The bSIDE6 gallery is located in the ground floor corner space of the bSIDE6 building at 524 East Burnside Steet in Portland, Oregon. Conceived of to activate a vacant corner retail space, the bSIDE6 gallery operates with support from project cityscope and bSIDE6, llc.

Unlike a traditional gallery with open hours, the space itself is inaccessible to the public except during First Friday openings. Open calls for proposals pose the question of how to activate this space both during the day and at night while capturing viewers' interest strictly from the sidewalk.

Scroll down to view current and past installations.


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[object : group : field] by Ian Campbell, Benjamin Gray & Mia Nolting
February / March 2011

Referencing childhood memories of seemingly boundless landscapes, rows created singularly of plants buzzing by the car window in a monotonous and unrelenting cadence. [object : group : field] will explore the relationship between these individual objects and the methods by which they come to be arranged in an unconscious construct - memory. The installation will blur how the viewer processes field, object, and residual space to form memories.

  
  
photography by Benjamin Gray


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Refuge by William C. Tripp & Stephen A. Miller
December 2010 / January 2011

A photographic inquiry
of what it means to be alone
in an empty space
seeking refuge
hiding
or
emerging
enticing even
becoming one’s other self
an inner struggle, observed.

  
  
photography by Stephen A. Miller


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Public Isolation Project by Cristin Norine & Joshua Jay Elliott
November 2010

The Public Isolation Project consists of two symbiotic and simultaneous art pieces–Joshua Jay Elliott’s An Examinable Life and Cristin Norine’s The Future of Socializing. An analog analogy of the contemporary experience of living in the Internet age, Cristin Norine will spend one month living within the confines of the bSIDE6 Gallery—in total view from the gallery’s windows. Her isolation will be alleviated solely by digital interactions with the outside world. Viewers of the piece will reflect on their own expanded accessibility that technology has brought them.

click here to visit the Public Isolation Project blog that documented the process


photography by Joshua Jay Elliott


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Asleep Until Awake by Nathan Dinihanian
October 2010

Dear bSIDE6,
I will be here every day this month.
What we do will change as the month progresses.
It will be interesting to see how our relationship takes form.
I am excited to be collaborating with you.
It is good.

Sincerely,
Nathan Dinihanian

The difference between occupied space and unoccupied space is change.

Regardless of location, size or status, space develops over time based upon the activities and people within. bSIDE6 offers a space where the function is not completely defined, the experience within is undetermined.

On October First the installation will begin with the introduction of seven benches. Benches have two purposes. First they establish the idea that art is present. Second they are useful. I will visit the site daily and as the month progresses the form will take on new context based upon the changing relationships. This internal process will mirror the larger shifting forces taking place outside the walls of the gallery.

Through this process, I hope to better understand how space, form and interaction develop when no specific function is required. Whereas in previous installations in which I have privately prepared for the display of a completed form, the bSIDE6 installation will be on display in all its forms and will always be complete. It will simply be changing.


  
  


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BIG shirt / little TOP by Elisa Linda Saether
September 2010

presented as a pair and drawing on scales of memory both individually and collectively, common vintage items are reassembled and made wholly anew yet strangely familiar, as well as concurring within the larger context and scale of the bSIDE6 office building.

BIG shirt
Referencing mythology and modernity, this shirt fit for a giant, turns the common uniform of the corporate world into an occupiable fantasy through collective repetition and scale.

BIG shirt is conceived and constructed with several singular used men’s dress shirts to create one new collective big shirt. Each shirt was opened at its seams and stitched back together to create the rectangular yardage for the final construction and re-constitution of one giant-sized dress shirt.

little TOP
Starting with an old hatbox as an initial reference to scale and context, a small circus tent newly occupies and rises from the flat round box with all its parts ready to assemble alongside with some new circus occupants. little TOP is constructed using various scraps of vintage clothing and common household items (drinking straws, curtain weights, wooden dowels, thread, glue and paint).

little TOP draws from personal memories of a circus tent constructed for The Circus No Purpose. It was made for the children of a dear friend and former Circus colleague. Conceived to be easily able to pack down for traveling entertainment; its next stop is Berlin via post.


                                                                            
  


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Placement Product by Laura Hughes & Michael Reinsch
August 2010

This collaboration by two PNCA MFA graduates intervenes in the usual usage of the storefront window to reinvestigate the command for attention by commercial purposes. The language of sales sloganeering is replaced with a contemplative reinterpretation of aspects of the space.


  
  


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MA by Merge Studio + Lab
July 2010

MA is a Japanese word that can be roughly translated as the “space between two structural parts.” This installation explores the relationship of positive and negative space in an interstitial condition. Reusing two materials, bike tubes and reclaimed lumber, the creation of interstitial space is highlighted through a role reversal of the materials as it passes through the divided aperture.


The Uses of Not
Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
But the empty space between them is the essence of the wheel.
Pots are formed from clay,
But the empty space between it is the essence of the pot.
Walls with windows and doors form the house,
But the empty space within it is the essence of the house.

-Taoist Philosopher Lao Tse

  
  
photography by Jacob Robertson ©2010


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4 Dimensional Sidewalk by project cityscope & David Neevel
April thru June 2010

Can a building actively shape its environment?

HISTORY
Lower Burnside Street was widened in the 1920’s to create a central city arterial. The carving of the existing, now historic buildings to establish arcades has resulted in a unique pedestrian environment. The City of Portland encourages new structures to create a relationship with these historic buildings and reduce the perceptual width of the street.

DISTORTION
The building provides a 3-dimensional pedestrian environment and passively marks a relationship with the existing historic fabric, reinforcing a district, and helping to define an ordered public way.

This interactive installation seeks to dynamically distort the urban environment created by the building façade through the projection of live video captures that are augmented by time and spatial representation. The intent is to allow the building armature to produce a feedback relationship with pedestrians, resulting in a 4-dimensional sidewalk.

This project was a collaboration between project cityscope and artist David Neevel, with support from in situ PORTLAND program of the Regional Arts & Culture Council and bSIDE6, LLC.