Image: Detail of a debut installation by Stephen Slappe, 2015. OUR PEACE is a 4-channel immersive video environment created from documentary footage captured in Portland, Oregon.
3|3|3
Todd Johnson | Elizabeth Malaska | Stephen Slappe
December 1 – December 19, 2015
First Thursday Opening Reception
December 3, 2015 | 6:00p.m. – 8:00p.m.
White Box at the University of Oregon in Portland School of Architecture and Allied Arts is pleased to present 3|3|3. This exhibition features three artists; each occupying one of the three galleries in the White Box. The exhibition runs for three weeks.
Todd Johnson is an experimental and conceptual photographer living and working in Portland, Oregon. His photographic work uses abstract metaphor, social critique, dark humor and personal narrative. Johnson received his MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. Todd is the founder and director of Black Box Gallery. Recent solo exhibitions include: The Misadventures of Ansel Adams: Garage Sales, Geotracking and General Tomfoolery at The Art Gym at Marylhurst University; Dangerous Territory at Pacific Northwest College of Art; and Malt Liquor and Cold Cuts at False Front Gallery.
Elizabeth Malaska’s paintings, with their dramatic juxtaposition of subject, material, and technique dispel normative readings, while also warning against the impending apocalypse of global complacency. Coupled with the artificiality of her statuesque female figures and geometric settings, they transition from everyday narratives into urgent allegories. Malaska earned her MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Her work has been exhibited nationally at various institutions including Portland’s Nationale, Froelick Gallery, Disjecta, Portland Center Stage, and San Francisco’s California College of the Arts, where she also received her BFA. She was named a finalist for The Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant and the Fine Arts Work Center fellowship in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Malaska is a recent recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund’s Money for Women Grant. Malaska lives and works in Portland, Oregon, where she is represented by Nationale.
Stephen Slappe, an artist based in Portland, Oregon. Utilizing video and subversive installations, Slappe creates work that critiques technology and society’s inherent reliance on it. Viewers become immersed in environments where the parallel lines of reality and perceived social media become blurred. Slappe’s work has exhibited and screened internationally in venues such as Centre Pompidou-Metz, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s TBA Festival, The Horse Hospital (London), The Sarai Media Lab (New Delhi), Consolidated Works (Seattle), Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow), and Artists Television Access (San Francisco). His projects have been funded by multiple grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council of Portland and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission. Slappe actively organizes video and film exhibitions including Subduction Zone at The Front (New Orleans) and Out of the Great Northwest at The Horse Hospital (London). His most recent project is an iOS app, titled 8, available on iTunes.