 – The exhibition, “Just Playin’ Around” opens on Tuesday, January 21, 2025 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, showcasing the work of Derrick Adams,…){kind=link}
PORTLAND, OR (PNAN) – The exhibition, “Just Playin’ Around” opens on Tuesday, January 21, 2025 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, showcasing the work of Derrick Adams, Calvin Chen, Jeremy Okai Davis, Latoya Lovely, Jillian Mayer, Takashi Murakami, Jeremy Rotsztain, Heidi Schwegler, Joshua Sin, Matthew Earl Williams, and Erwin Wurm. At 4:00 pm on Thursday, January 23 a panel discussion will be held with an opening reception.
Co-curators of the exhibition, Nancy and Theo Downes-Le Guin said, “The artists in this exhibition show us how play is a form of freedom, and art and artists can’t exist without freedom. These connections between play, art, and freedom are worth serious consideration. But we didn’t want this exhibition to explore play in art just as an idea–the experience should be fun and participatory…”
Play and humor have deep but often unacknowledged roles in the history of art. Like art, play exists outside of the realms of logic and utility; yet both are universal across human history and cultures.
Many artists acknowledge that playfulness is a necessary state for making art, allowing them to think flexibly, to take risks and to achieve states of creative flow. Playfulness and humor in art can also be a crucial form of subversion and resistance, especially for artists whose identities and subject matters challenge societal norms and conventions.