What’s So Lovely About the End of the World?

Is It:

The Apocalypse? Or it is the Apocalypse.

Your detachment? What do you mean ‘the end of the world’? Do you believe?

The climate crisis, pollution, and mishandling of earth’s resources?

The world ends in 2024? 2035? 2050? The end of this century? OR …?

Political unrest? Social unrest? The rise of fascism? War?

Are you Right, are you Left, are you neither? Do you care?

AI’s replacement of humans?

We are at the end of time?

OR 

Is it:

Ecological thinking?

Beauty?

Knowledge?

Immersing in the arts?

Creating a new culture?

Time.

What’s So Lovely About the End of the World presents a dichotomy of a dark reality and a ‘light’ reality of hope. A consternation we all face.

Time is a key part of ecological thinking; you have to think life span, a new beginning within a constant loop. Ventura, California-based fashion designer and performance artist, Narci Lee, who creates beauty by diverting material wastes from a heavily polluted environment, extends the life span of textile objects and says, “keeping fabric alive, giving fabric a new life, a new meaning, it lengthens the life cycle, countering the time it takes to biodegrade.”

The beauty of life allows us to keep learning, to keep creating and engaging in the arts, to keep absorbing beauty around us … while fighting the destructive headwinds of a dying earth. Can the beauty of art and the consciousness of artists negate the power of the apocalypse?

Portland, Oregon-based Erik ReeL, artist and author of Pterodactyl Cries: Art, Abstraction, and Apocalypse, has said in relation to the painting, What’s So Lovely About the End of the World (which is in the show), “It seems that a considerable portion of the human race lusts for the apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it. It is as if there is this darkness deep down in their psyches that wants to see the world burn, yearns for Armageddon, the last battle. Maybe it is possible to think and do things differently, instead.”

Lee and ReeL present 40 objects.  Originally from Seattle, and recent transplant to Portland. This will be ReeL’s first exhibition in Portland, and his first show in the Pacific Northwest in 36 years.

Highlights from the exhibition:

Vivi Ann is a coat, dress, and duffel upcycled fashion ensemble, a collaborative project by Narci Lee and Erik ReeL. Lee, who creates upcycled garments, created Vivi Ann, specifically for this show using deadstock futon covers designed by ReeL.

 

ReeL’s paintings, acrylic on canvas and linen, ranging in sizes from 72 x 96 inches to 26 x 44 inches, challenge our thinking, explore our vivid imagination, as we view ReeL’s work which is titled around world sociological and climate-related issues such as Rising Tides, Viva Ukraine, In the Wake, Jangled, Everything’s Infected, and a 30-piece 9 x 11 inch works on paper titled Life Boats for Rising Seas, otherwise known as the “boat book”.

Artists:

Narci Lee

Narci Lee is a zero-waste fashion designer and performance artist based in Ventura, California. Her designs have been exhibited at the realART Gallery in Agoura Hills, California, seen on the runways of art museum’s fashion events and in boutiques and wardrobe collections throughout the country. Her performance work has engaged audiences for years at John M. White’s celebrated 5x5x5 performance art series in Ventura, California. She lives in Ventura with her husband, Jason Russell. 

Erik ReeL

Erik ReeL is a Seattle-born visual artist and writer living in Portland. ReeL’s art is represented in collections based in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Chicago, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Houston, Indianapolis, London, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Oakland, Paris, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Seoul. ReeL’s work is part of an international turn toward improvisational abstraction that includes artists such as Jadé Fadojutimi, Amy Sillman, Julie Mehrutu, Laura Owens, Albert Oehlen, and Liliane Tomasko while frequently featuring ecological thinking and themes.

Curated by Rhonda P. Hill

What’s So Lovely About the End of the World?

On View 28 August 2023 – 28 September 2023
PLACE
735 NW 18th Avenue
Portland, Oregon, 97209, USA

PLACE

PLACE is a design studio engaging landscape architecture, art, and urban design to make the world a better place. As a partner of 1% for PLANET, their impact is reflected in prestigious accolades including the 2021 ASLA Landmark Award and the inaugural Architecture MasterPrize Landscape & Urban Design Firm of the Year.  World headquarters, Portland, Oregon.

Feature image: Narci Lee’s Vivi Ann, Erik ReeL paintings, “What’s So Lovely About the End of the World” installation, PLACE, Portland, OR, 2023 | photo by Rhonda P. Hill