Joe Rudko: “Picturesque” at PDX Contemporary Art

With a fugal sense of complexity and invention, Joe Rudko fastidiously tears, cuts, and shreds found paper and found photographs, as well as original photographs, then puts them back together in elegant, visually witty new compositions. The Seattle-based artist, a 2013 graduate of Western Washington University’s BFA program, made a strong Portland gallery debut with a suite of these immaculate, often illusionistic, pieces, all from 2014, collectively entitled “Picturesque.”