Stockland Martel

Bruce Wolf’s “Oregon Journal” debuted here a couple of weeks ago with a slew of his mysterious landscape photos. For his second installment, he’s focusing on someone else’s work: Wieden+Kennedy’s John Jay…

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John Jay is the executive creative director of Wieden+Kennedy. A former New Yorker, he truly does have his finger on the pulse of Portland and, moreover, the world. He travels incessantly for business and spends a great deal of time in Asia. He is obsessed with pop culture, especially in China and Japan.

John’s personal creative adjunct is Studio J, a space devoted to his and wife Janet’s projects. These projects are far ranging. The most recent one was curating “The Jelly Generation,” a multimedia exhibit of art, photography, fashion, music, and design being created in China by the post-1980s generation. As stated at the exhibit, this is “the first generation after the ‘one child policy’—[these artists] didn’t have siblings…they didn’t have to share.”

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All exhibition photos by Bruce Wolf.

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What I took away from the exhibit (which was at the Goldsmith Gallery) was the global nature of the work. It was fresh and new without being naïve. There was no hint of the isolation China imposed on its young artists for so many years. It also included the absolute best Photoshop-created montages I have ever seen—two very large urban landscapes that appear to be decaying hillsides. Simply breathtaking in both concept and execution. Who said Oregon only has trees? —Bruce Wolf

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