Current Exhibition

June 26 – August 16, 2009
  Patron and Press Preview, Friday, June 26, 6 - 7 pm (by invitation)
  Opening Reception, Friday, June 26, 7 - 9 pm
Main Gallery: Jennie C. Jones: Red, Bird, Blue
Gallery Four: Alexi Brown-Schmidt and Rose Marcus: Cavepainting
Round Gallery: Charles Huntley Nelson: Alphaville (Preview)

Jennie C. Jones: Red, Bird, Blue
Experimentation and connectivity are threads that run through the work of Jennie C. Jones, whether in drawings, photography, sculpture, or sound installation. Her practice explores the conceptual legacy of jazz, linking it to other creative disciplines and developments in technology, marketing, and historical understanding. The inspiration for Jones’s installation at the Contemporary takes its cue from the painter Ellsworth Kelly’s childhood illness that left him housebound, sparking his interest in birds and their colors.Using this bit of biography allows Jones to link diverse narratives of influence, formal aesthetics, and ethnicity.

In Red, Bird, Blue, sound and space are examined using a combination of wall paintings, works on paper, design objects, and audio recordings. Using large fields of red and blue paint combined with vinyl lettering, Jones establishes a dialogue between Kelly’s monochrome canvases (that examine space, shape, and saturation), and classic Blue Note album cover designs that epitomize the modernist be-bop styles of musicians Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and others. A color-coded bench and birdfeeder, visible through a window in the gallery, link discreet spaces for visual and aural activity. The Color of Birds is an audio work that utilizes the sound of bird wings and moving air emanating from a directional speaker; it is inaudible to the viewer/listener until passing through the soundscape area. Slow Birds comprises four Charlie Parker (whose nickname was “Bird”) notes, slowed down and mixed with a reconstructed Max Roach drum solo. Several collages on paper depict shapes that conjure speakers, records, electrical cords, and various listening devices.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN (mp3, 1:27)

Jones lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been exhibited at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison,
WI; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; and Artists Space, Smack Mellon, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, all
in NY. She is the 2008 recipient of the William H. Johnson Prize, and awards and grants from Creative Capital Foundation,
Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

Jennie C. Jones, Red, Bird, Blue has been organized to coincide with the National Black Arts Festival.

Alexi Brown-Schmidt and Rose Marcus: Cavepainting
Cavepainting brings together two emerging New York painters currently residing in Atlanta. Using palettes of bold and moody color, applied to paper or canvas with exuberant gestures, Alexi Brown-Schmidt and Rose Marcus reference classic motifs of portraiture, landscape, and still life.The title of their two-person exhibition indicates an approach that is direct, expressive,and perhaps a bit unrefined. But in sympathy with sophisticated painters including GeorgeCondo, Sean Landers, and Dana Schutz, they freely mine conditions of comedy and tragedy,references to high and low culture, and good or bad taste. Combining figurative fragmentsand abstract patterns, Brown-Schmidt and Marcus borrow expressive elements from folk art,pop culture, and art history. Fantastic and quotidian subjects including dogs, grotesque faces,scenes of birth and catastrophes-in-process animate their recent works which mix true feelingsof care and concern with a healthy dose of irony and awkwardness.

Brown-Schmidt lives and works in Atlanta, GA, and Riverdale, NY. He graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Painting in 2006. He has exhibited his work in Brooklyn, NY, at the Bruce High Quality Foundation, Smith Street Studios, and About Glamour Gallery. Marcus lives and works in Atlanta, GA, and Riverdale, NY. She graduated from Pratt Institute in 2005 with a BFA in Sculpture, and has exhibited her work in Brooklyn, NY, at the Bruce High Quality Foundation and Smith Street Studios. She curated a series of nomadic exhibitions in Puerto Rico entitled La Mobil in 2007.

Charles Huntley Nelson: Alphaville (Preview)
Charles Huntley Nelson is developing a film and installation based on Alphaville, the infamous 1965 science fiction/noir/gangster film by Jean-Luc Godard. This work re-imagines the film’s protagonist Lemy Caution, a gruff Dick Tracy-like secret agent, and the triumph of human creativity over the restrictive logic of technology.

Nelson’s installation in the Round Gallery is a preview of his work-in-progress, which will be presented in its final form at theContemporary in fall 2010. Alphaville (Preview) is in effect an exhibition “trailer” offering a visual and conceptual indication of things to come and access to the artist’s thinking. Sketches, watercolors, video clips, and source materials depict various North American cities and architecture, lighting and communication systems, and private codes and symbols. Secret societies and rituals are a key element in the artist’s project, and he has said that, “As a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity myself, I have a unique understanding of these rituals and the dual meaning of the word Alphaville.Alpha Phi Alpha, founded in 1906, is the oldest Greek letter college fraternity for AfricanAmericans.”

Nelson lives and works in Atlanta, GA. He has had solo exhibitions at South Carolina State University, Orangeburg, SC; Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; CAS Gallery, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL; and Romo Gallery and Rialto Center for the Performing Arts, both in Atlanta, GA.

Charles Huntley Nelson: Alphaville (Preview) has been organized to coincide with the National Black Arts Festival.

Resource Room

The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center’s Resource Room was established in 2006 to be a social and educational space featuring books, catalogs, periodicals and digital media that focus on contemporary art and visual culture. A community bulletin board provides info about art events and exhibitions and free Wi-F i access is available. The original room design was created by New York-based artist Charles Goldman.

Special thanks to the Judith and Mark Taylor Family Supporting Foundation for their generous gift establishing the forthcoming Encounters with Modern and Contemporary Art Archive of interviews, transcripts and recordings.