“An international showcase of exhibitions, lectures and public events” at SCAD in Midtown as well as at their campuses in Savannah and Hong Kong.

Atlanta events include exhibitions by Dario Escobar, Zander Bloom, Lisa M. Robinson, and a group show of SCAD student work along with lectures by Escobar, Robinson, Nancy Spector, and Fred Wilson.

Complete schedule of events and locations at the deFINE ART website.

Anne Irwin Fine Art Gallery will host a reception with the artist David Arms on Friday, Feb. 24th from 6 until 8:30 p.m. The exhibit will continue for three weeks following the reception.

Anne Irwin Fine Art Gallery
690 Miami Circle, #150
Atlanta, GA 30324

Release party for Aint-Bad, a quarterly publication started by five SCAD students, Aint-Bad focuses on images that explores human existence, culture and contemporary issues. Their third issue will be for sale.

Fall Line Press
1000 Marietta Street, Suite 112
Atlanta, GA 30318

Yasharel Manzy solo show opening reception.

Through March 24.

TEW Galleries
425 Peachtree Hills Avenue, #24
Atlanta, GA 30305

“Some Sort of Solitude,” Tommy Taylor’s second solo show at Whitespace gallery demonstrates a new direction in Taylor’s work. Over the past twelve years, his paintings have been mainly abstract pieces with amoebic-like forms created from intuitive, as opposed to planned, brushstrokes. His work continues evolving, but even though it introduces figures and pop references, it still contains those amorphous, abstract elements of his previous work.

His reflection on the conflicting desires, drives, meanings, and logics that confounded him as a child showed Taylor that, while he can grasp the many layers on which that conflict plays out better, it is still just as characteristic of his adult experience as it was of his childhood. He gives expression to this by making images that display the paradoxical combination of meaningfulness and incoherence that is typical of an experience.

He does this by placing visual elements that are hard to understand side-by-side. These forms include images of ‘real’ life from photographs, magazines, film stills and direct observation; symbolic images like cartoons and drawings; and marks that include lines and basic shapes. He brings these elements into the space of the painting in an intentionally chaotic and confusing way by excluding the traditional visual cues and logic of painting – ground, figure, tone, value, size, and perspective – like his previous abstract work.

As a result, he is thwarting any possibility of arriving at a coherent, consistent visual reading or deciphering of the painting. Produced and displayed in this way, the elements dissolve into, mask, and compete with each other, just like the drives, histories, expectations, accepted social norms, and other elements in our lives. The elements and the paintings as a whole both lose and gain meaning and structure on their own, confronting the viewer less with a depiction of experience than with an actual experience. These works are challenging, defying, and inviting the viewer all at once.

Tommy Taylor has shown his work locally, regionally, and nationally. In 2011, he was recognized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia as an up and coming local artist when he was selected for “Movers & Shakers: MOCA GA Salutes the Rising Stars of the Georgia Arts Scene.” He recently completed a mural in Inman Park as a part of the Four Coats Project. He was awarded the opportunity by the City of Atlanta. Taylor currently resides and works in Atlanta, Georgia.

Through March 31.

Whitespace
814 Edgewood Ave.
Atlanta, Ga.

Hagedorn Foundation Gallery and Kristen V. Cahill present the only U.S. exhibition of a unique collaboration by English photographer James Reeve and fashion designer Dries Van Noten. The exhibition will feature 14 of Reeve’s large-scale nightscape photographs and several pieces from Van Noten’s Spring-Summer 2012 Collection, which were inspired by the artist’s Lightscapes series. While traveling to Vienna, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Paris, this collaborative exhibition has garnered favorable reviews in The New York Times, Interview and LuxuryCulture.

Reeve’s “light after dark” photographs — shot in Marseilles, London, Beirut, Las Vegas and other international cities — remove the physical form of the urban landscape, leaving just the artificial lighting of architecture and infrastructure. Each city is stripped of any cultural or geographical identity and the resulting works offer suggestive, often near abstract images of individual buildings and cities as glittering jewel-like images, similar to strings of Christmas lights.

Both Van Noten and Reeve consider the work quite voyeuristic. The designer likes “the mystery, the lights at night, the moment of wonder, where you’re questioning what’s happening on the other side of the windows.” Reeve sees them as “1,000 small colorful television screens all lined up in rows on the hillside.”

Reeve’s photography has received The Portrait Prize from The National Portrait Gallery, Professional Travel Photographer of the Year, Nikon and The Observer and The Fifty Crows Foundation Grant. He has exhibited at the Villa Noailles, Hyeres Melon Rouge Photo Festival and the National Portrait Gallery, London. This is his first US show. His images range from reportage to portraiture and contemporary documentary projects.

The fashion world is not his usual stomping ground. “The first time I saw the finished pieces was at the show in Paris (last September) and it was great seeing them all glide past me on the catwalk,” says Reeve, “I really like how Dries has treated the garments almost as canvases for the images, showing them in a very clear and uncompromised way.” I’m used to seeing my work as two dimensional, It was inspiring to see Dries translate it into dynamic forms – the way the ruffle skirts seem to almost play with the lights as they move, the colored crystals that he sewed into the windows of La Rouviere, I thought that was a really beautiful idea.”

Artist Reception, Feb. 23, 6-8:30 p.m.
Artist Talk, Feb. 25, 1-2 p.m.

Through March 31.

Hagedorn Foundation Gallery
The Galleries of Peachtree Hills
425 Peachtree Hills Ave, No. 25
Atlanta, GA 30319

The Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Galleries at Georgia State University presents “Stewart Ziff: Office Hours.”

Ziff, who recently joined the faculty of the School of Art & Design, will be exhibiting a work that is simultaneously object-based, performative and site specific. Ziff will be “occupying” the gallery during “office hours” from 3 until 8pm, Monday through Thursday and from 12:30 until 6pm on Friday for the entire duration of the show.

Ziff says about the project, “I bring to the gallery the current state of studio work in progress to occupy the space and continue the work in-situ so that, in an ongoing dialog of idea, poetics and discourse, nothing is defined with any certainty of completion, remaining differently in a state of perpetual flux,where the mission of engaged exchange with the audience is one of ‘relational aesthetics’ in an inter relational space of practice oriented action, disengaged from the status of the autonomous object of contemplation.”

Visitors to the gallery will be invited to participate in an open conversation with artist while he pursues the development of a work of installation from inception to conclusion. Ziff will be engaged with a variety of activities in the making of the work that include the building of home made projectors for video, the printing of images in uncommon ways, the construction of roboticactors with legos, and other processes.

Through March 2.

Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Galleries
10 Peachtree Center Ave.
Atlanta, GA 30303.

The Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design Gallery presents “Aural Regeneration” on view February 27 to March 2. The public is invited to the closing reception and performance on Thursday, March 2, from 5-8 p.m. The event is part of the Downtown First Thursdays Arts Walk.

With the ingenuity of a mechanic and flare of a fine craftsman, Myrna Lee Pronchuk injects the art of sound into mundane life. Combining mark making, composition, sound installation and building of hybrid instruments, Pronchuk creates an environment for a dialogue to occur between the audio, visual and human experience.

Pronchuk’s machines crank, lurch into sound like some animated Kurt Schwitters assemblage or Goldberg contraption. The viewer becomes a participant in the excavation of the abstraction of the human experience with obscuring the confines between form and expression, sound and visual, experience and imitation.

Welch School Galleries/ GSU
10 Peachtree Center Ave.
Atlanta, GA 30303

Presenting new works by James Bridges and Justin Rabideau and curated by Dashboard Co-op‘s Craig Cameron and Romy Maloon, “Waste Not” portrays the artists’ response to individual experiences in their natural surroundings. Each crafts visceral depictions of metamorphosis by capturing the moments that are at the crux change, transformation, and re-interpretation. Bridges abstracts his experience, while Rabideau pulls directly — and quite literally — from his.

How can an artist best respond to a pile of rotting wood, or to the contrast of the sea meeting land? Rabideau questions how meaning can be extracted from materials whose purpose has been forgotten, while Bridges works to preserve moments by abstracting them to the point of essence.

Nothing is forgotten. Nothing goes to waste.

Justin Rabideau, an artist inspired by his natural surroundings, creates assemblage sculptures and site-specific installations from materials in his proximity. Using craft, paint, glass, and many natural elements to instill new energy into found materials, he provides a fresh perspective and re-interpretation. During this act of change and transition, Rabideau seeks to re-create a moment where there was once a touch of clarity.

James Bridges crafts multi-layered, poetic paintings of the natural landscape. Based on abstractions of environments that surround him, Bridges’ paintings are created with fast strokes and vigorous line that, quite unpredictably, imbue familiarity. His marks are effortless, spontaneous, yet confident in their placement and intensity.

Through March 24.

Barbara Archer Gallery
280 Elizabeth St NE # A012
Atlanta, GA 30307

Sandler Hudson Gallery announces an exhibition of recent works by Atlanta artists Andrew Crawford and Katherine Mitchell.

“Andrew Crawford’s sculpture stems from a classical approach to object making. He finds his inspiration in everyday objects, often from his own workshop. Using traditional sculpture materials, innovative techniques, and an emphasis on craftsmanship, Crawford seeks to eliminate the utilitarian quality of useful objects, leaving their recognizable qualities to dictate their own identity. Exploring the relationship between manufactured items and hand made objects, he exploits the boundaries between mechanical and organic form. His goal is to create objects that invite the viewer to recognize and appreciate familiar imagery.”

Katherine Mitchell’s new body of work explores “the ways in which the houses in which we have lived in our early lives influence our dreams, day-dreams, creativity and art. The texts embedded in these paintings include many ideas from the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, whose book The Poetics of Space was important in my conceiving of these works. He said, “Through poems [or paintings] we touch the ultimate poetic depth of the space of the house,” which “is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories, and dreams of mankind.” Bachelard also reflected on the importance of “a dream of elsewhere.” This idea is seen in the works based on journeys involving a formative, early experience of literature. The inner journey, like the inner dwelling, is essential.”

Andrew Crawford was born in Chatham, NJ and moved to Atlanta a year later. Crawford graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a concentration in Sculpture. “Crawford’s studio, the Andrew T. Crawford Ironworks, was founded in 1993 and is built on Crawford’s creation of functional objects, ornamental ironwork and industrial fabrication.” Crawford has three full-time craftsmen who collaborate with him in making sculpture and functional objects of original design.

Mitchell was born in Memphis, TN and now resides in Atlanta, GA. Katherine Mitchell received her BFA from Atlanta College of Art, MFA from Georgia State University and did Post-graduate studies at Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy. The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia presents, Places of Memory and Dreams, a solo exhibition opening December 17, 2011, continuing through March 31, 2012. This Working Artist Project exhibition was funded through the generosity of the Charles Loridans Foundation.

Through April 7.

Sandler Hudson Gallery
1009-A Marietta St. NW
Atlanta GA 30318