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| Katherine Taylor, Untitled
Sketch, 2006 |
Hilary Wilder, Basin,
2003 |
Donna Mintz, Untitled
(house under water), 2006 |
Friday April 21 - June
3
Courting Disaster Katherine Taylor,
Hilary Wilder, Donna Mintz
Artists' Reception Friday
April 21, 7 - 9 pm
Hilary Wilder Artist's Talk, April 21, 6 -
7 pm
Donna Mintz Artist's Talk, April 26, 6:30
viewing; 7 pm talk
Katherine Taylor Artist's Talk, May 17, 6:30
viewing; 7 pm talk
“The Human Factor: Influence and Response”
a conversation led by Andrea
Weyermann, PhD, May 24, 7 pm |
Courting Disaster Katherine Taylor,
Hilary Wilder, Donna Mintz, presents the work
of three accomplished artists, each delving into
the themes related to natural and man-made disaster
and catastrophe. Each artist's exquisite technique
belies the chilling, haunted and always compelling
images of the aftermath of disaster, from hurricane
and wildfire ravaged neighborhoods to sunken ships
to rubble-strewn avenues.
Katherine Taylor is an artist
and educator born in Biloxi, Mississippi. She
received her MFA from Georgia State University.
Currently, Taylor is an adjunct professor at the
Atlanta College of Art where she teaches in the
drawing and painting departments. Her work is
exhibited and collected nationally and has been
included in museum exhibitions in Albany, GA,
and Tallahassee, FL. New American Paintings recently
featured her work on the back cover of volume
#58. Taylor is represented by Marcia Wood Gallery.
Hilary Wilder was born in 1973
in North Conway, New Hampshire and currently lives
and works in Houston, Texas. In 2004, she completed
a two-year fellowship as both a Visual Artist
resident and a Critical Studies resident in the
Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
She has recently exhibited work at the Devin Borden
Hiram Butler Gallery, the Blaffer Gallery at the
University of Houston, and the Dallas Center for
Contemporary Art. Her videos have been screened
at the Chicago International Film Festival, the
Art in Motion II festival at the University of
Southern California, and the Pacific Film Archive
in Berkeley. In addition, she has written catalogue
essays for exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts
Houston, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Rice
University Art Gallery. Wilder received an M.F.A.
from the University of Wisconsin in 2001.
Donna Mintz was born in Gainesville,
GA in 1956. Her evocative paintings are recognized
for their contemplative,atmospheric study of anonymous
spaces. She is influenced by her naturalist studies
and by the convergence of art with poetry, history,
and science. Her work is exhibited nationally
and is widely collected in private and corporate
collections. She lives and works in Atlanta, GA
and is represented here by Sandler Hudson Gallery.
The Human Factor: Influence and Response
a conversation with Andrea Weyermann, PhD, Patricia
McIntosh, (Vice President, Coast, Georgia Conservancy),
and artist Katherine Taylor
Wednesday, May 24, 7:00 pm
Andrea Weyermann, PhD has explored
psychology in a clinical, academic, and private
practice context cultivating an extensive and
diverse knowledge of her field. Weyermann received
her Ph. D. in Clinical Psychology from Georgia
State University in 1993 with a dissertation examining
comorbidity and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
in Vietnam Veterans. Prior to receiving her degree,
Weyermann was an assistant professor at Augusta
State University and served as a consultant to
Augusta Veterans Administration Hospital in Augusta,
GA.
After receiving her Ph.D. Weyermann became an
associate professor at Augusta State University.
Subsequently she worked as a therapist at Emory
University in Atlanta studying the effectiveness
of certain therapies in treating Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder.
In 1998 Weyermann chose to stop working in the
psychology profession and start a family with
her husband in Atlanta. Until the year 2000 she
lectured at Georgia State University and taught
undergraduate courses in Abnormal Psychology and
Personality Theory. Weyermann has continued to
lecture on the subject of psychology while directing
most of her energies to her children’s activities,
serving on school boards, chairing committees,
as well as teaching within their schools. In this
time Weyermann has also taken interest in the
arts and become extremely involved in the visual
art scene in Atlanta; she joined the Board of
the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in 2005.
Patricia McIntosh is Vice President
for Coastal Programs at the Georgia Conservancy.
Serving in that capacity since 1998, she manages
the Conservancy’s coastal office in Savannah
and oversees the organization’s program
activities related to coastal growth management
and the protection of coastal resources.
Prior to joining the Georgia Conservancy, McIntosh
managed local government planning, environmental
management and technical assistance programs for
the Georgia Department of Community Affairs and
was closely involved in policy and program development
under Georgia's Growth Strategies Program. She
also served as a policy analyst with the Governor’s
Office of Planning and Budget, transportation
planner with the Georgia Department of Transportation,
and a local government land use and environmental
planner.
McIntosh Chairs the Chatham Environmental Forum
and serves on the boards of the Institute for
Georgia Environmental Leadership and Skidaway
Marine Science Foundation. She also serves on
the Department of Natural Resources Coastal Advisory
Council, Department of Community Affairs Coastal
Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee and Regional
12 Advisory Council, the Sapelo Island National
Estuarine Research Reserve Advisory Committee,
and the Georgia SeaGrant Advisory Committee.
McIntosh has a Master of City Planning degree
from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an
undergraduate degree in Urban and Regional Planning
from East Carolina University.
Mail Art |
Exquiste Corpse |
| |
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Friday January 27 - March
25
The Paper Sculpture Show
+ Evidence: Paper Works
Mail Room - Mail art from the collections
of Benjamin Jones, Ruth Laxson, and Kathy Yancey
Exquisite Corpse - Collaborative drawings
by Melissa Herrington, Benjamin Jones, Alex Kvares,
D.E. Johnson, Ruth Laxson, and Kathy Yancey
Paper Garden - an installation comprised
of recycled junk mail by Marilee Keys
+ The World of Watermarks - presented
in collaboration with the Robert C. Williams Museum
of Papermaking at Georgia Tech
Patrons' preview January 26, 5 - 7 pm
Artists' Reception January 27, 7 - 9 pm
Artists' gallery
tour 6 - 7 pm
(Also opening on January 27, The Third National
Juried Collegiate Handmade Paper Art Show,
at the Robert
C. William Museum of Papermaking)
February 7, 6:30 – 8 pm, “Why paper?”
A conversation led by Carrie Przybilla
February 18 & March 11 – Paper Saturdays
- Free admission to the gallery to create paper
sculptures
March 25, 5 – 9 pm – closing party
with music and Exquisite Corpse silent
auction closing
Special hours -- During
the run of The Paper Sculpture Show,
the Contemporary will be open each Thursday evening
until 9 pm.
Join in the fun of helping
to create the exhibit. Use
the online form to book your group for a day or
night of Paper Sculpture making!
Lively and unconventional, The Paper
Sculpture Show explores the nature
of the art object and the identity of the artist.
Twenty-nine international artists and artist
teams, among them Janine Antoni, E.V. Day, Glenn
Ligon, Cildo Meireles, Sarah Sze, and Fred Tomaselli,
have each contributed a design for a three-dimensional
paper sculpture that is only completed once it
has been assembled by visitors to the gallery.
The artists’ designs, along with detailed
instructions, have been printed on up to four
sheets of paper per artist (most are on two sheets),
each measuring 10 x 12 3/4 inches. At the onset
of the exhibition, 500 copies per sheet of each
work will be stacked on work tables in the gallery,
along with a limited set of tools - such as scissors,
tape and glue - to be used in the “transformation”
of the work.
Over the course of the exhibition, the visitors
will assemble their favorite pieces into paper
sculptures right in the gallery. The creations
will remain on display after completion (to be
picked up after the show closes), to enable the
exhibition to grow and change throughout its presentation.
Subsequent visitors will have the opportunity
to see multiple versions of the same piece, each
made unique by the hand of its fabricator.
To join the fun, register your group
using the online form.
CLICK HERE
Groups are encouraged to pre-register,
so that we can be sure to accommodate every one!
Special hours -- During the run of The Paper
Sculpture Show, the Contemporary will be
open each Thursday evening until 9 pm!
(Regular admission fees are waived for groups
who book in advance. Donations to the Contemporary
are always appreciated)
Artists in the exhibition are: Janine Antoni,
The Art Guys, David Brody, Luca Buvoli, Francis
Cape and Liza Phillips, Seong Chun, Minerva Cuevas,
E.V. Day, Nicole Eisenman, Spencer Finch, Charles
Goldman, Rachel Harrison, Stephen Hendee, Patrick
Killoran, Glenn Ligon, Cildo Meireles, Helen Mirra,
Aric Obrosey, Ester Partegàs, Paul Ramirez
Jonas, Akiko Sakaizumi, David Shrigley, Eve Sussman
, Sarah Sze, Fred Tomaselli, Pablo Vargas-Lugo,
Chris Ware, Olav Westphalen, Allan Wexler.
 The
Paper Sculpture Show is organized by
Cabinet magazine, Independent Curators International
(iCI), and Sculpture Center. It is curated
by Mary Ceruti, Matt Freedman, and Sina Najafi,
and accompanied by the The Paper Sculpture
Book, which contains the entire exhibition
in unassembled, take-home form. The traveling
exhibition is organized and circulated by
Independent Curators International. The exhibition
and its accompanying publication are made
possible, in part, by support from the Peter
Norton Family Foundation. www.ici-exhibitions.org |
Evidence: Paper Works
In keeping with the theme of "paper",
the Contemporary will present Evidence: Paper
Works which comprised of three exhibitions,
Mail Room, Exquisite Corpse and Recycled
Garden.
Artists Benjamin Jones, Ruth Laxson,
and Kathy Yancey will display mail art
pieces from their personal collections for the
exhibition Mail Room.
Mail artists like to claim that mail art began
when Cleopatra had herself delivered to Julius
Caesar in a rolled-up carpet, this may be disputable
but the origins of mail art can be reliably traced
to the acivities of the Fluxus group of the early
1960s. The artists taking part in the exhbiit
have been involved in trading artwork, ephemera,
and the like with other artists and this is integral
to mail art concept that "senders receive;"
one must not expect to recieve mail art unless
one is actively actively involved in the process.
For Exquisite Corpse
Benjamin Jones, Ruth Laxson, and Kathy
Yancey will be joined by artists Melissa
Herrington, Alex Kvares, and D.E. Johnson
to collaborate on a series of works inspired by
the Surrealists’ exquisite corpse game.
Each artist will start a drawing, fold the paper
to conceal most of the drawing, and then pass
it to the next player for a further contribution.
The artists are encouraged to approach the game
with a figurative outcome in mind. By default
these exercises, which celebrate the mystique
of accident, lead to unpredictable chimeras. Results
cannot be predicted when artists working from
different points-of-view attempt to interact with
unknown quantities. Each of the collaborative
drawings will be on auction during the run of
the exhibition. The final night of silent bidding
will be held during a closing event on March 25.
Marilee Keys' Paper
Garden is a site specific installation
using her junk mail collected over the past 9
months. It will be based on a contemporary version
of the old technique of paper quilling. "I
will be working off the walls and suspending from
the ceiling creating a new topography, with paper,
shadows, space and volume." Marilee Keys
Quilling is the technique of rolling paper to
form coils, which are then assembled to form designs.
Dating from the middle ages, quilling was created
mainly by cloistered religious orders in Europe
who had access to handmade papers.
The World of Watermarks
is an exhibition created for the Contemporary
by the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum at Georgia
Tech. A watermark is a change in the thickness
of the paper that can be seen when the paper is
held up to the light. Without illumination, the
watermarks on display would look and feel just
like plain pieces of paper. Examples of the progression
of watermarking and educational text will be featured.
Running concurrently at the Paper Museum will
be an exhibition of The Third National Juried
Collegiate Handmade Paper Art Show. The exhibition
showcases a wide variety of sculptures, paintings,
books, and drawings; Thirty-three works by students
representing eleven schools were chosen for inclusion.
Saturday November 12, 2005
– January 7, 2006
Cindy Loehr and Rachel Lowther: Rough Magic
and Dark Lullaby
Curated by Helena Reckitt
Cecelia Kane: Hand-to-Hand,
a Project for the Round Gallery
Artists' Reception Nov 12, 7 - 9 pm
Artists' Talk 6 - 7 pm
Cecelia Kane Artists' Talk &
Performance, Nov 19, 4 pm
VIEW
THE WEB GALLERY
The two-person show by
Cindy Loehr and Rachel
Lowther highlights artists who
are gaining international attention for their
installations and sculptural tableaux. Cecelia
Kane is an Atlanta based visual and performance
artist who easily traverses personal and political
ground in her work. All three artists share an
interest narrative and storytelling, making pieces
that are emotionally resonant and viscerally charged.
Loehr, Lowther, and Kane have also made work in
collaboration with other people, often incorporating
sound into their installations.
Cindy Loehr is
currently based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She recently
completed a two year Core Residency at The Museum
of Fine Arts Houston. Her show will include several
recent pieces, including Bluebird Burden,
a 3-channel audio installation that evokes despair
and loneliness. Loehr wrote the lyrics and vocalist
Carlos Lama composed and sang the melody - three
versions for the three birds. In Pillowheads,
a two-channel audio sculpture that relates to
the piece, towering pillow-head figures sing a
lullaby about the dangers and seduction of comfort.
Rachel Lowther
is based in the Berlin to Brooklyn. Her sculptures
and performances combine apocalyptic visions with
nostalgia for the 1970’s. As curator and
Participant Inc. founder, Lia Gangitano, puts
it, Lowther “mixes elements such as hard
and soft, virility and delicacy, ‘secret
poison [and] out and out carnage’. Recent
works deploy such contradictions to examine masculinity
and related violence. Creating a space that is
poised--neither coming together nor falling apart--her
work reiterates, from the present moment, the
formative impact of Cold War warnings on a generation
now grappling with deja vu.”
Since the beginning of the Iraq
War in March 2003, Cecelia Kane
has been painting a news story almost daily on
white stuffed gloves. These gloves depict the
headline, the date the story appeared and the
relentless violence, daily killings and occasional
positive or human-interest news from Iraq as featured
in the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper.
She has painted all the characters as clowns whether
they are victims or perpetrators. She makes no
other comment except what the viewer may surmise
from the sheer, accumulating numbers of them.
"I use gloves, because fingers
are used to count and this is a counting, time-based
installation piece of unfolding events. Hands
also act for good or evil, construction or destruction,
help or hurt. Lined up chronologically on a wall,
the stuffed hands with red tips begin to resemble
little bodies each with a story to tell."
Cecelia Kane
Saturday September 10 –
October 29
Red Beans and Rice: Asian Artists in the New
South
Press and patrons’ preview Friday, Sept
9, 5 - 7 pm (by invitation)
Artists' Reception Saturday, Sept 10, 7 - 9 pm
Artists' Talk 6 - 7 pm
Curated by Kóan-Jeff Baysa and Craig Bunting
View
the web gallery
The American South has struggled with
the ideals of equality throughout its controversial
history. The Civil Rights era and desegregation
of the 1960’s began the era of the “New
South”. Yet even today there are pockets
of resistance, places where even though the law
says that all people are equal, some are more
equal than others.
Red Beans and Rice brings
together an under-recognized group of artists
profoundly influenced by their experiences in
the Southern states. The exhibition dissects themes
including cultural engagement, dual citizenship,
Christian, American, and Asian ideals and stereotypes.
Some of these artists were born in the South and
have deep roots in the region. For others it has
become their home through adoption and absorption,
but their sentiments about the South are often
in conflict with the traditions and cultures they
grew up with. As the process of Americanization
begins, these artists reexamine, redefine, and
integrate a new vision of home. For many, the
longing for distant homelands might never pass,
with fantasies of home distorted through the processes
of memory and myth making.
The show will include installation
art, photography, fiber art, digital video &
still imagery, painting, drawing and sculpture.
Artists participating include:
Yun Bai
Ying Kit Chan
J. Jaia Chen
Arthur Liou
Kazuko Matsumoto
ON/Megumi Akiyoshi
Jiha Moon
Osamu James Nakagawa
Lordy Rodriguez
Jan Ru-Wan
Prince Varughese Thomas
Edie Tsong
Bo Zhang
Saturday June 18 –
August 13
Summer Solos 2005
Curated by Helena Reckitt
Katherine Mitchell The Krems Suite, Labyrinths
and Related Works
Caroline Lathan-Stiefel Whorl
Funded
by Creative Capital
Mark Roeder Triangular Solid with Circular
Inserts (Multiple Cracks, Possible Explanations)
Artists' Reception June 18, 7 - 9 pm
Artists' Talk 6 - 7 pm
Wednesday June 29, 6:30 pm
Katherine Mitchell in Conversation
with Maria Artemis, in conjunction
with ACA 100.
Solo projects by three artists –
Katherine Mitchell, an established Atlanta artist,
Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, a former Atlantan who
now lives in Montreal, Canada, and Mark Roeder,
an emerging artist from Los Angeles who has not
exhibited in Atlanta before. All three explore
aspects of the modernist legacy in their work,
and share an interest in architectural and spatial
metaphors.
Katherine Mitchell
is a respected Atlanta-based painter who has exhibited
her work since the early 1970’s. The exhibition
will include a selection of work by Mitchell from
the past decade.
After graduating from the Atlanta
College of Art in the late 60’s Mitchell
studied at the Tyler School of Art in Rome and
earned an MFA from Georgia State in 1977. She
has received many awards, grants and commissions.
Most recently she was invited by the Galerie StadtPark,
Krems, Austria to participate in their 2005-2006
residency program. Her work has been featured
in more than 20 solo and 100 group exhibitions
in museums and galleries including The Brooks
Museum, Memphis, Tennessee, The High Museum, Atlanta,
Georgia, Hunter Museum, Chattanooga Tennessee,
Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and The
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Work by Katherine
Mitchell is in the collection of the Columbus
Museum of Art, Columbus, Georgia, The Georgia
Museum of Art and The Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah
Georgia among others. Her work has been featured
in Art in America, Art Papers and New American
Paintings. Katherine Mitchell teaches drawing
and painting at Emory University. She is represented
in Atlanta by Kiang Gallery.
Caroline Lathan-Stiefel
is originally from Atlanta and currently lives
in Montreal, Canada. Her new work for the Contemporary
is a room-sized installation. Consisting of multiple,
connected forms made of fabric, pipe cleaners,
yarn, pins, thread, and wire, the immersive installation
covers the ceiling, walls, and part of the floor
of the gallery room. The fabric is either sewn
or held together by sewing pins. The environment
combines childlike three-dimensional sketches
of houses and people with more abstract sections
that echo microscopic imagery and aerial photography
of cities.
Integral to the work is the idea
of sprawl, as in the drive to take up space coupled
with makeshift development. Because the systems
of heterogeneous parts making up the piece have
"run amok," the installation aims to
spoof and transform seemingly coherent architectural,
technological, and organic systems. Forms in the
installation vaguely refer to interior and exterior
architecture, domestic objects, plant and cell
structures, plumbing, and marine biology. Lathan-Stiefel’s
sculptural installations are often in dialogue
with her drawings and possess a pictorial quality.
While a pictorial quality is present throughout
the new installation, the viewer cannot take in
the whole piece with one look. Instead, multiple
areas of focus are present with many opportunities
for viewing "hidden" scenes.
Caroline Lathan-Stiefl studied at
Brown University before earning her MFA from the
Maine College of Art. Represented in Atlanta by
Sandler Hudson, she has had solo shows at the
gallery as well as the Westbrook Gallery at the
Georgia Institute of Technology. She has participated
in group shows at FE Gallery, Pittsburg, Islip
Art Museum, East Islip, New York, New Jersey State
Museum, The Morris Museum and the Lamar Dodd School
of Art. In 2003 Lathan-Stiefel received the New
Jersey State Council on the Art’s Sculpture
Fellowship. Her work is in the collection of The
Hunterdon Museum, Morris Museum, Newark Museum,
and the Noyes Museum. Her work will be included
spring 2006 in an exhibition at Galerie Articule
in Montreal entitled "Immersive" in
conjuction with a new show of work by Carolee
Schneemann. Lathan Stiefel was awarded a Creative
Capitol Foundation 2005 grant.
Mark Roeder is
an emerging artist based in Los Angeles. His work
deals with the influences and traces of minimalist
and conceptual art. Roeder's new piece responds
to Dan Graham’s Pavilion Influenced
by Moon Windows which is currently owned
by the Contemporary.
Roeder received his BFA from Otis
College of Art and Design, Los Angeles CA, in
Photography in 2000. In 2001 he had his first
solo show at Low Gallery in LA. Roeder has participated
in a number of national and international group
exhibitions including: Art Needs an Operation,
2004, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York NY, The Last
of Blood and Guts Brigade, 2004, sixteen:one gallery,
Santa Monica CA, Cruel Intentions, 2004, Sandroni
Rey, Venice CA, When the Periphery Turns Center
and the Center Turns Periphery, 1st Prague Biennial,
National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic, Unreal
Estate Opportunities, 2003, PKM Gallery, Seoul,
Korea, London Is Balling, 2002, The Bart Wells
Institute, London, England, and The Fifth International,
New York NY. In 2001 he curated The Soul Returns
to the Body at Postartum, Long Beach CA. Richard
Hawkins selected Roeder as one of his “Top
Ten” of 2000 for Artforum International,
and Bruce Hainley highlighted him as one of the
“Best of 2001” for the same publication.
His work has been included in several catalogues
and been reviewed in Frieze and the Los Angeles
Times. This will be his first exhibition in the
Southeast.
Saturday April 16 – June 4
2005 Atlanta Biennial
Curated by Helena Reckitt
Artists' Reception April 16, 7 - 9 pm
6 - 7 pm Artist led gallery tour
with Barbara Campbell, Terri Jones, Dona
Lief, Christopher McNulty, Matthew
Weddington and curator Helena
Reckitt
9 - 10 pm Music by the Glasses
Wednesday, June 1, 6:30 - 8 pm Artist led gallery
tour with Benita Carr, Santiago De
Paoli, Cody VanderKaay and curator Helena Reckitt
2005
Atlanta Biennial web gallery
The 2005 Atlanta Biennial features work
by sixteen artists from five southern states.
Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and
Tennessee are represented by the artists Barbara
Campbell (Greensboro, NC), Benita Carr (Atlanta,
GA), Santiago De Paoli (Atlanta, GA), Stephanie
Dotson (Athens, GA ), Jennifer Drummond (Farmington,
GA), Ben Fain (Atlanta, GA), Mirtha Ferrer (Atlanta,
GA), Sally Heller (New Orleans, LA), Terri Jones
(Memphis, TN), Dona Lief (New Orleans, LA), Lester
Julian Merriweather (Memphis, TN), Christopher
McNulty (Auburn, AL), Amy Pleasant )Birmingham,
AL), Jane Timberlake (Birmingham, AL), Cody VanderKaay
(Athens, GA), Matthew Weddington (Lexington, Kentucky)
Curator Helena Reckitt conducted
extensive studio visits in order to identify the
most vital work from among more than 250 regional
artists’ submissions. As Reckitt explains,
“The Contemporary is one of the few venues
in Atlanta committed to presenting innovative
work, if it looked like an artist was working
at a level of formal or conceptual experimentation,
I set up a studio visit.”
In addition to several respected
local figures, the exhibition features emerging
artists - including some still in graduate school
- and those with established reputations who are
not part of the Atlanta visual arts circuit. While
a number of artists mine the potential of traditional
media like painting, sculpture, and photography,
many work across conventional boundaries, incorporating
a wide array of materials and approaches in their
work.
“Of course the show reflects
my tastes,” notes Reckitt. “I’m
interested in conceptually-oriented work, especially
if it has a sense of wit or humor. My background
in feminism makes me sympathetic to work which
explores the broad area of ‘the feminine.’
I am suspicious of grandiose statements in art
and am drawn to a delicate aesthetic. That said,
I also enjoy artwork that provokes a strong, visceral
response.”
Alan Sondheim initiated the Atlanta
Biennial in 1984 as a tongue-in-cheek response
to the Whitney’s influential survey (which,
noticeably, did not include a single artist from
the South in 2004). For 2005, the selection criteria
2005 Atlanta Biennial were broadened
from artists in and around Atlanta to encompass
those working throughout the Southeast. The Biennial
will return to an Atlanta focus in 2007. While
the exhibition makes no claims for, nor attempts
to find a southern aesthetic, it does aim to celebrate
the vitality and sophistication of artists who
call the region home.
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
will take the opportunity of the opening of the
2005 Atlanta Biennial to recognize the Fulton
County Commissioners and Arts Council for the
invaluable support given to the Contemporary and
for the important role they play in the Atlanta
art community.
What Business Are You In?
Saturday January 29 – March 26
Curated by Helena Reckitt
Curatorial Consultant, Sheep
Opening Reception February 4, 7 - 9 pm
(Free to ATLart[05] patrons)
Christian Philipp Müller Artist's Talk (Free)
Monday, January 31, 5 pm
Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University
Carey Young Artist's Talk (Free)
Wednesday, February 16, 7 pm
CAA Reception
Thursday, February 17, 5:30 - 7 pm
(CAA members)
Irene Moon will perform My Queen and I
during the reception
What
Business Are You In? web gallery
Creative
Loafing review
Atlanta
Journal-Constitution review
An exhibition of national and internationally
known artists who insert themselves into institutional
structures and/or mimic the language and practices
of business and academia. Includes video, installation,
photography, and live performance.
Michael Aurbach (Nashville, TN), Alex
Bag (New York, NY), Andrea Fraser (New York, NY),
Jason Irwin (New York, NY), Gunilla Klingberg
(Stockholm, Sweden), Lucy Kimbell (London, England),
Irene Moon (Lexington, KY), Christian Philipp
Müller (New York, NY and Frankfurt, Germany),
Adrian Piper (USA), John Salvest (Jonesboro, AR),
Carey Young (London, England). To
learn more about the artists, visit their websites
Artists’ relationships with the corporate
and academic worlds are complex and often contradictory.
Far from the myth of the romantic outsider, most
artists depend on the support of institutions
and corporations, much as they did on the aristocracy
or church in the past. Artists engage in self-promotion
and branding, produce multiplies and outsource
the production of work.
A number of artists immerse themselves in business
life to revitalize the idea of what art is and
might be. Some artists adopt mimicry and masquerade
in order to explore corporate culture ‘from
within’. Others take an anthropological
approach to the cultures of the university and
the corporation.
For some artists, the frustration with a day
job that kept them out of the studio stimulated
work about office life. For others, the experience
of becoming a professional art teacher prompted
artwork about their ambivalent relationship to
authority.
Unlike earlier conceptual artists, whose tactics
developed in tandem with - and were often absorbed
by - the mass media, many of these artists are
not strictly oppositional. Instead, by highlighting
the co-dependence of individuals and organizations
they explore the moral ambiguities of our ideologically
impure times.
What Business Are You In? presents artists from
Britain, Germany, Sweden and the United States
working with photography, sculpture, video, performance,
and installation. Playful and quizzical, rather
than overtly didactic, they explore the slippery
definitions of art, artist, and entrepreneur.
This exhibit is funded in part
by the College
Art Association, the British
Council, and International
Artists Studio Program in Stockholm.
Artist websites
Michael
Aurbach
- www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/finearts/aurbach
Lucy
Kimbell
- www.lucykimbell.com
Gunilla
Klingberg
- www.gunillaklingberg.com
Irene
Moon -
www.begoniasociety.org
Christian
Philipp Müller -
www.minettabrook.org
Adrian
Piper - www.adrianpiper.com
John
Salvest
- www.johnsalvest.com
Carey
Young -
www.careyyoung.com
Saturday, November 13 - January 8, 2004
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, 2004
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/
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.
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/
.
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
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