Game plan

Local arts champion Jeff Jahn assembles a show that focuses on our innate need to play

By Michaela Bancud

The Portland Tribune, Sep 6, 2002, Updated Oct 30, 2009

If this show doesn’t do something for you, you might be dead.”

That’s just one of many baiting remarks that fly from the mouth of curator and artist Jeff Jahn, who jokingly calls himself the Matt Drudge of Portland’s visual art scene.

The show Jahn refers to is “Play,” which he curated for Portland State University’s Littman Gallery.

To casual observers and culture vultures alike, it’s obvious that the 31-year-old Jahn works hard to throw light on Portland’s visual arts scene. It’s a task that Jahn, who hails from Milwaukee, takes up with gusto. And he may have what it takes to get people’s attention Ñ he’s competitive, irrepressible and more than a little obsessed.

“The fact that he’s from the Midwest gives him an exuberance about this town,” says gallery owner Mark Woolley. “People who grew up here tend to take what goes on here for granted. His dedication and ubiquity is having an impact.”

When he isn’t hustling on behalf of his own work and others’, Jahn is a freelance writer for Modern Painters magazine and the online sites www.artcritical.com and nwdrizzle.com, helping to connect Portland’s artists to the national scene by reviewing shows and chatting them up in as many places and forums as possible.

“I talk a lot. I never shut up,” Jahn admits with a laugh.

Dark humor

The show includes work from painter Jacqueline Ehlis, sculptors Bruce Conkle and Hilary Pfeifer Ñ all native Oregonians Ñ and photographer Todd Johnson. Together they paint a clear picture of Portland’s art scene right now, says Jahn, who also has work in the show.

The idea behind “Play,” Jahn explains, came from Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” in which the author writes that even in the most horrific of circumstances people maintain a sense of play.

“If play existed at Auschwitz, it’s obviously core, root human behavior,” Jahn says. “I’m asking, ‘What do we need to get down to? What is necessary for the human race?’ I’m interested in all forms of play as kind of a way to add spark to life.”

The darker themes that exist in the show are buoyed by the sense of humor that runs throughout the artists’ work.

“There’s a playfulness to each of their work, but there’s also a dark side,” Jahn says.

Jacqueline Ehlis just completed her first show at Savage gallery.

“My own work was recently called really whimsical and goofy and quite playful,” Ehlis says. “Innately, I’m working with the idea of play; I make pieces that I call jokes. For the informed viewer, from an art historical perspective, its damn funny.”

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