This was the first year that the Affair at the Jupiter Hotel—an art fair that hosts a few dozen galleries from around the country, each transforming a hotel room into a mini-gallery for the weekend—piggybacked onto the TBA festival, happening the final weekend of the 11-day performance art intensive. As a result, I was far too burned out and strung out to appreciate the Affair in any meaningful way, stopping by twice on the tail end of a week-plus, sleep deprived gorge of intense and challenging performances. So I have a little less to say than usual about the Affair, and I might not be the only one. All reports indicated that the $50 opening night gala was pretty deserted, and there was no cheap afterparty for everybody to join in afterwards.

One local gallerist asked what I thought of this year’s art fair. “I don’t know,” I answered. “This has nothing to do with looking at art, to me. This is about consuming, consuming, consuming, even for the people who aren’t buying. It’s about that obsessive quest for the ‘next thing’ without taking the time to look at the ‘current thing.’ This has very little to do with what I like about art.” The gallerist agreed emphatically, saying that looking at art here was more like looking at jpegs than anything. “Flash, flash, flash. Why do we even do it?”

One reason, aside from that obsessive quest for “what’s next,” is that the Affair is typically a lot of fun. Popping in from one room to the next, running into what feels like everyone you’ve ever met in Portland, getting caught up in the atmosphere—it’s like an idealized version of First Thursday, free of the lemondrop-and-cigar crowd, as well as the Saturday Market-style vendors.

It needs to be noted, however, that Portland art spaces really rose to the occasion this weekend and provided some of the best hotel rooms of the whole she-bang. Special shout-outs to Cinema Project, who let hundreds of yards of 16mm film spool out from a projector onto the floor, creating a visceral connection between film’s physicality and latent imagery (projected on the wall); Reed’s Cooley Gallery absolutely pimped their room out, creating a darkened, Asian-themed viewing palace for a Cooley-commissioned film by the Dim Sum Puppet Opera; Motel Gallery went full bore with hugely impressive works by gallery artist Jessie Rose Vala; and Elizabeth Leach made my day with a tiny new sculpture by local artist Nan Curtis, who’s kept a low profile recently. Built from lint and receipts from the family washing machine, her stack of paper pebbles spoke to financial anxiety, domesticity, and even to Andy Goldsworthy, which is a hard trio to resolve in a palm-sized artwork.

My camera battery was dead by the time I got there, but you can see plenty of photos here.