5 x 9” ($1200)

Emily Counts, Transponders, 2015, stoneware, porcelain, platinum luster, cotton rope, 11 x 25.5 x 9” ($1200)

“Emily is my fav ceramics artist—my second is Marcel Duchamp.”

Thanks, Jonathan! 

Check out Jonathan’s paintings in our current show Everything We Ever Wanted.

OUR CURRENT EXHIBITION REVIEWED ON OREGON ARTSWATCH

“Unlike a traditional bottle, bowl, and fruit motif, the objects of the still lifes in Everything We Ever Wanted lend a degree of specificity that suggest unique personality—the tableaus are alive with vibrant individuality. Wearing similar palettes and styles, the paintings appear that they might be of the same social circle, happily coexisting in the gallery. There is a casual and good humored tone to their rapport as they rest comfortably among patterned linens, enjoy a snack, and leaf leisurely through the pages of Artforum. But as casual as the mood might be, the show is absolutely worth taking seriously. The trio of artists create richly layered works that build and reveal, grow and shift, creating an ever changing viewing experience that seeks to offer everything you ever wanted, and comes close at least for a time.”

 Read the full review HERE

OUR CURRENT SHOW REVIEWED BY MEGAN BURBANK

On Monday, Nationale’s new show, Everything We Ever Wanted, was extended through July 6, and it’s easy to see why. Though the show’s promotional materials tout an interest in the divide between what Lana Del Rey would call “the real and the fehhhhhhhk,” it’s also got echoes of post-net art, and brings an explosion of color to the shop/gallery’s tidy, white box.

There are Sarah Mikenis’ paintings of grouped, unidentifiable objects—they’re weird homunculi in gorgeous jewel tones, like an army of .gifs invading our tangible, 3-d plane. Jonathan Cassella’s works in acrylic do something similar: They’re paintings, but so heavily textured they read as collage. I checked with Nationale’s Gabi Lewton-Leopold: They’re not. It’s a delightful trick of the eye writ in broad gestures, and the color scheme you’d expect from a D.A.R.E. t-shirt ca. 1994, not precise cross-hatching behind swathes of paint.

Then there are Katie Batten’s paintings—perfect, picture book-illo assemblages that are like acid-hued I Spys for the digital age. They’re like getting to see inside a stranger’s browser history, if that stranger was more into lifestyle porn than porn-porn. I spy: Goldfish in a bowl cribbed straight from Matisse. I spy: a slice of pizza, a nod to snackwave, the web-based snack-food obsession the Hairpin’s dubbed “the internet’s saltiest meme.” I spy: Artforum. I spy: A Dutch-blue-painted flowerpot. In another one of her paintings, Batten zooms in on what reads as the top of a dresser piled with a sliced geode, a BFF necklace, a crucifix. The Tumblr teen girl aesthetic is one of my favorite trends in contemporary art right now, and it’s very much present in this painting, in objects so strongly associated with a particular age (adolescence) and a particular time (mid-‘90s?).

Batten’s paintings are, for the most part, the show’s only plainly representational pieces. Though Mikenis’ appear to have been painted from tricked-out still lifes, they read as abstractions. They’re fascinating. But they evade categorization. Meanwhile, Battens’ paintings are all about categorization. They’re invested in objects. And with their impossibly bright colors and smooth lines, they manage to be both cartoonish and very clean. I want to hang out in a room with 500 of them.

Everything We Ever Wanted is a shot in the arm. It’s a burst of color without being a mess, an onslaught of references you don’t necessarily need to understand. It’s as bright as you want, and then some.