There is typically a sense of finality when an artist’s work is displayed on a gallery’s walls. It’s all about showcasing the finished product, and as a result, the viewer is usually unaware of the creative process that went into each piece. Gallery owner Byran Suereth would rather put the focus on an artist’s disjecta — the fragments and revisions that eventually form a final piece. So when Suereth formed his gallery in 2000, he thought Disjecta would be a fitting namesake. “Disjecta was an interesting name, and it also had a connotation for what we do as an arts institution,” Suereth says.
As Suereth started Disjecta, Portland’s burgeoning art scene consisted primarily of artists and collectives that operated informally out of warehouses. It was his peers’ DIY approach and the city’s creative energy that sparked his idea to create a gallery of his own. “For the first two years of Disjecta, we really fed off of that spirit,” Suereth says. “I wanted the ability to create and to give people in the space the ability to create.”