Staff Picks
The days have started shortening again, but the good news: Seattle’s art summer is far from over. The Seattle Art Fair and plenty of intriguing satellite exhibits are popping up the last weekend of July, and August is bringing a bevy of playful, immersive and interactive exhibits. Art sometimes gets a bad rep for taking itself too seriously, so here are some fun and funky shows to see this month.
“Chewy Thoughts”
In preparation for her latest exhibit, Seattle artist Eriko Kobayashi has been chewing small pieces of glass. Not with her teeth but with a set of bronze dentures she uses to “bite” down into hot, just-fired glass chunks to make them look like pieces of chewed-up gum. Attached to a vertical glass slab, these globs — spearmint green, bubble gum pink, cherry red, Winterfresh blue — form an abstract collage that may look familiar to some. Yes, this is an ode to Seattle’s famed gum wall.
Through Aug. 27; Das Schaufenster, 6019 14th Ave. N.W., Seattle; free; annamlasowsky.com/dasschaufenster
“Cheek and Hole”
It started with a joke between local artists Chloe King and Colby Bishop. What if they curated a Very Serious Art Exhibit about … butts? The result is a, um, cheeky exploration of America’s infatuation with derrières, per the exhibition statement. “It is really based on our love of humor as an access point to larger conversations around art,” Bishop told me. Featuring painting, video installation, sculpture and performance by local and national artists, the exhibit will butt into ideas around race, queerness, drag, representation, image saturation and meme culture. Get yer caboose over there!
Through Aug. 26; Specialist Gallery, 300 S. Washington St., Seattle; free; specialist.gallery
“TERRIcolas (EARTHlings)”
They are called “Earthlings,” but these creatures seem to come from another, stranger planet. Their froglike eyes are bulging, horns sprout from their heads and legs grow from their shoulders. The new series of elaborate and grotesque handblown glass figurines by brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre, the celebrated Mexican American art duo, is a surreal trip. In this new show, the brothers take on consumerism, dating apps, faux-spiritualism and the planet’s environmental crisis with humor and absurdism. (Case in point: genitalia-shaped cactuses and figures wearing taco hats filled with tiny, chiseled torsos.) These creatures aren’t aliens: They are the exquisite corpses of this dying world.
July 29-Sept. 2; Koplin Del Rio Gallery, 6107 13th Ave. S., Seattle; free; koplindelrio.com
“In Preparation: To The North Pole and Back”
Seattle artist Iole Alessandrini is going to the North Pole. Her plan: photograph the landscape with the unique Laser Plane Photography technique she pioneered and named after herself, Ioleography. The technique involves a complicated combination of laser planes and long-exposure photography, which results in eerie, ghostly photos whose subjects seem to have temporarily crossed over into a different plane of reality. Alessandrini is showing some of her “Ioleograms” in the window gallery of The Grocery Studios. On Aug. 5, from 3 to 6 p.m., she’s also opening up the studio, where she’ll be showcasing the laser-plane technology, taking people’s Ioleogram portraits and selling prints to raise funds for her upcoming residency up north.
Through Aug. 19; The Grocery Studios, 3001 21st Ave. S., Seattle; free; thegrocerystudios.com
Seattle Design Festival
The theme of this year’s Seattle Design Festival (Aug. 19-24) is curiosity — using your senses and letting yourself be amazed about whatever comes next. There will be plenty of opportunity to unleash your inquisitiveness during the festival’s two-day outdoor block party, which will feature dozens of interactive (kid-friendly) installations designed by local designers, artists and architects. Enter into the “Inside-o-Scope,” a mirror palace holding surprises within; look and walk(!) through a giant kaleidoscope; play an instrument with your limbs; experience augmented and virtual-reality games and artworks by local creators; enjoy a puppet parade; and bring your own shirt for screen printing.
Aug. 19-20, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; Lake Union Park, 860 Terry Ave. N., Seattle; free; seadesignfest.org
“Lab Test 002”
Update 7/28/23: This show has been canceled in its current venue; check show website for any updates.
This August, in the heart of downtown Seattle, you’ll be able to interact with a light painting that changes with each viewer thanks to AI technology, space out in a room flooded in 360-degree lights, and sit on a swing in a diorama filled with forest creatures. With this curated group show of experiential, immersive and large-scale artworks by two dozen Seattle-based artists and designers, local art/design firm Experience Research Lab lives up to its name. “What if we had a space that really gave a place [to] these immersive, experiential new media artists to take over a whole … room,” said ERL’s Taylor Reed, “kind of how you see in a lot of museums in New York or L.A.?”
Aug. 25-Sept. 8.; ERL in partnership with XO Seattle at Coliseum Theater, 500 Pike St., Seattle; $15-$25; experienceresearchlab.com
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