Oregon Painting Society Takes Tate Modern

May 06, 2010

Oregon Painting Society (OPS), a Portland-based art collective, participates in Tate Modern’s No Soul for Sale: A Festival of Independents, May 14-16. As one of over 70 independent art groups from around the globe, OPS will create a floor installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall that will focus on interactive musical sculptures. They will also present a new multimedia stage performance in the auditorium. The No Soul for Sale festival celebrates Tate Modern’s 10th anniversary.

PNCA alumni have been active members of the collective since its inception in 2007, including Liam Drain ‘07 and Julia Perry ‘10, and current members Barbara Kinzle ‘07, Brenna Murphy ‘09 and Jason Traeger ‘07.

Widely recognized for their group exhibitions and performances, OPS often incorporates witchcraft, New Age spirituality, psychedelia and science fiction into their installation and performance work. PORT awarded them “Favorite Solo Exhibition of 2009” for Radiant Dream Face at Portland State University’s Autzen Gallery.

Oregon Painting Society was most recently featured as part of the Portland 2010: A Biennial of Contemporary Art, presented by Disjecta and curated by Cris Moss of Linfield College.

Their installation HexenHouse was “a house, a game room, a garden, a jungle, an ocean under the stars and a metaphysical Hawaiian chill zone,” according to group member Jason Traeger ‘09. It was built predominantly of reused and reclaimed materials in a “collage-like collision of style on a larger scale than ever before.” They also continued to incorporate interactive electronic musical elements, leaving the audience to wonder, “Are you playing Hexenhouse? Or is Hexenhouse playing you?”