Andre LaPorte is the show-stealer of an exhibition with too many artists to be entirely interesting because of his ability to detect and communicate something intangible about Portland beyond the city's geometries. "Port Nights Quartet" is an interconnected group of four panels representing, in the artist's words, "the high intensity night life being enjoyed by the young of all ages in the OLD PORT'S bawdy BOITES." Feeling explodes out of his kinetic layers without any need for direct representation. This ability is further evidenced in "City #5," which features an abstract skyline with the buildings reduced to their essential forms. Bright reds and blues are endowed humanity by way of abrasions revealing the texture of the canvas. Large white compositional fields become structural as spackled, heavy daubs mixed with the earthy grime of the workshop. The shapes are groundless but the street view is implied. Composition is perfectly balanced as the tall skyscraper encompassing the vertical aspect of the work is deflected from remaining in the limelight by eye-catching circle shapes seemingly burned into the piece. The intentionality of the work has the effortless air of good design with the emotional warmth of the empathetic eye, and is the prize of the show by a long shot.
Ian Paige can be reached at ianpaige@gmail.com.
"4TH BIENNIAL PORTLAND SHOW" through January 3, 2009 | at Greenhut Galleries, 146 Middle St, Portland | 207.772.2693
Related:
State of the arts, A look at Portland's graffiti history, Who’s running for mayor? (Yes, already!), More 
- State of the arts
In Portland, and around Southern Maine, developing trends hold promise for our changing, but still cantankerously distinct, artistic character to act as a new kind of cultural reflection.
- A look at Portland's graffiti history
Back in the early '90s, Eli Cayer had just finished art school in Boston and headed to Maine, where he continued creating street art.
- Who’s running for mayor? (Yes, already!)
Here's an early holiday gift from us to you: A new election to start thinking about! (You can thank us later.)
- Odd year ahead for museums and galleries
Remember, for every droopy tarp stalactite that makes it into a museum lobby installation, there are dozens of similar (and similarly impressive) creatures that never leave a studio wall.
- Museums and Galleries preview: Looking ahead
In November, incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner and fellow Republicans called for the Smithsonian to shutter its National Portrait Gallery show surveying gay identity in a century of art.
- Review: Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, And Conversations
If you are interested in the great painter Philip Guston (1913–1980), you will want this book. If you are interested in American painting from 1945 on, and into the future, you will want this book. If you enjoy a great talker in top form, you will want this book.
- Staying 'classy' over food
As many problems as there are in society over racial and ethnic hang-ups, I've long maintained that the bigger separator of people in this country (and probably most nations) is socioeconomic class.
- Review: ''American Gothic'' painter Grant Wood gets to leave the closet
Who was Grant Wood? Millions of Americans know him as the artist who painted American Gothic — and that's about it. But since his death, from pancreatic cancer, in 1942, he's become the poster boy for the right and the whipping boy of the left.
- Review: It's no joke: Grant Wood is truly a great artist
Even if the name isn't instantly familiar, the painting will be. You've seen it on billboards, on magazine covers from Mad to Time , in Charles Addams cartoons, on Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live.
- Artists probe atrocities, the atmosphere, and yarn
For several months, Georgie Friedman has been collaborating with a couple of friends in Oregon who've been launching high-altitude balloons bearing cameras into the stratosphere. Now the Jamaica Plain artist finally debuts this æsthetic research in her show at Carroll and Sons.
- The Decemberists | The King Is Dead
It may be called The King Is Dead , but the latest Decemberists album screams "rodeo" rather than "royalty."
- Less
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Portland, Painting, Visual Arts, More
, Portland, Painting, Visual Arts, Tom Hall, John Whalley, Mike Lewis, Art, Andre LaPorte, Nancy Morgan Barnes, Cynthia Davis, Less
