UNINCORPORATED
solo exhibition by: Simone Fischer
B10 Gallery, PNCA
511 NW Broadway, Portland, OR
Opening: April 7th 5-7PM
March 28th- April 19th
Exhibition Statement
Unincorporated is an in-process body of work created during Simone’s Intermedia Department Artist Residency at PNCA, which considers the material and sonic rendering of a landscape. Simone explores the industrial history of Portland through metal as a vessel and music subculture. Simultaneously inspired by run-down stripmalls, basement house shows, gaudy concert halls, steel yards, convenience stores, laundromats and film noir; She connects the landscape through minor scales, which heavily annotate grunge/metal genre and sonically define the Pacific Northwest within her practice. During the residency, Simone’s research considers Barbara Strozzi, a 17th century female composer who published music independently without a male pen name. Simone places Strozzi’s most famous composition Che si puo fare? (What Can I Do?) in conversation with The Melvin’s Night Goat and Bikini Kill’s Rebel Girl as a feminist reinterpretation and reclaimation of rage and power through sonic composition, blue collar material and technique . Using photography, silkscreens and video, Simone explores the emotional gravity of her landscape of 82nd Avenue through music theory, steel and sound.
a warning (2021), pictured above features a silkscreen pixelated chandelier photograph on brushed steel. Inspired by historic concert venues like the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, this piece materially speaks to present day power dynamics of the working class relationship to art. The marriage of material alludes to the inextricable ties between trade industry and the arts and considers femme access to both. The brushed steel gestures create a lenticular effect within the image, which allude to a string of notes within a symphony, intangible street graffiti and The Melvin’s 1993 album Houdini, which nuances both the sonic and industrial identity of the pacific northwest.