UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES:
Installations by Atlanta's Gallery Artists
January 15 - March 18, 2004

Panel Discussion: “The Boundaries of Installation Art” with artists, Imi Hwangbo and Greely Myatt, and curator, Lisa Kurzner; the panel will be moderated by Helena Reckitt, Director of Exhibitions & Education at the Contemporary.
Saturday January 17th, 6 pm

Artist Reception: Saturday January 17, 7 - 9 pm

Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and the Atlanta Gallery Association present Under Different Circumstances. This exhibition will feature installations by artists represented by eight different members of the newly formed Atlanta Galleries Association (AGA). Conceived jointly by The Contemporary and the AGA as a project to free artists from the confines of their gallery schedule, the exhibition aims to present work in a new light by focusing on the experimental mandate of the host institution and on the artists’ fulfillment of a manifest destiny. The title refers to the fact that the artists selected have established careers in the gallery system, but in this instance are exhibiting work they have chosen or made for a particular viewing space. It poses the question, “what happens when the inception and reception circumstances of a work change?”

Artists and galleries represented in Under Different Circumstances are:

Stewart HELM (London, UK) contact - Galerie Timothy Tew

Patrizia Guerresi (Verona, ITALY) contact - Momus Gallery

Imi HWANGBO (Athens, GA) contact - Kiang Gallery

Greely MYATT (Memphis, TN) contact - Sandler Hudson Gallery

Sheila SWIFT (Los Angeles, CA) contact - Jackson Fine Art

Julia VENSKE and Gregor SPÄENLE
(New York NY and Munich GERMANY) contact - Marcia Wood Gallery

J. Daniel WALSH (New York, NY) contact - Solomon Projects

Mike WSOL (Bloomington, IN) contact - Saltworks Gallery

Lisa Kurzner is a freelance curator and writer based in Atlanta, GA. She received her BA in Art History from Wellesley College and did graduate work at New York University, with a concentration in photographic history. A former Research Assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art/Institute of Fine Arts, Kurzner was the Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Photography at MOMA between 1987 and 1990. While living in Europe in the 1990’s, she worked at the British Council in Brussels, the Contemporary Art Society in London, and in the Department of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Kurzner currently advises the King Baudoin Foundation in Atlanta, an organization that offers study grants in Belgium to artists.

Under Different Circumstances is part of ATLart(04), a city-wide event that will bring area art museums, non-profit visual arts organizations and commercial galleries together in a unique collaboration. ATLart (04) has been organized by the Atlanta Gallery Association, a consortium consisting of 29 of the city’s foremost commercial art galleries representing the highest standards of fine art. The AGA is dedicated to promoting visual arts and increasing the public awareness of Atlanta as a major international art center ATLart (04) is sponsored by Delta Air Lines and The Coca-Cola Company.

Under Different Circumstances Web Gallery

Sponsored in part by

###

OBJECT[S] OF ARCHITECTURE:
Works by Georgia Tech Architecture Faculty Exhibition
February 6 - March 18
Opening reception - February 6, 7 - 9 pm
Curated by Tina Simonton and Frances Hsu

Object[s] of Architecture is an exhibit of current work by Georgia Tech Architecture Faculty. The show is curated by exhibition co-chairs Tina Simonton and Frances Hsu. The exhibition’s intentions are described in their curatorial statement below:

“The show’s intention is to exhibit the irreducible, irreplaceable, transcendent object[s] of architecture. It seeks to foreground the ideal forms of process, [re]presentation and material, whether drawing, model, rendering, image, competition board, film/video, sketch/book, construction/fabrication document, etc; in order to circumvent the typical, often retrospective-like exhibition of architecture which dislocates the object in favor of direct experience. It is in this spirit that ‘Object[s] of Architecture’ is not mere ‘documentations’ of something, but the ‘things’ themselves. A catalog will be published in conjunction with the exhibit.“

Tina Simonton, Exhibition Co-Chair
Tina Simonton is an Assistant Professor in Architecture at Georgia Tech. She completed her undergraduate studies in Architecture at Auburn University. She then received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Furniture Design and Painting from California College of Arts and Crafts [CCAC, San Francisco], and her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Massachusetts College of Arts. She has been exhibited widely and has taught at numerous institutions before joining the College of Architecture in 1998. She, along Wanda Dye, helped implement and develop courses for the Common First Year program. She continues to teach design studios in the CFY program and a seminar titled “Material Potential and Fabrication Strategies”. Presently her research interests and teaching are interdisciplinary in nature and attempt to translate the processes of the painter into variable object production through traditional means and use of the College’s Advanced Wood Products Laboratory.

Frances Hsu, Ph.D. Exhibition Co-Chair
Frances Hsu is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Architecture at Georgia Tech. She completed her undergraduate studies in Architecture at the University of Virginia. She then received her Master of Architecture from Harvard University and her PhD from ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. Her dissertation was based on the projects and texts of Rem Koolhaas. She has worked in the offices of Rem Koolhaas - OMA [Office of Metropolitan Architecture], Peter Eisenman and Ben van Berkle. Presently she teaches graduate and undergraduate design studios and two seminars titled “Instruments of Urbanism” and “Rem Koolhaas: or The Ends of Modernism”.

April 2 - May 29
KOL/MAC STUDIO New York, New York
Opening April 2, 7 - 9 pm

Sulan Kolatan and William MacDonald founded KOL/MAC Studio, in New York City in 1988.
Kolatan received her Dipl. Ing. from the Technische Hochschule Aachen Universitat in 1982 and her Master of Science in Architecture and Building Design from Columbia University in 1983. William Mac Donald received his Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse in 1979, studied at the Architectural Association (London) in 1978 and received his Master of Science in Architecture and Building Design from Columbia University in 1982. Between both of them, they have taught Architecture as Visiting Professors at Barnard College, Ohio State University, The University of Pennsylvania, Parsons School of Design, University of Virginia, The Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies in Basel, Switzerland and Venice, Italy and Columbia University. In addition to their practice, since 1990, they both have held Adjunct Associate Professorships at Columbia University.

The firm’s projects are produced entirely on the computer from the early conceptual phase, through schematic design, design development and working drawings. This affords a smooth interface with the consultants and the subcontractors with whom the digital information is shared, and who work directly off of the architectural drawings not only to generate their own set of drawings, but “in the case of the subcontractors” to actually make the various building parts. KOL/MAC Studio examines these and other groundbreaking changes in the relation between design and actual construction.

Visit KOL/MAC Studio’s website at www.kolatanmacdonaldstudio.com for more information about the firm.

April 3 - May 29
So Atlanta: Artists Respond to the Contemporary City
Organized by Felicia Feaster and Helena Reckitt

Artists' reception: Saturday April 3, 7 pm

Artists: Bobby Abrahamson , Karen Rich Beall, Teresa Bramlette Reeves, Russell Carnes, Oraien Catledge, Jeff Conefry, Sarah Dougherty, Roe Ethridge, Sam Hill, Kim Hoeckele, J Ivcevich, Ron Jude, Anya Liftig, Hormuz Minina, Charles Nelson, Laura Noel, Ohm Phanphiroj, Julie Stuart, Thomas Tulis, Sheila Turner, Alex White, Martha Whittington, Ron Witherspoon, and Meshakai Wolf.

Click here for the So Atlanta web gallery

Saturday April 3, 6 pm
Panel Discussion: What Is It That Makes Atlanta So Different, So Appealing?

So Atlanta offers artists working in a variety of media the opportunity to express their feelings and observations about Atlanta specifically and, by extension, about the experiences of contemporary urban and exurban dwellers throughout the US and globally.

Dubbed “the city too busy to hate” and “the city of trees”; Atlanta, the birthplace of the modern civil rights movement, is defined by a host of images and fantasies. Struggling since before the days of Sherman’s “March to the Sea” to re-make and re-envision itself, the City has sought to project a convincing public image.

Relaxed zoning laws, generous tax incentives, and a steady supply of college graduates have enabled Atlanta to attract businesses and their corporate headquarters. As the economy and population have developed the city has experienced rapid suburban growth, earning a reputation as “the poster child of sprawl.” Accompanying problems of pollution, traffic, water management, violent crime, and low-ranked public schools contradict the city’s rose-tinted picture of itself.

Atlanta is in many ways a thoroughly modern city with the same problems and challenges that have come to vex contemporary America. But to think of Atlanta in terms of homogeneity alone – of business parks, gated communities, edge cities, and shopping malls without end - misses what is distinctive about the city. Partly as a result of disposable income afforded by a strong economy, and also in defiance of consumer culture, Atlanta has nurtured a subculture of musicians, artists, strippers, cross-dressers, graffiti artists, and activists. Artists occupy a complex and often ambivalent position in Atlanta. Frequently at odds with the corporate values that provide the city’s raison d’être they nevertheless depend upon the support of moneyed patrons.

Atlanta has also become the hub of a national pattern of reverse migration making it home to one of the largest black populations in the country, including a prominent black middle and upper middle class. New waves of immigrants and refugees continually shape and redefine the city and its suburbs. Atlanta is a magnet for lesbians, gay men, and sexual adventurers of all persuasions who frequently flee small Southern towns for “Hotlanta.” The alternative weekly, Creative Loafing, recently voted “gays” as the best reason for living in the city. While good ole boys still occupy most positions of power there’s evidence that “girl power” is on the rise not least in the figures of recently-elected lesbian, City Council President Cathy Woolard, and the city’s first black female Mayor, Shirley Franklin.

Wednesday April 21, 7 pm
Panel discussion: Mass Transit and Sustainable Development
in conjunction with So Atlanta
Moderator: Michael Dobbins, Visiting Faculty Member, Georgia Institute of Technology; former Planning Commissioner, City of Atlanta
Architects Carlie Bullock and Ryan Gravel will discuss sustainable evelopment and mass transit as they relate to Atlanta's growth.
Click here for more

Friday May 7, 9 pm
Sam Patton: Hollywood Self Destructs
Sixties Hollywood attempts to make hip, swinging cinema - and spectacularly fails. Patton introduces clip from discarded classics.

June 19 – August 7, 2004
Summer Solos: Michael Oliveri Fast Food, Hydrocarbons and Waves in Outer Space & Prema Murthy Space Invaders, Curated by Helena Reckitt

Summer Solos web gallery

Press and Patron's Preview: Friday June 18, by invitation
Artists' talk: Saturday June 19, 6 - 7 pm
Artists' reception: Saturday June 19, 7 - 9 pm

Michael Oliveri Fast Food, Hydrocarbons and Waves in Outer Space
Michael Oliver’s solo show is inspired by several related scientific discoveries and new theories of a finite universe. The exhibition fuses the aesthetics of experimental video, sculpture, and science. In one gallery, the soil-free fast-growing food facility “NASA Nourishment” is accompanied by NASA exploration video footage. Another installation incorporates glass sculptures of hydrocarbon models on Styrofoam surfaces that suggest the surface of Mars. Images of waves and surfing in two installations evoke the influence of surfing and sailing on Oliveri’s development as an artist growing up in Southern California. From specific scientific observations about Fullerenes, Hydroponics, and Sonic Growth, Oliveri makes the broader point that innovation often occurs not as a result of structured research, but of accidental discoveries.

Biography
Michael Oliveri lives in Athens, Georgia and is a Chair of the Digital Media program at the University of Georgia. Oliveri received his BFA in sculpture from San Francisco Art Institute and MFA in New Genres from the University of California, Los Angeles. His works have been shown throughout the U.S. at venues including Lump Gallery, Raleigh, NC: Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Palm Beach, FL; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; Florida State University Museum, Tallahassee, FL; Plan B, Santa Fe, NM; Brea Municipal Gallery, Brea, CA; Frumkin Gallery, Santa Monica, Ca; and Anderson Gallery, Buffalo, NY. Reviews have been published in Art Issues and the Los Angeles Times.
http://www.michaeloliveri.com

Prema Murthy Space Invaders
Prema Murthy's digital prints and animations explore the dynamics of conflict, transformation and change in our lives. Her iconographic landscapes are appropriated from early vector-based arcade games that she played in her youth. Murthy sees gamespaces as modern day arenas where dramas of suffering and justice are played out. Working against the military origins of video games, she mines their expressive potential, exploring how fantasy and role play enable us to think beyond our physical and mental boundaries.

Inspired by aesthetic traditions as diverse as Baroque architecture and Indo-Tibetan tangka paintings, these delicate and playful works are, as Murthy describes them, "located in a place somewhere between collective memory and personal history".

Murthy is a Fellow at the Wesley Center for New Media at Georgia Tech
http://premamurthy.net/ .

Saturday September 11 - October 23, 2004
Chris Verene: From Galesburg to Atlanta, 1986 – 2004
Curated by Helena Reckitt
Artist's Reception September 11, 7 - 9 pm

Chris Verene: From Galesburg to Atlanta Web Gallery

Curated by Helena Reckitt

This survey of former Atlantan Chris Verene shows the artist to be equally at ease on either side of the camera. The exhibition combines new work from the Galesburg and Self-Esteem Salon series with documentary photography from the 1980’s and highlights from the Camera Club, Cheri Nevers, and Vereni projects. Listening stations feature music that influenced Verene as a teenager, including Easturn Stars, Freedom Puff, and DQE – a band that Verene eventually joined – and other acts regularly featured in Atlanta’s Destroy All Music festivals.

In the spirit of Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, Verene makes work about people close to him: friends from artistic and sexual subcultures, and three generations of his extended family in Galesburg, Illinois. Sharing William Eggleston’s interest on life in out of the way places, Verene focuses on everyday people and scenes. Yet whereas Eggleston’s gaze is neutral, Verene brings a storyteller’s empathy for the poetry, pathos, and offbeat glamour of his subjects. His work also displays an earnest, and perhaps unexpectedly old-fashioned, belief in art’s ability to affirm and ennoble people’s experiences.

Verene is well aware of photography’s potential for voyeurism. In his Camera Club (1995 – 1997) series Verene shot amateur photographers ‘from behind’ while they photographed inexperienced, scantily clad female models. In work made since, Verene’s models have played an active role in the way they are presented and collaboration has become central to his working process.

One example of creative cooperation– both with another artist and with random participants – is The Baptism Series (2002), made in collaboration with Christian Holstad. The artists baptize participants at the Cleansing Center fountain, made during a residency at the Kohler Company, in an “all-denominational, positive, non-threatening safe space”. The series is represented here by photographs, sculpture, and a trailer for the forthcoming video work, The Baptism Series – The Movie. The Baptism Series is part of the ongoing Self-Esteem Salon (1998 - present) created by Cheri Nevers, Chris Verene’s female alter ego whose name is an anagram of his. Heartfelt and campy at once, the Self-Esteem Salon aims to raise visitor’s self-confidence and morale, much as an appointment with a glamour photographer or a trip to the spa would. Vereni The Great (2000 – 2002), another artistic alter ego, was born out of a life-long love and study of Harry Houdini, the small town Midwestern Jewish escape artist. Video footage from 2000 shows a marathon performance in Times Square. In the culminating scene audience members nail Vereni into a crate which is displayed all day on the sidewalk before Vereni’s dramatic two-minute escape. After sustaining injuries during a performance, Vereni was retired in 2002.

Selections from the Galesburg series (1987 - present) include new material from My Twin Cousin and Crystal and Amber. The project documents Verene’s extended family in this blue collar town through vivid color photography and hand-written captions. Organized into chapters, it follows key individuals as their lives overlap over the years.

Galesburg speaks eloquently about American life close to the poverty line. The mental hospital closed, due to lack of funding, releasing residents for “care in the community”. Verene is drawn to people on the margins of society – children, teens, old folk, and those with mental and physical disabilities. He is conscious of the responsibility involved in depicting people whose lives usually go unnoticed: “I have learned to manage the huge burden created when simple, normally unseen human stories are pulled up onto the stage for the rest of the curious world to see.” Through careful listening and looking Verene makes portraits with emotional depth. Seeing Galesburg as “my life’s work”, Verene visits the town frequently, and for extended periods, to ensure that he is part of the world he depicts.

Chris Verene grew up in Atlanta, GA and studied at Emory University and Georgia State University. In 2002 he moved to New York. A photographer, performance artist, sculptor, and musician, Verene is a member of the band, Cordero. He has been exhibited at numerous institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, Thread Waxing Space, New York, Cheekwood Museum, Nashville, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. His work has been covered in ArtForum, Art Papers, Parkett, ArtNews, Art in America, and The New York Times Magazine. Prairie Jews will be included in Common Ground at the Jewish Museum of Art in New York in 2005. The monograph Chris Verene is published by Twin Palms (New Mexico, 2000).

We would like to thank the following for their invaluable support with this exhibition: Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, GA, Wendy Cooper Gallery, Chicago, Ill, Artifacts Framers, Atlanta, GA, and John Dean. We are very grateful to individuals who have loaned work for the show: Matthew Miller, Erik Schneider, and Molly Verene.

Saturday, November 13 - January 8, 2005
Hew Locke House of Cards
Curated by Helena Reckitt
in tandem with Julie Joyce of the Luckman Gallery
Artist's Reception November 13, 7 - 9 pm
Artist's Talk, 6 - 7 pm

Click here for web gallery

Hew Locke makes magnificent objects from cheap, unspectacular materials: cake decorations, paper garlands, crocheted remnants, and plastic toys. Yet, for all their surface gaiety, there is nothing easy or easy to swallow about them. Locke was born in Scotland and spent most of his youth in Guyana, moving to England as an art student. Growing up in the ‘colonies’ gave him an ironic distance from Britain and the colonialist mindset. His portraits festooned with gaudy baubles parody the kind of art often sold in airport gift stores, suggesting that the western imagination both fears and feasts upon the exotic in its midst. Locke is critical of the ways in which artists are categorized according to their presumed ethnic affiliations. In using cardboard as the basis for many of his pieces, he comments on the packaging and commoditization of artists and their work.

The largest of the portraits are five cardboard cut-outs (2004) that depict Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, and Prince Charles in various officially represented states of age or emotion. Inspired by images on travel postcards, the deceptively detailed likenesses are formed by a lattice of small serrations into large sheets of cardboard, each highlighted by white paint and black marker pen. Thirteen small pastel and charcoal drawings from the Siren series (1999) are also included in the exhibition. Resembling facial topographies, the drawings are painstakingly adorned with minutiae befitting the royal subject matter.

Included in this exhibit will be Locke’s recent Passport Culture, which references the Queen’s Coat of Arms (as depicted on every British passport). “The piece is constructed in layers. A pen drawing on my trade-mark brown packing material is overlaid with an encrustation of strings of beads, chains of safety pins (a la Sex Pistols), fabric and butterflies. These exotic materials form themselves into a chaotic line drawing. The original Lions, Unicorns and Harp are almost swamped by drawn and cut patchwork masks and wild-eyed skulls. The piece reflects the changing / shifting nature of British cultural identity and the fear these changes often evoke.” Hew Locke

For the exhibit at the Contemporary, Locke will create a site-specific piece directly on the walls of the Contemporary. Using rope and sequin waste, he will realize a floor-to-ceiling coat of arms of his own invention as the central welcoming piece of the show. This experimental piece continues in the vein of his current work and speaks to an idea that “commoners” may also aspire to the opulence of heraldry.

The satirical impulse runs deep in Locke’s work. His visual discussions of the contradictions of royalty are at once affectionate, humorous, and grotesque. Like the house of cards of the exhibition’s title, the monarchy is depicted as precariously balanced in a time of shifting priorities. Yet there is nothing overtly critical about the series, hovering as it does between moral and emotional registers.

Locke’s work questions the complex relationship between the powerful and the powerless, and the high and low. Often using base materials as the primary elements of his works, Locke comments on the commoditization of his subjects and of artists themselves. His sources of inspiration include Rococo, Medieval and Islamic architecture, Royalty ephemera, Victorian funfairs and carousels. He draws from everyday sources, especially from habitual trips to the Brixton Market, discount fabric shops and thrift stores. Most influential to his work, however, is Locke’s own colonial background. Born in Edinburgh in 1959, in 1965 he moved with his English mother and Guyanese father to Georgetown, Guyana. Locke returned to Britain at the age of 21 and studied printmaking at Falmouth College; he currently lives in London. Regarding his artistic practice, Locke states, “My work reflects this diversity and various historical fusions still being played out in these post-colonial societies. I have had a long involvement with the idea of ‘invented culture,’ which has developed into a strong interest in how different cultures evolve and invent themselves, and select their symbols of nationhood.”

Hew Locke’s King Creole, a large interpretation of the House of Commons’ Pugin Crest, recently adorned the Millbank Entrance to Tate Britain, welcoming visitors to British Art Week.

The exhibition of Hew Locke: House of Cards represents Atlanta Contemporary Art Center’s ongoing commitment to bringing the highest quality contemporary art to Atlanta and the Southeastern region.

Saturday, November 13 - January 8, 2005
Team Lump - Goodbye says it all
Opening Reception November 13, 7 - 9 pm

Lump gallery/projects is committed to showcasing local, national and international emerging artists. With a seven-year history, Lump remains dedicated to exhibiting the most thought-provoking, contemporary art available without commercial compromise. Lump is an artist-run space that does not represent artists.

Team Lump will present a large-scale group exhibition. A limited catalog, t-shirt, box set and print are all in the works. Plus, all new work from everyone.

Team Lump is: Stewart Sineath, Lump Lipshitz, Tory Wright, Jeremy Taylor, Laura Sharp Wilson, Dale Flattum, Gary Smith, Allyson Mellberg,
Charles Parker Boggs, Tyler Wolf, Herbie Abernathy, Bob Schatte, Josh Rickards, Michael Salter.

http://www.lumpgallery.com/