Visits to Portland are always filled with surprises and frequently leave one contemplating the possibilities that exist in civic-minded, inward-looking cities that do not aspire to global significance. In the once-forgotten former meat packing district of Kenton in North Portland, the pattern of neglect and renewal has resulted in Disjecta, a multi-disciplinary arts center that inhabits a cavernous building that once served as a bowling alley. Outside, the old town’s commercial district is being reconstructed while the light rail passes by and an aging but brightly-hued colossus of Paul Bunyan faces the wide Columbia to the north.

Inside, the planes of the shining concrete floor and freshly-painted walls are in marked contrast to the weathered, skewing slats of the sloping roof. But here is the environment that Portland artist Jenene Nagy’s work has long demanded. Her installations, which have been constructed in various sites in Portland and around the world, are provocative interventions into their surroundings. Rendered in a single color, they are vivid gestural responses to both the architecture and the institutions where they briefly reside.

Two years ago I saw her piece s/plit in a 450 square foot gallery inside the elegant, travertine-clad Portland Art Museum. The work, part sculpture and part painting, was a series of connected panels painted a glossy deep-purple cut into jagged shapes and positioned at careful angles along and against the walls. The neon lights that ran across the surface gave the work a sense of depth and movement, separating the viewer from its immediate presence and making its spatial context disappear. By making us forget the museum and its famous architect Pietro Belluschi with her common-place building materials, Nagy had performed a most difficult task.

Here in the vast and utilitarian Dijecta space, she is able to take advantage of the building’s height and indifference to produce a much larger and far more dramatic work of art. Tidal is 74 feet long, 26 feet high, and 32 feet wide. Large pieces of irregularly edged, fuschia-pink drywall are mounted on 2x4s and subtly backlit by a row of wall-mounted florescent lights several feet off the ground. The composition suggests an overwhelming force that flows across the floor and crashes upwards against the walls before breaking into fragments as it ascends into the rafters.

The high-gloss segments of drywall affixed to the beams and curved ceiling have been painstakingly angled to create an intense dramatic effect. While laying on the floor beneath an assistant in a cherry-picker, Nagy oversaw their specific placement until the entire work came into being. Their spatial abscission is highlighted by the variance of color and light as they play vividly against one another in the receding darkness.

There is a great deal of contemporary art that explores the inherent properties of built and natural environments by incorporating elements of architecture, landscape, and topographic mapping. Despite the determination to engage the physical properties of our surroundings, much of this art dwells upon concept and leaves our senses strangely underwhelmed. Looking upward at Tidal with its broken, shimmering planes bordered by lumber, shadows and empty space, we are reminded of the Abstract Expressionists and their belief in the primacy of emotion and sensory experience. When we remember that we are in an abandoned bowling alley in North Portland we realize that something of this dream has been fulfilled.

One gets the sense that whatever Nagy is up to she’s just getting started. My hope is that she will someday find herself in the esteemed company of our public artists, many of whom have left far more tepid and ill-conceived works for future generations to puzzle over.

Tidal runs through February 28. Photo: Jeff Jahn