Department of Art Events

University of Oregon 2026-27 Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research

Ido Radon will give a talk on recent exhibitions, form and content, negation, structures, mechanical joinery, the utopian impulse, the artist-spectator-artwork triangle, maintaining productive tension, and history.

Radon is an artist and writer whose practice is an attempt to give form to the abstractions that shape contemporary life in order to make them thinkable. Radon has made solo exhibitions at Afternoon Projects, (Vancouver, BC), Air de Paris (Paris), Artspeak (Vancouver, BC), Ditch Projects (Springfield, OR), Et al. (San Francisco), ILY2 (Portland), Jupiter Woods (London), Pied-à-terre (San Francisco), Romance (Pittsburgh), and Veronica (Seattle) and shown work at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the Belkin Art Gallery, and the Henry Art Gallery. Her exhibition Men make their own history.... was commissioned by Lumi Tan for the 2026 Converge45 triennial. An autodidact, Radon holds a BS in Political Science from California Polytechnic University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. She is the Director of SOCIETY, a space for contemporary art and its histories and discourses.

University of Oregon 2026-27 Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research

In recent years, there has been a rise in fascism, multiple genocides, unnecessary wars, the monopolization of industries, turbulent economies, the development of artificial intelligence and the fear of subsequent technological eradication, among other pervasive global anxieties and insecurities. As a result, markets have suffered, artists have abandoned their studios, galleries have shuttered, and academic and cultural institutions have been in a state of upheaval. Yet, as the brilliant William Beckett once said, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on,” and thus, we too must go on. But how? Keith J. Varadi intends to share his experiences of attempting to figure out ways to do so.

Keith J. Varadi (b. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1985) is an artist, writer, researcher, curator, and gallerist based in Los Angeles, California. He is the Director of Gene's Dispensary, which he founded in May of 2024. In addition to exhibitions at the gallery's primary location, Varadi now curates off-site exhibitions and produces events under the Gene's moniker. The gallery's roster currently lists Joshua Abelow, Jesse Benson, Merideth Hillbrand, and LeRoy Stevens. 

As an artist and independent curator, Varadi's work has been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, over the past decade. His writing has been published in Art in America, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Flash Art, Kaleidoscope, LEAP, Spike, and X-TRA. He has released his poetry in both audio and written form. Aside from his work in the art world, he has worked as a researcher for two private investigation firms and for the long-running television game show, Jeopardy!.

University of Oregon 2026-27 Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research

In 2024, Aruna D'Souza published Imperfect Solidarities, a short book about artworks and practices that offer, in direct and indirect ways, examples of being in solidarity in ways that preserve individual and collective sovereignties. These moments in contemporary art—including those by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Stephanie Syjuco, Candice Breitz, and the feminist collective AIR Gallery in New York—allowed Souza to imagine creating momentary alliances in space with the goal of preserving and nurturing life, first and above all. This talk will add to that roster, drawing on artists and collectives around the world who allow us to envision a solidarity that does not require subsuming self in other, or absorbing other in self—an especially urgent project in a moment of rising global fascism.

Aruna D'Souza writes about modern and contemporary art, intersectional feminisms, and diasporic aesthetics.  Her work appears regularly in 4Columns, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and in numerous artist’s monographs and exhibition catalogues. Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times. Recent editorial projects include Linda Nochlin’s Making It Modern: Essays on the Art of the Now and Lorraine O’Grady’s Writing in Space 1973-2018; she co-curated the retrospective “Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And” at the Brooklyn Museum in 2021. She is the recipient of the 2021 Rabkin Prize for art journalism and a 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant. She was appointed the Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor at the National Gallery of Art in 2022, and the W.W. Corcoran Professor of Social Engagement at the Corcoran School of Art, George Washington University, in 2022-2023. Her most recent book Imperfect Solidarities was published in 2024.

This lecture is made possible by Critical Conversations, a platform for dialogue and inquiry that supports established artists and writers across Oregon. Developed in partnership between The Ford Family Foundation and the University of Oregon’s Center for Art Research, this initiative engages contemporary art spaces, statewide, to host prominent visiting curators and arts writers for studio visits, public lectures and community engagement.