This content was published: January 10, 2020. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
David Eckard
Sylvania North View Gallery
Placards and Placeholders
![Mixed media sculpture hangs on a white gallery wall. The lower half of the artwork is painted wood and depicts a jeweled necklace and white wrapped fabric. The upper part of the piece is a padded turban like shape made of shiny red fabric, with white buttons imbedded in it. A tail like drape of artificial grey hair is draped on the right side of the object.](https://www.pcc.edu/galleries/wp-content/uploads/sites/56/2020/01/David-Eckard-for-North-View-Webpage-1000x1400.jpg)
Quite, Quite, 2019, painted wood, fabric, leather, mirror, artificial hair, 45.5″ x 28″ x 3″
- Dates: January 15 to February 15, 2020
- Opening reception and gallery talk: Thursday, January 16, 2-4pm
- Weekend opening: Saturday, January 18, 3-5pm
The North View Gallery is pleased to present new work by Portland-based artist David Eckard. This work continues his explorations combining rendered images with fabricated forms and structures. Eckard’s sculptural rebuses offer up visual riddles built from a personal vocabulary of evocative forms, pragmatic materials and presentational invitation.
Placards and Placeholders
Notes from Eckard’s studio journals:
…scores and schematics of fantasies and fetishes for an aging body (recalling).
…monk, dancing bear, trip hazard, jester, huckster.
…the power/cowardice of opaque emblems (shield/banner), icons and coy ciphers. Yours?
…verse, chorus, punchline.
The artist hopes you will come and discover your own answers.
David Eckard utilizes diverse materials, techniques and presentational strategies in his studio practice. Futility, function, authority, queer masculinity and persona are the primary notions investigated, critiqued, and exploited in his work. Eckard fabricates fictive artifacts and enigmatic objects with a variety of materials and techniques. These sculptures exist as singular objects, installation components and performance props. His rendered works on panel and paper are biomorphic, sexualized schematics that address the body as carrier of histories, fantasies, potential and trauma. Through performance, Eckard orchestrates transient theatrics and deploys temporary monuments in civic spaces for incidental audiences.
![Large scale mixed media sculpture sits on a concrete floor in a gallery. The artwork is abstract and multicolored. On the right of the piece is a blue circle within which is an opening that is painted in trompe l'oeil style to resemble folds and flesh or bone like forms. The circle is attached to two pieces of bent metal, painted light yellow, which sit on the floor. At the other end of the bent metal is a pink metal wire form from which is suspended a white fabric baglike shape. On the bottom right of the sculpture is a long wooden pole that extends from the yellow metal curves across to a small orange stand.](https://www.pcc.edu/galleries/wp-content/uploads/sites/56/2020/01/Eckard-David-Cornucopia-theatrics-of-worth-NVG-Placards-and-Placeholders-1000x688.jpg)
Cornucopia (theatrics of worth), 2020, painted wood, turned wood, steel, mirror, fabric, wool, leather, sand
About the artist
Eckard has exhibited internationally and his work has been reviewed in Art in America, Sculpture, Flash Art, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and Artnews. He is the recipient of multiple fellowships and awards including the Individual Artist Fellowship (2015, Regional Arts and Culture Council, Portland, OR), the Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts (2010, Ford Family Foundation, Portland, OR) and the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship (2010, Portland, OR).He is an Associate Professor and Head of the Sculpture Department at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.
Gallery hours: Monday – Friday, 8am-4pm, Saturday 11am-4pm
Directions: Follow signs to the bookstore and visitor parking. The gallery is located in the Communications and Technology (CT) building, adjacent to the bookstore, on the NE corner of campus.