First Friday Opening Reception: September 3, 2010, 6-11 p.m.
Golden Rule Gallery, 811 E. Burnside, Suite 122, Portland, OR. 97214. (503) 477-5124.
Show Runs August 31, 2010 through September 25, 2010
Picture
'Untitled Coffee Painting,' by Delphine Bedient, 2009. Coffee grounds on paper, 11x17 inches
ARTIST STATEMENT

Delphine Bedient's work shows the marks made by a life as it happens—not as autobiography so much but as a form of aesthetic forensics, domestic archaeology. Day by day, as part of the same routines she is depicting in her art, Bedient re-presents, arranges, and re-contextualizes the materials of living: assemblages of receipts, existential to-do lists, resignation letters, stubs, leavings, findings, even the view from her window.

Her large installation piece, “315 Tea Bags,” is essentially found art, except that it is art re-found within the domestic ritual of teatime. Each spent bag of tea, as it is hung and dried, creates its own patterns, much as each morning imposes its own patterns on a day; the drying of each tea bag became yet another domestic ritual for Bedient, folded into the ritual it depicts. In aggregate, through their slow, day-by-day accretion, the bags of tea become a delicate portrait of life in its minutiae, design in change, the revealed self-expression of what’s left behind.

Similarly, Bedient preserves the dregs of her morning coffee by pouring them each day over paper to create a wispily fragile calligraphy of coffee grounds; the coffee removes itself from her cup according to its own qualities—density, stubbornness, or fluidity—to become blots, stains, rings, zigzags of sludge tamed to gentle marks. It is an incidental diary written not by the writer, but by what is written. In Bedient’s work the view from a bedroom, over time, imprints itself on copper plate; the overlaid gentility of lace and netting creates indelible textures preserved on a page. Just as ritual sanctifies domesticity, Bedient’s work sanctifies a life lived within ritual.

Bedient was born in Lincoln, Nebraska .She has worked and lived in Portland for the past four years. For the last two and a half years she has been the editor of Peep! zine, which in recent issues has included quotes from Tolstoy, descriptions of modern jobs as found in the New York Times, collections of security envelope patterns, receipts, definitions, and self-definitions. Past issues of Peep! will be available during the showing of Making Sense.

Picture
'Untitled Wall Assemblage,' by Delphine Bedient (pictured here), 2010. String, photographs, notes, reciepts and found materials.
Picture
'315 Teabags,' by Delphine Bedient, 2010. Mixed media installation of teabags, string, paper, staples. Edition of three, variable dimensions.
Picture
'Untitled Lace Print,' by Delphine Bedient, 2010. Lace print and embroidery on paper, 30x22.5 inhes
Picture
'Untitled Print through a Bedroom Window,' by Delphine Bedient, 2009. Copper plate print on paper, 11x8.5 inches
Picture
'Untitiled Coffee Painting,' by Delphine Bedient, 2009. Coffee ground on paper, 11x17 inches
All pieces, including installations, are viewable for sale at Golden Rule Gallery, 811 E. Burnside, Suite 122, Portland, OR. 97214, T-SUN, 12-6 p.m., or by appointment. For additional information and pricing contact Wynde Dyer at (503) 863-1545.
2 Comments